Quote: Ferocious Aardvark " But perhaps some sort of effort and resources should finally be aimed at actual training and actually improving driving standards. We get plenty of grim warning adverts and exhortations to be careful, but what good do they do? 36,371 deaths in 10 years. Anything else, and huge resources would be brought to bear. While UK road safety may be better than most places, that's beside the point.The carnage continues, and I reckon that one of the daily Commissions of Inquiry of which the Government is so fond should be set up to look at the issue from all sides. MPs fiddling theirn expenses is worthy of an inquiry and jailing the worst offenders, but surely pales into insignificance compared with thousands dying on our roads non-stop, year in, year out?'"
I know that this sort of comment is easily passed off as "old fogey" but until two years ago I was still driving 25-30k miles a year, since then its much less but its all inner-city which just makes things worse - I maintain that in recent years (say 10 years) the level of driver aggression on the roads has increased noticeably.
As most of my driving is now commuting and not driving to appointments any more I admit that I now drive much slower than I used to, speed cameras and three convictions (ok, not convictions, I dobbed myself in) have done that, but I'm constantly tail gated by other vehicles when driving at or very close to the speed limit who through either aggression or complete lack of knowledge are driving so close to my car that they wouldn't even have time to hit the brakes if I had to make an emergency stop.
The most common of those who follow so close at 30 or 40mph that you can't actually see their radiator grill in your rear view mirror are young women drivers, thats not to pick on them specifically but thats the result of my completely unscientific survey - I just think that they have no clue at all about road positioning and the theory of giving yourself plenty of reaction room, after all its your wallet thats going to suffer when you're in the boot of another car and you didn't even notice them braking.
Its simple education - I learned through experience when I passed my test in 1975 in cars that were far less safe than the ones we drive today, seatbelts weren't even compulsory then.