This summer was fairly bad for bikers in Wales with total of 5 deaths in seperate accidents. I witnessed an accident myself 3 months ago while coming back from builth wells- saw a biker colliding with a car. Luckily he walked away with only minor bruises.
Found this piece of article, thought to share it with you all.
Justice Blair’s Theory "Feet per second"
The following is a talk by Mr. Justice Blair, recorded in “The Listener” and copied from “The Journal” of Criminal Law, No.5 January, 1988.
The basic cause of road accidents is widespread ignorance of ground speed, not only on the part of pedestrians but also on the part of virtually every driver of a motor car, and I add that if this widespread ignorance on the part of the road users be cured and it is curable, then there will follow a great reduction in the toll of road accidents. A speedometer does not tell anyone his ground speed. It does nothing of the kind, and it is because every motorist deludes himself into believing that a speedometer tells him how fast he is covering the ground that the danger or road accidents is increased. A speedometer gives you your speed in miles an hour. Have you any mental picture of the length of any hour or the length of a mile? No one has. How then, can anyone possibly get a mental picture of his ground speed when he is asked to put two unreliable factors together and obtain a result?
I have tried very many running down cases. Judges are conscientious when trying cases and I always felt that in order to understand any motor case it was necessary that I work out a respective speed of each vehicle in a measure that would tell me their respective ground speeds. The only measure that would give me any mental picture of the speed at which a vehicle covered the ground was the measure of feet per second. That involved me in a lot of Arithmetic. Sixty miles per hour works out at 87.9 recurring feet per second and every time I converted miles per hour into fee per second I got a result in recurring decimals. So then I had to look for a simple formula, and this is how I got it.
Instead of calling 60 mph 87 odd feet per second I called it 90 feet per second and that gave me the simple formula of adding half to my miles per hour to obtain speed in feet per second correct within 2%. Ever since then, I have driven cars and tried running down cases in feet per second. Now what I say to all motorists is that they try doing what I do, that is always to drive and think in speed in feet per second instead of in miles per hour and you will at once become a 100% better and safer driver. All you have to do is to add one half to the figure of your speed in mph and you will get your speed in feet per second.
Any child can do that. The other aspect of road safety touches what is called kinetic energy, which means the moving force possessed by a vehicle in motion. I cant give you a more detailed explanation, but another way to put it is to refer to kinetic energy as the kick possessed by a moving vehicle. A small motor car weighing about a ton and moving at a speed of 40 miles per hour strikes the same blow as eighteen ten ton steam rollers travelling at their highest speed, which is 3 mph. That is the force you are handling when you speed up a light car to 40 mph 60 feet per second. If you are driving a big seven seater 2 ton car at 60 mph (90 feet per second) its kinetic energy is more than that of 100 ten ton steam rollers moving at 3 mph.
Excellent advice, and as citizens we wish that every driver of a motor car would bear Mr. Justice Blair’s words of wisdom in mind.
Unhappily, human nature is such that when travelling from one place to another we are all inspired with the same desire, to get to our destination as soon as possible. So we all travel as fast as possible, the controls comprised by the words “possible” being (1) regard for your safety, (2) road sense, (3) consideration for others, (4) the law.
“Feet per second” and “Kinetic Energy” do not occur to most of us, until after the accident.
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