DOES REDUCING YOUR SPEED HELP TO REDUCE THE POSSIBILITY OF ACCIDENT?

Among the factors found from a survey conducted to 5080 drivers that contribute to the speed variation among the drivers are:

  1. Demographics (age, gender, driving experience and exposure)
  2. Visual ability
  3. Driving skill (hazard perception, car manoeuvre, judgmental skills)
  4. Psychology factor (risk tolerance, social deviance and thrill-seeking)
  5. Temporary states (mood, fatigue, effect of drugs and alcohol, illness)
  6. Journey type (length, purpose and urgency)• Car type (performance, comfort, noise level)
  7. Road environment (road surface, design, speed limit, authority and maintenance)
  8. Surrounding factor (passengers, pedestrians, time of the day, signs, location familiarity and weather)

The real question now- does reducing your speed help to reduce accident rate? We can know the answer by sorting the factors based on the its importance;

• The effect of surrounding

This includes things as estimation of driver speed based on the surrounding geometry. You tend to relate the frequency of something for example passing the street lamps at certain speed. 

Thus, at new surrounding where the distance between the street lamps would varies, you tend to keep your norm site geometry which might lead to you driving faster or slower than usual without realizing it.

• Driver’s character

The age, gender or driving exposure would influence your style of driving. This includes on how often do you drive and the distance of each journey.

• Psychology aspect

This includes things such as modern car being quieter or more comfortable compared to the old car. This might lead to speeding without realizing it. Other examples are on the car ownership. Car owner tend to take care of their new better, causing them to drive slower or driver using company car inclined to drive faster as they feel less responsible on it.

Thus, from the listed factors, there is more than one single reasons that could lead to speeding. Simply reducing the speed limit or implementing AES camera at certain places would not simply work.

Through the usage of predicted speeds as variable to explain the model of accident involvement, there is a possibility to receive an apparent relationship between speed and accidents. Study suggests that 1% change of the driver norm speed is associated to 7.75% change in the driver accident liability. The range would be higher is observed between the change of mean speed and accident change on certain part of the road. 

Obviously, there is a relation between speed and accident rate, but it does not mean that reducing the speed would reduce the accident rate. This is because both things are somehow related to the variables especially age, experience and driving exposure.Remember to service your car according to the schedule to ensure your car is always in good condition. Let SERV do it for you.

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