”AGAIN,I remind people that even a 10kph increase in speed GREATLY increases the stopping distance for a car.”

A. We spend much more time with moving traffic that we need to coordinate with then stopping for the sudden intrusion. The relationship between speed and safety is curvilinear not linear as you are implying.
B. Those uncommon sudden intrusions are most often a pedestrian that we swerve past rather than aim for and panic brake like on those TV commercials.
C. The next most common sudden intrusion is a car and whether you are more likely to hit it because you are faster or less likely to hit it because you are faster just depends on where you are relative to it at the time of the intrusion.

Just for fun could you specify how much it increases the stopping distances.

“ Most drivers, in their abysmal ignorance of speed knowledge and consequences, are blissfully unaware of stopping distances at various speeds and the resulting massive death and injury consequences resulting from going too fast in relation to limits and prevailing conditions.”

Driver skill training could be extremely beneficial. Nevertheless research consistently shows that most drivers have this basic skill as the speed at which most drivers travel if freely choosing a speed is close to the optimal speed for the conditions. Further research consistently shows that people slow down in particular areas that are unusually hazardous (as measured by accident history) then they do in other areas in close proximity. This all confirms that basic skill. When sober people in a roadworthy vehicle do the wrong thing with speed they usually know. The proviso I would add is situations of fog or heavy rain seem to test people more.

”To most people, a 10 or 20 kph speed increase (from any initial base speed) seems rather inconsequential. This false "belief" is the result of utter ignorance of the mathematics and science of speed. It's "amateurs" offering "uniformed" "opinion".”

Get off your high horse that mathematics and physics has a context that is more compelling.

“ ‘why do police allow leeway on speed limits?’. For safety reasons, that's why. If all police were always totally strict to within 1kph, then when every driver gets even slightly close to the speed limit they'll be looking at the speedometer more than the road.......’not’ safe at all.”

Philips, you are saying that it is safer to do a few ks over, or to be allowed to do a few ks over. This seems to run strongly counter to the message presented in you previous post;

“AGAIN,I remind people that even a 10kph increase in speed GREATLY increases the stopping distance for a car.”

In my experience in both urban and highway situations, there are an awful lot of drivers that push the limit of what they think they can get away with (10kmh over the stated limit) and who would have to be constantly monitoring their speedos. Indeed, that is what I find myself doing on the highway in particular. That is, doing the fastest speed that I can get away with when there is traffic behind in order to roll with the flow…which means a constant monitoring of the speedo (or using cruise control if the vehicle I’m driving has it).

So a 10kmh leeway doesn’t solve the problem of the need for constant speedo monitoring or the added risk that it might create.

continued

“…bad overtaking, tailgating and slow road-hog driving" are ALL "speed" related examples.”

Speed-related yes. But it makes no sense for all of these different manifestations of bad driving to be lumped under the one category of speed (if this is the case) for the purposes of deriving statistics on road accidents. Indeed, it is very misleading, as the general public would perceive the stats on speed-related accidents to mean excessive speed, with the specific exclusion of slow road-hoggery or other types of accidents that could occur at slow speeds, such as nose-to-tail accidents caused by tailgating.

“…did you know that it can take 2.5 kilometres to overtake a road train that's doing 100kph. That takes a lot of skill and control at ‘high speed’ “.

That doesn’t make any sense. At high speed, you could overtake a road train that’s doing 100kmh in a few hundred metres, easily.

Within your very broad interpretation of speed, I guess you could even argue that any drink-driving accident, no matter how slow the idiot might have been going or what the circumstances of the accident might have been, would be speed-related because the driver was going too fast for his impaired reaction ability to deal with the situation.

Anyway, your very broad interpretation of speed seems to be pretty much the same as what I call risk factors and safety margins. So we have the same broad concerns and that is the main thing.

“Things like tailgating is not too bad and at normal speeds is not really dangerous except when there is a mismatch in vehicle sizes…”

Steel, I’ll have to disagree.

In surveys conducted by the RACQ (Royal Automobile Club of Queensland), tailgating is of a very high level of concern http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/10/08/1160246005913.html

Tailgating gives the immediate indication that the offending driver has a very poor understanding and appreciation of risk factors and safety margins, or of road courtesy.

It is very distracting for the driver in front.

It places the innocent party in front in an ongoing heightened risk scenario. For as long as they are being tailgated, they have very little scope for slowing down, let alone breaking quickly if they need to.

It is just about impossible for the driver in front to do anything about most of the time.

It causes road-rage.

Nose-to-tail accidents caused by tailgating make up the top category of motor vehicle insurance claims.

How often do you see a whole line of silly drivers travelling too close to the vehicle in front? I see it all the time. It only takes a very slight slowing down of the front vehicle for an exaggeration of slowing to be created back along the line of traffic, with each driver reacting more strongly to the slowing of the vehicle in front until there is a great screech of brakes and an accident back down the line somewhere.

I am very sensitive to this and hang well back when in a line of traffic. But very often the driver behind is intolerant of this, even though it is obvious to the twat that I’m travelling at the same speed as the car in front of me.

Nope, tailgating is bad news indeed. And the abject lack of policing of it is just disgusting.

yes, but does it actually kill people or injure them significantly? Is it truly dangerous? I think the answer currently is not really as millions of people tailgate and the absence of accidents prove that it's almost harmless, though I agree with you when it is done serious at high speeds and I would classify it as dangerous then. The cause is probably proof that current speed limits are ridiculous enough to cause a lot of frustration. People would tailgate a lot less if the speeds were higher or a better system was in place.

Ludwig,

"But it makes no sense for all of these different manifestations of bad driving to be lumped under the one category of speed (if this is the case) for the purposes of deriving statistics on road accidents. Indeed, it is very misleading, as the general public would perceive the stats on speed-related accidents to mean excessive speed,"

Here here!

In fairness, Queensland Transport, used to (mid to late 1990s) and may still take the approach of using a more normal concept hence deriving statistics of speed as a factor in 4% of accidents.

New South Wales took the misleading approach and got a figure of 40% from memory.