How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads

I took my test nearly 25 years ago, and this was present then -- for the avoidance of doubt, the UK test has always been very thorough, though not quite as thorough as those in places like Finland where apparently they have skid pans and similar!

You know, it does vary but relative to any other developed country it's pitiful in every state. The reality is we just hand out driver's licenses to whomever.

It's one of those places there will only be 2 other cars in sight, but they're driving side by side and 10 under the speed limit. And for some reason, everyone seems to just hold down their brake pedal at all times so you can never tell when they're actually slowing. I presume they're driving an automatic with two feet and keep just enough pressure to trigger the brakelights. And everyone, even the Kia Rios, drives in the opposite lane before turning so they can swing wide like a semi. I could go on and on but I digress.

Anyways, it had been an enigma to me for the last few years since I moved here, until one day I was asked to take a lady to her driving test. Sure, why not.

The entirety of the 5 minute road test was turning out right onto a sparsely populated 2 lane highway, driving anxiously at 35 in a 55 for a mile or so, then turning around and coming back. Passed. Suddenly, everything made more sense to me.

And I'm sure this isn't probably even the easiest test nationally, just one I became familiar with recently.

So yeah, we have absolutely no driving standards.

It has done for nearly 25 years at this point ;)

I kind of assumed every state does this.

The official statistics have a rate of about 40-60% for these tests:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/driving-...

Though it definitely varies by area:

https://www.gocompare.com/motoring/reports-statistics/drivin...

It's closer to a school exam in terms of difficulty, rather than the quick drive around a parking lot that it seems a lot of places have.

So people seem a lot more prepared than in many other places, since they actually have to be able to spot hazards and do driving maneuvers to get their license in the first place.

Why are they 60mph? Well, the symbol they display doesn't say 60mph, it's basically just a slash symbol - it should be read "National Limit Applies" or perhaps "Derestricted" and it so happens that the law in the UK says that if there's no other rule in place that limit is 60mph and on these tiny roads nobody has put in place a more specific limit so that's the law.

[If there is carriageway separation, e.g. a larger road on which traffic flowing in the opposite direction isn't sharing the same tarmac, this global rule says 70mph, but no tiny roads have multiple carriageways, actually sometimes it feels like there's barely room for one let alone two]

However, just because there isn't a lower limit doesn't mean it's appropriate to drive at 60mph and people who do are generally maniacs. Where I grew up there are lots of these roads, steep, winding, narrow tracks paved in the 19th or 20th centuries for access to a farm here or a cottage there, and maintained by the public. You absolutely might turn a corner and find an entire flock of sheep in the road going "Baa!". If you're doing 60mph after you've killed a bunch of sheep and the bodies start smashing through your windscreen you're probably dead. Sheep don't have lights, don't know about jaywalking laws (which Britain doesn't have anyway) and aren't smart enough to have considered this risk, they're just there and now you're dead. So you drive at maybe 30-40mph on the straight parts, slower on curves and always pay a lot of attention 'cos things can go very bad, very quickly.

Roundabouts are a bit different. The UK has a lot of what are called "mini roundabouts". As a pedestrian, or perhaps on a bicycle these do just look like they're small roundabouts, too small for the island in the middle to have any purpose so it's just paint. But in a vehicle it's apparent that the island can't exist because you'd crash into it, perhaps not in a Mini but certainly in a bin truck or a bus. The mini roundabout isn't a roundabout except in the sense that the same rules apply as if it was, which means if I can see you can't enter before I do then I know you mustn't enter, I have right of way, which means I needn't slow down - you won't be in my way, you're not entering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Browsing through this I found:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Accident...

What is up with poisoning in the early 40s?

Fortunately, good old Wikipedia has what we are both looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

For me the upshot is that UK still comes out quite good amongst its European peers, but the difference appears to be smaller.

> If we look at the number of deaths per billion miles driven, we see that motorways are roughly four times safer than urban roads, and more than five times safer than rural roads. This is not specific to the UK: among 24 OECD countries, approximately 5% of road deaths occurred on motorways.5 In almost all countries, it was less than 10%.

Both measures have bias, the "per people" metric doesn't take into account when people are actually driving while the "per kilometer" metric puts too much emphasis on long distance driving, which is usually done on motorways where it is the safest. Maybe the best metric would be "per time spent on the road, including as a pedestrian on the sidewalk", but I guess it is harder to estimate.

Anyways the UK is doing well on both metrics.

More than just the overall sizes of the cars (and they are big) it's those very high, flat fronts. That surely must be bad for visibility and bad for fuel efficiency at speed. I can only imagine people like that style because it looks more like a car and less like a minivan, which is what those enormous SUVs really are.

Obviously, in an UK town pedestrians and cars should never come in contact, there are pavements, pedestrian crossings, etc.

Getting my license in the US (CA and NJ) required... showing up with my own car.

And in New Jersey, they even forgot to make me take the actual driving test.

But yes, other than this people do generally drive really safely. I especially like how people mostly keep to the 30mph limit in towns(but then again, people get literally offended when you say you keep to the 20mph limit, like you're some kind of idiot for doing so).

- Lots more speed cameras

- Average speed cameras especially make a huge difference vs spot enforcement

- Tolerance for enforcement is normally 10% rather than 10 mph (i.e. 30 limit means no more than 33mph rather than no more than 40mph)

As someone that has lived in London for nearly 30 years, I can safely say - no they don't. Most intersections have traffic lights.

I'm more used to France's 90 km/h countryside roads (now 80 km/h for most of them) but it's the same, sometimes you can only drive 70 or 50, but sometimes 90 is perfectly fine. But you should be able to see it for yourself, and in the specific places where you can't see the danger there are generally signs and a lower speed limit.

That's the default. These were introduced in the 1950s - before then, there was no national speed limit.

Councils and highway agencies can then decide due to a number of factors to reduce that number to what they deem appropriate. Most councils pull that down to 40mph in unpopulated areas, 30mph in built-up areas. Some councils - and the whole of Wales - pulled the built-up limit down to 20mph.

The Highways Agency has deemed some parts of the motorway network aren't safe at 70mph, so will drop the speed appropriately. Sometimes permanently (50mph on junctions is common), sometimes dynamically (overhead gantrys). It's all fine.

This is how the UK works - you set a default, and then let councils figure out things for themselves.

What you seem to be missing is that this is not a speed target. In most of the UK (notable exceptions include Greater Manchester and Hull, in my experience), drivers do not aim to get to that speed, they use their judgement.

On that road, there is no way much over 30mph is safe, as you don't have line of sight to oncoming traffic within a stopping distance. Do you know how I know that? The driving lessons and tests I took are far, far better than most in the World, even those my parents took.

Nobody is driving that road at 60mph without a death wish, but it doesn't mean we need to spend thousands of pounds per mile dropping the limit and then struggling to actually enforce it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsOnBikes/comments/debwm4/2_bik...

I notice it when cycling too - there is more traffic on these lane - and the drivers think they can drive along like some A-road

Expecting the driver to be an educated and safe driver who is capable of judging the appropriate speed for the road is far superior. This also inculcates a better attitude in the driver - the speed limit is not a target.

There are quite a few rural roads where it is a perfectly reasonable speed (straight, wide, 2 lane), and plenty of roads where you physically couldn't get your car past 40mph without fecking it into a hedge. It's a limit, not a maximum, and it's that way so we can trust people's judgement based on the current conditions of a road, which is (at least in a rural context) almost certainly more accurate than what a council would set.

As a specific (and horrific) example, this doctor was found to be mostly liable for a collision that happened due to her speed, while still under the speed limit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66121540

My general take is that I try to drive as if a maniac (meaning anyone who might think it's reasonable to drive faster than I do) is about to come the other way along the road. I should be able to stop within my sight-lines if the road is wide enough to take evasive action, and well within half that distance if the road is narrow.

The lights control the flow, so no need to worry about giving way. You pick your lane in the lead up using the signs and road markings. Then you follow your painted lane, the markings of which guide you all the way through. The markings and lights do all the work for you, unless you're in the wrong lane at the start. All your awareness is focused on looking for hazards of people who are in the wrong lane because your route is dictated by the road markings.

I will admit, they look complicated - especially if you've never driven one before. My first time around one was a bit nerve-wracking, but they quickly become second nature.

I think if these guys are honest about their numbers - and the main number they're calling out is a 22-fold decline in road deaths per mile driven in the last 75 years, which is remarkable - and shows those other safer regions in their comparisons, what is the problem?

> If every country could lower its rates to those of the UK, Sweden, or Norway, this number would be just under 200,000. We’d save one million lives every year.

The article wasn’t making the case that the UK is the absolute best, it was discussing what the UK did to change from being unsafe to much safer.

I would actually love to see some data that compares total deaths and injuries per capita from electrocution from plugs across different countries. I have a feeling the total worldwide figures are tiny in comparison to injuries from stepping barefoot/putting your knee on UK plugs.

Also, UK plugs tend to have the wire coming out the bottom and then curving upwards as the electrical device is usually above the socket, over time resulting in an exposed wire, while most other plugs have the wire coming out the centre.

I never see Brits saying this. Only people from other nations.

The plugs are the safest though!

I chose active travel over car dependency at an early age. I also worked in the cycle trade. My opinion is that roads have become far more dangerous, however, most of what can be killed by the car has already been killed and the reason for fewer deaths is slimmer pickings.

Children and the elderly are two canaries in the coal mine.

Kids used to get new bicycles at Christmas, play in the streets and be 'free range' in the UK. Nowadays they are all welded to mobile phones and cocooned in SUVs. Only something like one on four know how to ride a bicycle nowadays and that Christmas trade in bicycles died thirty years ago.

Although you see a fair few Lime bikes and people commuting by bicycle in London, most bicycles are sold to rich people for them to strap to cars, for them to drive to a designated safe spot, for them to ride from the car park in a loop back to the car park. You never see these bicycles parked up next to the door at a supermarket or even at a railway station, partly due to the risk of theft, but also due to the dangers of the road.

As for the elderly, nowadays they are boomers and they all have cars. They only give up their car keys when they get condemned to retirement homes. Hence, like kids, old people are not to be found in the streets, unless cocooned in tin boxes.

As for being cocooned in a tin box, what happened to spirited driving? In the 1970s it was normal for people to cross the country with no sat nav or seat belt, driving as if they were in a Group B rally car, taking their special shortcuts, drunk, with cigarette in hand. Nowadays this doesn't happen, people in cars just shuffle from traffic light to traffic light fearing CCTV and speed cameras.

We have also priced out younger motorists, who would have been the 'spirited drivers'.

Hitchhiking used to exist in the 1970s. Thatcher era stranger danger put an end to that, so nobody hitchhikes these days. Does this mean that hitchhiking is safer? No!

There is another aspect of car dependency and 'safety'. Sure, you might not get killed in an ultra-violent crash in a tin-box cocoon, however, what about cardiovascular disease? Being car dependent and eating the convenience foods of the car dependent is a shortcut to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cognitive decline and death by blocked arteries.

The government knows this, and this is why 'active travel' is a phrase. By 2030 the UK government wants more than half of all journeys in built up areas to be 'active travel' rather than lame car dependency.

I think your experience is extremely unlucky. I went to a school in London (in the 80s) with around a 1,000 kids from 8 to 18 and there was one road death, and two injuries, all in the same accident, in all the time i was there. I did not know the buy who died personally, although i knew one of the others who was in the car.

I agree with you about the improvements in general. I do think the 20mph limits where I now live (and in some other places) seem a bit random, and there are some difficult A road junctions that I think the really could do with lower limits or other improvements that do not have them.

Absolutely true that kids are objectively much safer, but people have grown fearful. I wonder whether being safer has made people less tolerant of risk more than risks have diminished. Its common to hear arguments that anything that might save even one life is worth doing.

One of the issues is we’re trapped with a media ecosystem that won’t even allow progressive parties to say “we’ll take a bit more in tax and in return you’ll get a functioning health service”, instead they feel they have to promise to run the economy like the Tories (which is mind numbing).

It’s not just the recent Labour election I’m referring to. The first time Blair got in it was the same.

We get the services we deserve.

Equally, nobody in the construction trade gets into it to get killed in an accident, especially ones avoided by just having traffic move at slightly lower speeds.