Every driver is 'unique'

I was out the other day in the sticks, with a Learner, and we found ourselves on one of the rural roads that surround her parents farm.  The driving conditions on these roads differ significantly to those encountered on urban town roads, for quite a few reasons:

They have an unusual mix of long straight roads, and also severe bends (makes for an interesting experience if you ‘like to drive’)

They will often ‘look’ different to town roads; potholes, uneven road, no kerbs, no white paint, ditches on the sides, hilly, mud/manure on the surface etc

They will have a variety of road users; horseriders, motorbike riders (love rural roads), tractors, lorries, pedestrians walking on the road (there is often no footpath)

Vision is often severely reduced; not only due to those severe bends but often farms will have entry/exits from the road which are completely blind to road users, also you often encounter dips in straight roads which will completely swallow up an oncoming vehicle and you can easily think no-one is oncoming.

When driving at night, you often are left unaided by the Council; there may be no white paint on the road, no cats eyes, often no street lighting, sometimes no pre-warning of severe bends

The road users will often not be experienced of driving on them; people off on tourist trips will inevitably not have much experience of driving on rural roads, so they may not be as confident at reading the severity of bends, or whether an overtake is safe, or what the speed limit is etc and this can often have a knock on effect on other road users.

Getting back to my session the other day.  We had a long narrow stretch of rural road, farms all around us, very bumpy road, severe ditch on the right side of the road, massive trees to the left, and yet all around was vast stretches of very flat farmland.  There were no kerbs, just verge, we had vehicles oncoming and a vehicle coming up fast behind us.  My Learner was doing 50 in a national speed limit (60).  It’s fair to say, that given these circumstances, my ‘alertness’ increases, I feel more anxious, my pulse probably quickens, and I am making big efforts to anticipate things more.  I’m not a gambling man, but I guess to summarise, I would say that the odds are slowly but surely creeping against us in these conditions.  We don’t have many ‘escape routes’ to go to should an emergency crop up, we are more in the hands of other road users due to our limitations of options in position, which is never a good thing..... they may be drunk, tired, foreign, 90 yrs old, nervous, distracted, on medication etc.  Our speed is higher than a town 30 road, yet our vision is often less – not a nice combination.  If it’s going to go wrong, it’s going to go seriously wrong.  I wanted to test if my Learner was sensing the same, so I asked “How do you feel right now about our driving conditions?”, and to my surprise, she told me that she felt quite comfortable, because she is used to being on these roads, she felt quite at home with them, and she didn’t see any increased risk to note of.  She then asked me “Well, these kind of roads have less accidents on them than other roads don’t they?”.

What a great question.  Any driving instructor reading this, will instantly connect with me when I say these are like golden moments in our job.  When a Learner is willing and prepared to ask a question, no matter what it’s about, it’s an opportunity for learning (for them as well as us), but a question like that?!  I said that it was my belief that they pose more of a threat for it to go seriously wrong, but as I couldn’t give her instant facts, I’d dig about and get back to her with more concrete information.  She smiled at this, I think she quite liked the idea that for once, I was being given homework to do ... from her!

Well, the following link from RoSPA nicely summarises the situation.....

http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/highway/rural_roads.aspx

In addition, Wikipedia confirms that more deaths occur in rural areas, but more injuries in urban areas.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great_Britain

Then pop to pg 22 of the link below which is referring to a particularly high killed/seriously injured rate on a small section of the A17 which is a stones throw from where this Learner lives.  Just read the ‘evidence’ paragraph for a flavour of this very important subject of safety on rural roads.....

http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/pgr-roadsafety-dpp-rural-ruralroadsafetyreport-pdf/annex2.pdf

This last link has some quality information on it and well worth a read.  Reference is made to the disproportionately high incidence of death/injury involving motorbikes, and also the migrant community.

So it seems that for a variety of reasons, when it goes wrong on these rural roads, it goes horribly wrong with fatal consequences.   It will be interesting to see if this information has any affect on my Learners intended choice of route as she drives round for the rest of her life.  For me, personally, I don’t feel comfortable on those roads, as fundamentally I’m more in the hands of other road users than on urban roads.  By that I mean, I’m not in as much control of what happens.  Poor driving from another road user on these rural roads is more difficult for me to accommodate than on the urban roads, and as such, I could be the best driver in the world, but still come seriously unstuck on these roads due to the poor driving of another.

These perceptions are an important factor.  The other day when I arrived at a Learners home, I brought up the subject of aquaplaning due to a sudden downpour* on the way to his house.  When I asked if he had any experience of it, he relayed to me an incident that had happened a couple of days before while he was out practising with his Mother.  The heavens opened and he suddenly found himself slamming the brakes on hard due to a roundabout that just came from nowhere as he put it.  When I dug a bit deeper he told me that it was due to the very heavy rain that affected his forward vision that made him not see the roundabout.  He had not reduced his speed to reflect the sudden change in driving conditions, and as such, his speed was too fast for his lack of vision (an important message that has cropped up earlier in this blog).  When he was recounting the incident originally, the emphasis was on the sudden and unusual experience of the emergency stop and triggering the ABS as a result.  In his mind, he saw a link between me mentioning aquaplaning and his emergency stop.  The link in his head was the sudden downpour.  But the important bit is seeing the different consequences of the sudden downpour.

How we perceive driving conditions/incidents, either at the time, or after the event is a very personal matter, and what makes each of us unique. 


* Talking of sudden downpours, did you know that every single day of the year, 3.3 billion litres of water are wasted in leakages underground in England and Wales?  That amount of water would FILL UP Wembley Stadium THREE TIMES, every single day.  (Just thought I'd share that with you, if you, like me, are currently on a hosepipe ban).