Attention Nervous Nellies of Canberra Roads

Holden Caulfield said :

You and anyone else like you should book into a skidpan day with Fifth Gear Motorsport out at Sutton Driver Training Facility.

Buddy I get a little sick of your smart arsed comebacks that completely miss the relevance of what you’re commenting on. If you want to play nicely, then how about you at least try to make the effort to understand what you’re commenting on first …

It’s not that hard to work out how fast to drive in the rain. You drive at either the speed of the person you’re following, or a speed that allows you bring your vehicle to a complete stop within visible range. Obviously, you have to add some extra distance into estimations where you expect someone may pull out in front of you or fail to give way.

It depends on how bad the rain is. I’m sure the OP has normal fairly light rain in mind when he makes this post. Going 65 on the GDE with only light rain would be annoying considering the road should really be a 100 zone, so going 10kph under the limit it should be would still be 10kph over the actual limit now…so 65 is fairly absurd.

That being said, I was going substantially slower than the speed limit on the parkway. Around 30kph under the limit in my old pulsar during the really big storms. I found that it was still being thrown around a lot and had to steer left and right regularly to keep going straight during all the puddles. I wasn’t able to get a good view of the traffic ahead of me either. The taillights were the main visible feature of cars in front of me. I definitely don’t think I should have gone any faster than this in that car. Perhaps actually slower would have been better in that car as the grip is horrible, but I didn’t want to be an obstacle for others and everyone else was doing around the same speed. In my sporty car, I’d be fine for more speed with more grip though. For this reason I stuck to the left lane and allowed other people with better cars to go past. The right lane was quite empty though and hardly anyone tried to overtake because it was just so bad.

I drive to the conditions and sometimes that means I am speeding and other times it means I am below the limit, but I always go the speed I deem most appropriate with all things considered.

farnarkler said :

Kakosi the South Africans produced a nice sideways firing flamethrower to crisp attempts at carjacking. I’m sure the same company would make you a nice rear firing flamethrower for your car.

Cool 🙂

jayskette said :

I agree. Everybody in Canberra drives so slowly when it is drizzling and the road is long and wide and you can see every single car and what they are doing/will be doing. 5-10kmh below the limit perhaps, but NOT 30!!!!!

http://the-riotact.com/critical-thinking-and-cognitive-bias-public-lecture/66824

Kakosi the South Africans produced a nice sideways firing flamethrower to crisp attempts at carjacking. I’m sure the same company would make you a nice rear firing flamethrower for your car.

I agree. Everybody in Canberra drives so slowly when it is drizzling and the road is long and wide and you can see every single car and what they are doing/will be doing. 5-10kmh below the limit perhaps, but NOT 30!!!!!

Yesterday I seen some douche bag doing 40 kph in a 80kph and you guessed it another right lane looney. fair enough 10ks under in the wet but 40k’s under is just retarded.

Where is the law that says the right lane is only for overtaking in a city environment – especially if you’re doing the correct speed limit and need to turn right?

I find it annoying that people use the right lane to go over the speed limit and then act like *icks when they have to slow down to that limit when someone is in front of them. A good example is last weekend when I was in the right lane going to turn right (to go to the Woden Hospital) and some twat honked, waved his fist and tailgated me until I did.

What I wouldn’t give for a car with backwards shooting missiles or perhaps a flame-thrower? 🙂

AnimosiTy said :

because we can’t SEE when it’s raining..

That’s a worry – if you can’t see, and you’re driving on a public road, could I suggest you immediately pull over and call a cab?

AnimosiTy said :

lol and there are killer pot holes everywhere, I’m not about to sit in the right hand lane n go slow, but many you should consider going just a bit slower too..
or get up an extra 15min early so you don’t feel the pressure to stick to posted speed limits.

People who can’t spot potholes and/or avoid them should consider going a lot slower.

because we can’t SEE when it’s raining.. lol and there are killer pot holes everywhere, I’m not about to sit in the right hand lane n go slow, but many you should consider going just a bit slower too..
or get up an extra 15min early so you don’t feel the pressure to stick to posted speed limits.

I had the displeasure of having to head to Canberra during the big wet yesterday, on the way towards the ACT there were two cars in the bushes at the side of the road, having skidded off the road and were being towed out. On the way out of the city late afternoon, yet another car stuck in the ditch at the side of the road. I myself drove out of Canberra at about 90kms. 20kms below the speed limit!! I don’t give a rats if I pissed anyone off by my speed (although I was in the left lane) but at least I didn’t slide off the road and damage the car or myself.

shirty_bear said :

Surely we can’t lose the ability to build roads?

Well, nobody knows how to build pyramids anymore. Nobody knows how to build Roman style roads.

A few decades of cutting corners leads us from roads with properly bedded road base and decently thick surfaces to half-arsed road base (because you’re building to a tight time budget, or you forget to let it dry before putting the surface on), and just enough blacktop to cover the base (because the client doesn’t know how to evaluate road build quality).

Just watch as all these potholes are “repaired” by dumping in some road base, patting it down a little, and slapping some bitumen on top with a shovel. They will cave in within a week, leaving great chunks of bitumen and gravel sitting on the road to get thrown into motorcyclist’s faces or through windscreens.

So yes, we can forget how to build roads properly, and a competitive tendering process is a wonderful way of ensuring it happens.

smont said :

I too was naive about driving in the wet and figured my car was invincible until the Oct long weekend last year when I experienced that little gem called aquaplaning for the very first time. My tyres are good, I was on a good road and driving straight ahead when the car started gliding to the right on a plane of water and would not respond to my steering. Luckily the car responded to my steering correction just as I was about to leave the road – and the fact that I had slowed to about 5-10kph under the limit was undoubtedly a key factor in saving my bacon. Don’t kid yourself if you seriously think that driving in the wet adds no risk to driving in the dry. I wouldn’t actually give two hoots about you if it wasn’t for the fact that it could very well be me that you end up ploughing into …

You and anyone else like you should book into a skidpan day with Fifth Gear Motorsport out at Sutton Driver Training Facility.

I’m not having a go at you per se, just suggesting it’s far better to first experience an “Oh shit!” aquaplane situation in a controlled setting, rather than on a public road.

Doing such a course won’t make you invincible, nothing can, but it will better prepare you for driving in adverse conditions.

[sarcasm]
But, of course, making a course similar to this mandatory for all drivers wouldn’t better educate our motorists it would just turn them into overconfident hoons.
[/sarcasm]

BimboGeek said :

Talking to some ambulance paramedics today, they mentioned that there hadn’t been a lot of serious injury during the rain, on the roads or anywhere else. Their main concern had been the roads and at 7pm they were pretty happy.

So maybe you are all ok drivers!

For every tool on the road, there is ten or fifteen or twenty normal people watching the toolness happen, shaking their heads, then compensating for them. Dramas happen when two or more tools cross paths, or compete for the same piece of bitumen/pothole.

Speaking of which … is it my imagination, or are the newer roads FAR more susceptible to potholing than those more than, say, twenty years old? Has Gininderra Dve fallen apart to the extent Gungahlin Dve has?
Surely we can’t lose the ability to build roads?

I don’t mean to play semantics but those who say that it takes longer to stop in the wet need to revise their physics lessons. If you don’t lose traction, it takes no longer (in time or distance) to stop on a wet road than it takes on a dry one. If you do lose traction, it’s very much a matter of luck whether you stop before something undesirable happens. It is the increased likelihood of a loss of traction that means we should slow down when the road’s wet, not this fictional ‘it takes longer to stop’ nonsense.

But (I almost can’t believe I’m saying this) I agree with angrymotorist’s assertion that the real nellies should stay at home. The most nervous drivers I know refuse to drive on unsealed roads. In my experience, the strategies you use to minimise risk on dirt roads are mostly the same ones you use on wet roads, so if you’re not confident driving on a dirt road, you shouldn’t drive on a wet road.

And while I agree with those commenters who say that slowing down is a good thing, I can’t help feeling that I’d rather share the road with angrymotorist than with the nervous nellies down the extreme other end of the spectrum. I’d choose angrymotorist because (within certain boundaries) erring towards the accelerator in the wet is less likely to lead to a loss of traction than the nervous nellies’ tendency of erring towards the brake pedal. Of course, I’d prefer to share the road with the more moderate commenters in the middle who slow down a little and don’t rely on their brakes, but if it were just a choice between the two extremes, I’m with angrymotorist.

Even under those circumstances, though, I still think Marie hit it on the head: further aggravation to angrymotorist is the lesser evil. Actually, maybe further aggravation to angrymotorist isn’t an evil at all…

If it’s a choice between risking annoying someone and making them arrive at their destination a minute later, or risking a crash, I will choose to piss you off every time. Your extra 60 seconds is not worth my safety.

Talking to some ambulance paramedics today, they mentioned that there hadn’t been a lot of serious injury during the rain, on the roads or anywhere else. Their main concern had been the roads and at 7pm they were pretty happy.

So maybe you are all ok drivers!

Just drove from Narrabundah to Woden via Hindmarsh Drive on Thursday. Instead of going the normal +/-80 kms/hr, over and down Mugga, I thought I would go slower with the new point-to-point speed cameras. In the rain I was amazed that everbody had slowed down to 75 km/ph. It was an enjoyable drive and I think justifies the speed cameras.
People who think they own the road like angry motorist will tailgate & speed will pay the price for not obeying the road rules with fines. Next generation cameras can will show people who use mobile phones while driving. Angry motorists will pay for their intolerance of nervous nellies, just as you tolerate a lost tourist.

Watson said :

which took a while to de-mist (is that a proper word?).

Yes it is (no hyphen required though). Hence why most cars are fitted with a demister button.