Speeding and the weekend

[Ixion]

I never speed. Speed kills, this I know, the gubbermint tells me so.

I did do 200 odd k on Saturday and 300 odd k on Sunday in rain all the way. Slippery slippery roads. But most I saw, until Sunday evening , cage and bike, were quite sensible. And nobody was going particularly fast that I saw (especially not the ruddy Harley riders - but that's a. separate discussion - only ride I've been on where I was having consistently to brake coming OUT of corners)

[Maha]

I never speed. Speed kills, this I know, the gubbermint tells me so.

I did do 200 odd k on Saturday and 300 odd k on Sunday in rain all the way. Slippery slippery roads. But most I saw, until Sunday evening , cage and bike, were quite sensible. And nobody was going particularly fast that I saw (especially not the ruddy Harley riders - but that's a. separate discussion - only ride I've been on where I was having consistently to brake coming OUT of corners)

Followed a guy on a Triumph cruiser (speedmaster or whatever) down the Ohinewai road....theres a nice straight bit (about 2ks long) with a few crests and he was braking before the top of each crest....
Did he think the road turned left or right?...cant of because you could to whole way....had me fucked anyway, passed him after the 2nd crest. Did not feel comfortable riding behind him.

[davebullet]

I wonder if generally the people who cause serious crashes never think about them. I've been lucky (and with careful management) not to have been in any serious crashes in 23 years of driving / riding. I for one think every ride about serious crashes and how to avoid them. My chicken strips are a testament to that. It sickens me to read about it when kids are involved.

[marty]

That must be a record. Terrible. How many were due to inappropriate speed, and how many were innocents caught up in someone-else's stupidity? Will it force a rethink on the speed-thing campaign?

Not yet anyway.
Still...much too hard to detect more general idiocy from afar, eh?

a record since the mid 90's at least. i remember attending crashes in one month in the early 90's that killed 19 people on SH1 between mercer and te rapa (Huntly's patch). and that was only on my shift. the coroner and mortuary were so busy at that time that the coroner was signing cause of death certificates 'due to injuries sustained in a car crash' - without a post mortem. i think the last one was the 5 indians outside the dairy factory - they went home in coffins without a pm.

[Ixion]

There must be some mistake

On the one hand the gubbermint ( who never lie) tell us

Yesterday was the last day of a week-long, nationwide police clampdown on speeding.
The campaign also signalled the end of one of the worst weekends on record for road deaths.
..
Mr Toms said drivers did not seem to be getting the message.

But on the other hand

The accident north of Auckland happened about 8.30am on State Highway 1 near Te Hana, 10km north of Wellsford. The road was closed in both directions for more than three hours.
It is understood the Indian driver of the car that was in a head-on collision with a hatchback had just picked his father up from the airport and was not speeding at the time.
..


Another Indian motorist - who helped to translate at the scene for the father of the dead man - had tailed the car from Te Hana and said it never went faster than 50km/h.

But surely if he only went 50kph he could not possibly have crashed. He was obviously doing everything right, what more can anyone be expected to do except drive very slowly. There must be some mistake .

[Radar]

I noticed an incredibly heavy police presence on the roads last night, with lots of focus on speeding. If you were planning on speeding for the next few weeks on your trusty steed, maybe you might want to rethink things.

Ride safe.

Riding from Napier to Masterton yesterday afternoon/evening, I only saw one police car - and my speed was not ticketable... not at that time, anyway. When passing a group of cars/trucks, I may blip over briefly.

Where were all the police? Doing a blitz in Wellington?

[Swoop]

But surely if he only went 50kph he could not possibly have crashed. He was obviously doing everything right, what more can anyone be expected to do except drive very slowly. There must be some mistake .

Correct. The gubbinment, and their tax enforcement arm, never lie.
There was no crash. Move along. Nothing to see here.

[pritch]

Over 4 million people made it through the weekend though.

That's the real silver lining, not the fact that they weren't bikers.

[Grahameeboy]

a record since the mid 90's at least. i remember attending crashes in one month in the early 90's that killed 19 people on SH1 between mercer and te rapa (Huntly's patch). and that was only on my shift. the coroner and mortuary were so busy at that time that the coroner was signing cause of death certificates 'due to injuries sustained in a car crash' - without a post mortem. i think the last one was the 5 indians outside the dairy factory - they went home in coffins without a pm.

The worst road accident in the UK was a coach crash near Grassington, N Yorks, on 27 May 1975, in which 33 people died.

Current Road Toll in UK

Total Killed During:

January 35
February 36
March 37
April 39

It's a end of holiday thing here in NZ...

[mattian]

so..... you can see through crests??... and happy to maintain a slightly faster speed over the top of them?? wow.... I wish I posessed your magic powers of perception.
It makes perfect sense to slow a little before ascending to the top of a crest.

[robboh]

No recent rain & then a reasonable amount of rain, coming into winter (no recent slightly bad weather experience) and slightly bad weather. Recipie for it really, unfortunately.

I was doing the Domain Hillclimb in a cage yesterday (a sprikling of rain Sat night, and a reasonable amount Sun morning) and I have NEVER EVER driven on a road that was so slippery (well, except icy ones)!!

Interestingly on the radio news, I heard the comment that Police were "RECOMMENDING SLOWER DRIVERS MOVE OVER TO ACCOMODATE FASTER VEHICLES".

This is the FIRST time I have ever heard it, even slightly 'officially' positioned, that maybe slow drivers ARE an issue.

IMHO, a good portion of so-called 'speed' accidents are caused by impatience due to either;
* people who just drive significantly slower than open road speed in areas where there are no 'legal' ways to easily pass
* those wonderful people who speed up to make it impossible to pass in a passing lane, even remotely legally, and then slow down to their regular 85kph outside passing lanes (and think corners marked 95kph require an immediate severe application of brakes when doing 85kph)

[jrandom]

I did do 200 odd k on Saturday and 300 odd k on Sunday in rain all the way. Slippery slippery roads.

Aye. I rode down to Napier on Friday night after work (dry) and back up on Sunday (pissed down from the moment I got back over the hill, bleh).

The closest I came to a Moment (tm) was heading back up, between Te Awamutu and Ngaruawahia. There's a bit of road right on a corner of SH39 that's had orange "slippery road" signs up for well over a year. I suppose that's cheaper than repairing it.

Tiptoed into it through the rain, and the 1400 still went sideways at both ends. There was oncoming traffic, of course.

The tiptoeing gave me enough breathing space to ease out of it without crossing the centerline. But I did suck a bit of leather up my ringpiece.

Speed? Pig's arse. Shitty road surfaces kill.

[peasea]

Reading the reports, a combination of aggressive driving, poor judgement, driver error. But speed is easier to measure...

Perhaps it's because I'm a motorcyclist, but I find most car drivers to have poor skills and judgement.

With you there sunshine. The cops need to get their blikered eyes out from behind their lasers and cameras and get some of the dorks who pull insane stunts while still travelling at less than the speed limit, 50k zone or 100k zone.

[Gremlin]

The worst road accident in the UK was a coach crash near Grassington, N Yorks, on 27 May 1975, in which 33 people died.
...
It's a end of holiday thing here in NZ...

UK and NZ has NOTHING on South Africa. I remember cheering the road toll one easter past 1000, and Christmas was always over 2000.

A coach or bus would come off a mountain pass, 50-60 dead, easy

Yes yes, perhaps I shouldn't have cheered it on, but really, it was rather entertaining... must be rather desensitized I guess

[Grahameeboy]

UK and NZ has NOTHING on South Africa. I remember cheering the road toll one easter past 1000, and Christmas was always over 2000.

A coach or bus would come off a mountain pass, 50-60 dead, easy

Yes yes, perhaps I shouldn't have cheered it on, but really, it was rather entertaining... must be rather desensitized I guess

Can imagine..saw heaps of crashes in Kenya when I spent time there...mind you you only have to look at the roads....we complain about paper roads in NZ...they had paperless roads