There have been many reports of motorists using the lack of traffic on the roads during the Covid19 lockdown to flout the speed limits and now with more traffic back on the roads there is a danger that some may continue to drive at excessive speeds even after things are back to ‘normal’.
Behavioural Science in transportation (understanding the behaviour and motivations of transport users such as motorists and rail commuters etc) is a fascinating subject which plays a big part in the engineering and design of roads and their ‘furniture’ in an attempt to gently persuade drivers to modify their driving behaviour to something more appropriate.
There are many such psychological tactics in place to combat speeding but could we be doing more? What other engineering solutions could be implemented to stop excessive speeding? How do different countries tackle speeding on their roads? What could we learn from them?
i suggest you need the driver to feel some sense of danger - modern cars go to great lengths to remove this.
(having started driving in old cars in the last century, I very much agree with the comments about how much better modern cars are.)
So, how to re-create the feeling of mortality associated with driving an all drum brake car with cross ply tyres on a wet road, in a pre-seat belt car ? (and possibly a significant rust hole in the floor under the pedals and a dicky starter motor so you have to park downhill on a slope so you can roll start. That bit may have just been me of course.)
Perhaps above a critical speed a row of spikes should emerge from the dashboard and the driver's seat belt be removed ?
Setting the speed limits also needs an input from what is an acceptable fatality rate - if we are being shown folk dying on TV every night from a horrible virus, at a rate of some hundreds per day, so we are all doomed, it is not so surprising that the other half of the equation says it makes little sense to worry about the speed limits unless the death rate associated is comparable or higher. so for example we could raise the speed on motorways until it is.
i suggest you need the driver to feel some sense of danger - modern cars go to great lengths to remove this.
(having started driving in old cars in the last century, I very much agree with the comments about how much better modern cars are.)
So, how to re-create the feeling of mortality associated with driving an all drum brake car with cross ply tyres on a wet road, in a pre-seat belt car ? (and possibly a significant rust hole in the floor under the pedals and a dicky starter motor so you have to park downhill on a slope so you can roll start. That bit may have just been me of course.)
Perhaps above a critical speed a row of spikes should emerge from the dashboard and the driver's seat belt be removed ?
Setting the speed limits also needs an input from what is an acceptable fatality rate - if we are being shown folk dying on TV every night from a horrible virus, at a rate of some hundreds per day, so we are all doomed, it is not so surprising that the other half of the equation says it makes little sense to worry about the speed limits unless the death rate associated is comparable or higher. so for example we could raise the speed on motorways until it is.
