Too many flashing lights.

Two enormous tractors with huge wheels just went through the village with yellow front flashers, like aircraft strobe lights, and rotary-style blinkers each side. Ambulances that used to have one flashing blue light are now lit up like Christmas trees. No self-respecting wide load goes without a police escort and fairy lights. Construction trucks, long loads, dumper trucks, road-sweepers, dustbin lorries, road-menders, every amateur emergency service now has a blinking light on the roof.

Two problems. So many sparkling warnings devalue the currency. They should be reserved for real emergencies, like the ambulances, and not stuck on every truck to give the driver a sense of well-being. It’s fine for AA patrols on the hard shoulder, but some construction sites look like Guy Fawkes nights even when everybody’s parked.

Second. The old Roadcraft manual used to warn police drivers about Red Mist, the sense of urgency that comes with an emergency call. It’s now a Flashing Blue Mist and gets to the adrenalin of any driver, it seems, with an alternating light.

They ought to be rationed. Licensed. Drivers with sparklers should be held to account for every occasion they are switched on. Too many look upon them as a Turn-On.

Road Casualties

It’s motorcyclists we need to control. Overall deaths and injuries are up, car victims down. “Vulnerable road users” are suffering. Cyclists – dead and injured up 13 per cent. Motorcyclists – up 8 per cent. Child pedestrians – up 14 per cent. Car users killed or badly injured – down 4 per cent. Loose talk about 40mph limits on country roads looks like political window dressing. It is born-again bikers, with not enough training or experience, and not regularly riding on their immensely fast and extremely noisy machines that are worsening the figures. Cars are getting safer. Brakes, handling, airbags and increasing use of safety belts have all helped, and although there is scope for improvement, and IAM-style qualifications should be encouraged, let’s scrutinise the figures before drawing sweeping conclusions and imposing a whole set of restrictions that won’t work.

Speed Limits

“Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.” Yes Minister Jim Hacker’s famous response. Last week’s commotion about 40 limits is just the same. Hapless Jim Hacker - hapless real-life Tom Fraser – Minister of Transport who brought in the 70mph limit at Christmas 1965, “doing something” about motorway accidents in fog.

They weren’t 100mph crashes. Hardly anybody was doing more than 50. It was a fatuous response yet, astonishingly, voters liked it. Voters love speed limits. The average voter would bring back capital punishment and now we have a government that before the election promised not to wage war on motorists, reacting the same way the socialist dirigiste useless Fraser did.

Only months ago it was talking about an 80mph limit. I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now. Road casualties are up; they want to be seen Doing Something.

Yes Minister, they really are all the same.

Readers' letters

1985 Ford Sierra RS Cosworth

The Guardian readers’ letters were the rudest. I covered motor racing for the newpaper in the 1960s and 1970s. Pioneering stuff. Motor racing seldom made sports pages. John Samuel, sports editor recently presented with the Doug Gardner Award, wanted to be “inclusive”. He asked Adam Raphael, the motoring correspondent who went on to be a notable political writer, to cover racing. Adam didn’t want to and asked Barrie Gill, of the new (1964) Sun who might. Gill kindly suggested me.

I enjoyed The Guardian. It was demanding on writing style and I did the motoring column sometimes as well. I didn’t know about newspaper writing, had no formal training; I made it up as I went along. By good fortune John Samuel was patient. Just as fortunately perhaps, he had nobody else on hand who knew anything about motor racing.

There was a broad church of student readers with whom I got on well. But when I was critical in the motoring column of the 70mph speed limit Guardianistas were furious. Prejudiced and abusive the roundheads went after me. They seemed to suspect that not only did I not share their dirigisme, but also (probably alone of Guardian contributors) I was never a member of a trade union. They, and readers of The Obsever, nevertheless stuck by me for 15 years.

It was The Grauniad when I started with it. Compositry was a weakness on a small patch of floor in Grays Inn Road. Losing £120,000 a day now, they say. That’s what happens, you see...

Sierra Sapphire. Cosworth 4x4 was a development.

Sometimes it was as well not to tell readers absolutely everything. I did not disclose, even to my broader-minded Sunday Times readers in 1990 how, testing the Sierra Sapphire Cosworth in Spain, my former colleague from The Motor, Roger Bell in the passenger’s seat, pointed skywards. We were directly under the flight path to an airport and he was indicating a Boeing 747 overhead, seemingly stationary. We were both doing 150mph.

The Boeing was getting down to its landing speed approaching the runway. We were enjoying racing car speeds on an open road. Roger had been with the test team for the E-type Jaguar. In 1961, 150mph was so rare for a production car they put on crash helmets and used racing tyres. Here we were, on a sunny day, doing it in a production saloon Ford. Safe as houses at twice what the hapless Tom Fraser, Minister of Transport thought so perilous in 1965.

I didn't do 150mph in this E-type, one of the first I drove, at the Glasgow Motor Show following its introduction in Geneva. That's me on the right, with Jaguar apprentice Clive Martin outside the Hamilton newspaper that ran my first motoring column.

Speed limit research

Speed limits should be related to the design speed of a road. Low limits on roads built for high speeds are likely to be disregarded, resulting in higher speeds than if a realistic limit is imposed. The Transport Research Laboratory TRL concluded in 1994 that changing the speed limit on motorways to 80mph might not alter traffic speeds by much. It might rise by about 3-4mph provided drivers feel the limit is reasonable. “Although there is no experimental evidence that raised speed limits result in lower speeds ... such effects are said to occur. The explanation ... has to do with the driving public's response to the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the limit. If the limit is raised to something more appropriate to the design speed of the road, then ... some drivers will respond by observing it and speeds fall.”

The TRL found evidence that “drivers driving much faster or much slower than the general traffic stream are more likely to be involved in accidents.” The speed traffic is actually doing is less important than making sure all the vehicles are going about the same speed in relation to one another.

Analysis of the effect of speed on accidents has always been problematical and the TRL’s findings endorses the view that blanket limits can sometimes be unproductive. Limits should reflect the dangers of individual stretches of road and there would be more benefit from reducing the speed of the fastest drivers than reducing speeds for all drivers. This is especially true for urban roads where engineering and enforcement targeting the fastest drivers tends to work.

In a report compiled in 2000 the TRL said: “The scope for reducing accidents by means of speed management depends on the operational characteristics of the road. The often-quoted broad result that a ‘5% reduction in accident frequency results per 1mph reduction in average speed’ has been investigated carefully; although it remains a robust general rule, the percentage reduction in accident frequency per 1mph reduction has been shown to vary according to road type and average traffic speed. It is: about 6% for urban roads with low average speeds; about 4% for medium speed urban roads and lower speed rural main roads; about 3% for the higher speed urban roads and rural main roads. In urban areas the potential for accident reduction is greatest on those roads with low average speeds. These are typically busy main roads in towns with high levels of pedestrian activity, wide variation in speeds, and high accident frequencies.”

The Driving Test

You have to assume both drivers of this 1940s Ford Prefect agreed, in general, which way they wanted to go. Experimental, but ultimately unsuccessful driving school car.
Even veterans could learn from The Driving Test, a 100 minute DVD by Brian M Stratton. This is more than a primer to get L drivers through their test. It is that too, with advice on everything from pre-test nerves to what you should do if you encounter a bin lorry during it. It is also a revision course for experienced drivers and I strongly recommend it. Brian Stratton is an instructor who trained with the Driving Standards Agency, which sets the driving test, giving him a special insight into what examiners expect.

The driving test has certainly developed over the years, with up to a quarter of the 40 minutes or so it takes, given to “independent driving”. This furnishes candidates with a proper driving task, going from here to there by following a route. It can mean simply navigating by road signs or by a diagram on a card. Wasn’t like that in my day. You went where the officer said. It’s much more grown-up nowadays.

Yet how often one hears drivers cheerfully admit they wouldn’t pass their driving test now. Exasperating. They should get this DVD and go through the dummy specimen test with a “candidate” providing a commentary about what he is doing. Invaluable. And if anyone claims to have learnt nothing from watching, they are either being untruthful or they are dangerous. It is scarcely surprising young people fail the test more often than they did when I was 17. The standard is much higher.

Stratton’s DVD is entertaining. There is great footage of a 1935 driving test, with a 10HP Model C Ford and a V8 carefully avoiding one another. Certainly the best £10 any L-driver will spend. Go to instructor-training.co.uk or amazon.co.uk. The Driving Test, Essential Information, Brian M Stratton.