The conclusion I meant to draw about the amber light and hidden pedestrian was that given no lights and no traffic light poles obscuring the view and concealing the pedestrian, I would have been driving according to human context rather than in obedience to automated control, and would never have been tempted to speed up. It’s the difference between driving with due care and attention and true care and attention.
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Martin – Heard you on Radio 4 – good to hear there is someone else who understands the problems created by ‘experts’. Most people seem to think road safety is a sort of battle between drivers, cyclists, pedestrians & public transport users. They are all road users – mostly incompetent, as are the highway engineers and police with their very limited & simplistic knowledge of road safety. I’ve studied driving for over 40 years & have considerable insight into driver behaviour but I’m not professionally involved in road safety (I’m actually an unemployed handyman with health problems who happens to be a very good driver). I try to do my bit towards road safety but it’s difficult when vested interests lobby badly informed politicians. eg the mobile phone law which has clearly made the roads less safe. For 8 years I was a volunteer driver for the ambulance service in north Wales but gave up when it became clear that I could not do the work as safely & efficiently as I wanted, due to a speeding prosecution which has made me more of a hazard to other road users, as I now worry too much about the precise speed I’m doing (looking at the speedo much too often rather than concentrating on the road).
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As I said in my email reply last week, it sounds as if the community lost a useful member because of the traffic control industry’s obsession with numbers at the expense of context and intelligent discretion. I have asked, “if mobile phone use is banned on the ground that it takes our eyes off the road, should traffic lights and speed limits be banned for the same reason”, but can you expand on your point about the mobile phone law making roads less safe?