Les Quam

Jeff,

No one is ganging up on you here. The remarks are intended in a humorous vein I think? Lighten up will you? Ever since you started using the dark serious images of Steve McQueen on your posts you have got all dark and serious on us. Jerry Seinfeld is funny when he is dark and serious you are not. LOL

roberga

nick should the builders of motorcycles provide mandatory instruction. Perhaps an airbag?

Nick

Ray the argument of personal responsibility is more compelling with a motorcycle. The major threat because of inappropriate use of a motorcycle is to the driver of the cycle. That is why most states mandate use of a helmet not only to protect the driver but also to protect motorist(lliability wise) involve in collisions with motorcyclist. The assumption is head injuries of motorcyclist's are frequent and severe. Other than damage to themselves and their bikes little else is in danger.

Contrast that with a 3100lb automobile doing speeds in excess of 100mph with other cars on the same road and...well you get the picture.

BTW, years ago I represented a large motorcycle company and I will tell you injuries as a result of loss of control on a motorcycle's are horrendous. I will NEVER drive or get on a motorcycle regardless of the driver or the bike.

PogueMoHone

Nick, that's another thing we agree on, you're moving closer to the view the person is responsible for "personal responsibility".

A few thousand more posts, and you'll understand the error of your ways!

Tacit knowledge is a wonderful thing.

Nick

Colm, I like to think your coming toward me. No matter, difference's make life and chat site's interesting!

roberga

Nick: why not force the cycle builders to provide TC and training wheels and class? Are you saying motorcycles crash because of poor drivers but that the CGT crashes because it is the cars fault? Crashes happen because a driver fuc*ed up.

Nick

Ray here is a paragraph from an artcle posted on this site regarding the Borsh Evolution VDC. Your assumption regarding driver error may not be correct.


Accidents are often said to be in 90% of all
cases the result of driver errors. Käppler [8] however,
notes that these statements must be taken
very carefully since they originate from the police
jargon. According to Brown [9] drivers are only in
19% of all cases responsible for the accidents.
Vehicles are in 31% and the environment in 50% of
all cases responsible for the accidents. Rompe et
al [10] investigated the activities of drivers in critical
driving situations just before the accidents happened.
He found that steering was most often
(50%) involved. Similarly Edwards et al [11] found
that evasive maneuvers took place just ahead of
48% of all accidents, 50% just ahead of all collisions
and 64% just ahead of all accidents in which
the vehicle left the road.

Irishdriver

Nick,

This deliberate misunderstanding to make a legal distinction is what frustrates me and a lot of the other car fanatics. Drivers are responsible. Unless the wheel falls off or the brakes fail totally how can you continue to try to blame the cars?

Whatever car you drive becomes extremly sensitive when you get to the limit. Building in many electronic aids often hides the limit from inexperienced drivers and sometimes from experienced ones too. Also, a car is being driven on the limit by a competent driver can crash if the electronic aids and the driver are taking different actions to recover car control. This is true for any car.

Drivers are responsible for most accidents as in 90% of the case they have got the car into an inappropriate situation (entering corner too fast, leaving braking too late, falling asleep,....). In a very small number of cases the situaton cannot be predcted and then accidents can just happen.

You can ask for engineering solutions for protecting people in some circumstances - distance between cars on the road, etc., - but then can you remover these things from driver training? I don't think so. Telling drivers not to drive too close will always be necessary.

If you explore the paper by Rompe and Seul 1985 you will find that the review concluded that vehicle defects were the most likely cause in 8.5% of accidents. This was a report to see if the TUV-like examinations on the roadworthyness of cars was effective. The TUV covers cars of all ages and what it checks more is if people are maintaining their cars correctly. The faults could have been worn tyres. This did not explore any issues like "could a driver aid have prevented this". It is misleading at best (and dishonest at worst) to take research stastics out of context.

If we were to follow your implied logic to the full, everyone must be forced to change their cars to the standard ones that are state approved to be the safest possible. However then we can still sue the state as we still make mistakes and find ways to crash the car.

In Europe most fatal accidents occur when one vehicle crosses the centre line on normal streets and hits something coming the other way. The only way to prevent this is to engineer roads so no car can hit something in the other direction. The second most serious factor is "walk-outs" in built up areas. No amount of car engineering can keep a person on the pavement.

Wake up and get real, there are three factors to reduce road deaths: engineering, enforcement and education. One fact that no politician will ever admit is that we're near the limits of what can be achieved by engineering, we can do a little more with appropriate enforcement, but the best possibility of reducing road deaths lies in driver and pedestrian education.

40 pages of mails have not persuaded you that people are prepared to take responsibility for themselves so I don't expect I will. It seems litigation in the US is a better game than the lottery for getting rich quick.

wch

"It seems litigation in the US is a better game than the lottery for getting rich quick."

Far better than the lottery. The essence of our legal system is that, for every bad outcome, there must be a funding source to "make things right."



From Scott McClellan, attorney for Mr. Rudl's wife:

"If its power and handling characteristics make it too dangerous for the average driver without training or instruction, then it is defective."

What in the world does this have to do with track days?

Nick

Irishdriver you are misrepresenting my views on the matter. Also, I quoted the entire paragraph and it is not out of context.

I do not blame the car in every instance of an accident. Drivers need to drive responsibly and I am all for that. However, I also believe there is a partnership between the car manufacturer and the driver.

Automobile companies know there will be accidents. They know human being are not infallible and we all make mistakes. This is particularly so in an automobile. Thus it is not unreasonable in fostering the partnership between the car manufacturer and driver that if tried and true safety devices are technically available that the car manufacturer equipped their vehicles with the technology. Will they avoid all accidents? NO! But if we save a small percentage then it is worth the expense and effort.

Car companies that sell high performance cars KNOW that the buyer is using the car for more than transportation.

They KNOW the buyer will test the limits.

They KNOW that some will not extricate themselves once the limit is reached.

They KNOW injury and destruction will follow.

If they KNOW, why can't they help prevent?

wch

"Car companies that sell high performance cars KNOW that the buyer is using the car for more than transportation.

They KNOW the buyer will test the limits.

They KNOW that some will not extricate themselves once the limit is reached.

They KNOW injury and destruction will follow.

If they KNOW, why can't they help prevent?"


First - even if Porsche sell a car with every "helpful" feature acceptable to you, plaintiffs will then claim that the features didn't work properly, or weren't as good as alternatives, etc etc. It's about the money, not about protecting anyone.

Second - even the car with all the "helpful" features will have limits, limits that will be exceeded with injury and destruction likely to follow. The manufacturers simply can't prevent injury and destruction.

Les Quam

Sports Car Market Magazine has a two page story on this lawsuit and the CGT in this months issue. The writer also a lawyer interviewed the plaintiff's attorney and it is interesting reading.

wch

"Sports Car Market Magazine has a two page story on this lawsuit and the CGT in this months issue. The writer also a lawyer interviewed the plaintiff's attorney and it is interesting reading."

The plaintiff's views are well represented in the article. Even the plaintiff's attorney is portrayed sympathetically: hey, he's a racer, just like us! Well, except that some of "us" think that a man who signs something saying he won't sue ought to be bound by his signature.

So we've heard from the plaintiff's lawyer - ought to be good for business the next time some track day warrior wants to run away from his agreement to assume the risks of driving.

I wonder if anyone will dare to say what IMO this case is really about: a wealthy, intelligent man who voluntarily engaged in a dangerous hobby and who neither needs nor deserves the protection of the legal system. Where, in print, is the other side?

Irishdriver

Maybe I am - sorry - but this is the impression you have given me. The paragraph is out of context as the theme of this thread is that driver aids should be present to cover for driver error or incompetence.

The essence of the research quoted was discussing how, when using a tool like a car, the tool could be responsible for the accident, rather than accepting the experience of the police on driver responsibility. Do you really believe the driver is responsible only 19% of the time?

To come out with figures like Driver 19% Vehicle 31% and environment 50% means that of accidents where a car hits a tree the tree is responsible half of the time and there are no accidents that happened by accident. Clearly we do not have the full explanation of these figures therefore they are out of context. None of references ever assessed the number of accidents evaluated that were in high performance cars and that could have been prevented by driver aids that compensated for driver error so they do not add value to the discussion.

You have the issue here in what you say: The buyer will test the limits. Either we handicap the vehicles and the roads to the point where the buyer cannot test the limits or we allow the buyer to chose and live with the results of a minority getting it wrong.

To victimise high performance car companies when you generalise that car companies are not helping to prevent accidents is beneath you - everyone knows the advances that have been made in passive safety in recent years. Now work is progressing dramatically on active safety. Victimising high performance limited production cars strikes me as clearly biased.

Can you expect car companies to build cars without limits? If not, the only discussion is how to educate drivers to respect limits - i.e. take responsibility.

The viewpoint you present continues to create the impression in me - and probably others - that there is an agenda beyond the common good here.

1AS

Can anybody post the article. It's not a magazine I get. AS