Car driver assist tech, safety and where such things might go

[Bletchleyite]

Continuing this in a new thread:

We are not actually far off technology that could make people go into Lane 1. After all cars know whether you are too close to the car in front, would know the difference between the solid hard shoulder line and other lines, and could therefore work out if you are indeed overtaking the car in front (therefore can stay out) or not.

I'd question how good tech is that knows if you're too close to the car in front. I drove a friend's car last week which had adaptive cruise control, and on none of the settings did I feel comfortably distant from the car in front - the "nearest" setting I felt was downright dangerous and well under the "two second rule" which is an absolute bare minimum in perfect conditions. I personally think it should not be legal for these systems to allow closer than the Highway Code stopping distances, and they should always brake (or at least lift off) to re-create the distance as soon as safely possible if someone cuts you up - the system on his car (a newish Qashqai) did not, and I found that dangerous to the point of quite scary.

There are also considerations like how far the next car to overtake is and how busy the motorway is, and if it is three or four lanes. Changing lane comes with risk in itself, so sometimes staying out for a second overtake is the best and safest approach where that overtake will be quite soon. Diving in and out at high speed as is common for drivers of premium German cars is really not a sensible practice.

So people shouldn't just sit in the middle lane while overtaking nothing, but if overtaking is taking place and is about to take place again there are too many variables for sensible automation.

I do not think I have ever used my adaptive cruise. Cruise goes off if there is even a chance that I won't be able to keep my set speed. However, I think it is just a parameter adjustment in the algorithm to get it to obey the two second rule.

For the overtaking, it would be possible to override like the all the other "assist" options. However, the fact that it needed to be consciously overriden would at least make a few people think twice before sitting in the wrong lane. I am thinking regular need to override as well.

I am assuming as well that blind spot assist is on (that is a very nice feature)

I do like blind spot assist, yes. My car doesn't have it, but it is nice to have as an addition to turning your head (not instead of it!)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Aug 2025 ==

FWIW an automatic move left feature could be quite dangerous if someone is trying to pass on the left at speed, a lazy act which is encouraged by adaptive cruise control. It is most annoying when you are overtaking someone, they pull back in and before you have chance to execute the correct checks, indicate and move left (NEVER move at the same time as them as it removes their ability to abort the manoeuvre if something happens) some idiot in a premium German car (for it always is) shoots past 20mph over the limit, followed by several more which make getting back over difficult.

 

[Topological]

As a passenger, you can see who has blind spot assist when overtaking because their little red triangles on the wing mirror light up. Most don't.

What is nice about blind spot assist is that the car then does not let you go into danger, even if you might have done. On motorways, this usually manifests as you being confident to move left a lane having overtaken, but blind spot assist still thinking there is insufficient gap to move left. Of course, blind spot assist is right. But you do see a lot of people changing lanes a little quickly after overtaking.

 

[Lewisham2221]

I'm really not a fan of all this driver assist stuff if I'm being perfectly honest. It's far from perfect and just inadvertently promotes inattentive driving, which makes the roads less safe surely?

See also things like automatic daytime running lights - especially those where the dashboard also illuminates, but not the tail lights - leading to people driving around at night with DRLs on instead of headlights. And automatic headlights which will gleefully turn themselves on when you drive under a bridge, but not in rain, fog or other poor visibility situations - I actually know people who don't fill me with confidence that they actually know how to manually control their headlights/wipers etc because they're so used to the car doing it for them.

Having a car that will (supposedly) stop you from getting "too close" to the car in front, or from pulling out into the next lane if there's something else there, or whatever, is building a culture of "if the car lets me do it, it must be safe" and dilutes the need for proper observation, planning and control of the vehicle. All this, coupled with the lack of decent traffic policing that @Bletchleyite has previously alluded to, just paints a grim picture for the future of driving standards.

 

[Dai Corner]

I'm really not a fan of all this driver assist stuff if I'm being perfectly honest. It's far from perfect and just inadvertently promotes inattentive driving, which makes the roads less safe surely?

See also things like automatic daytime running lights - especially those where the dashboard also illuminates, but not the tail lights - leading to people driving around at night with DRLs on instead of headlights. And automatic headlights which will gleefully turn themselves on when you drive under a bridge, but not in rain, fog or other poor visibility situations - I actually know people who don't fill me with confidence that they actually know how to manually control their headlights/wipers etc because they're so used to the car doing it for them.

Having a car that will (supposedly) stop you from getting "too close" to the car in front, or from pulling out into the next lane if there's something else there, or whatever, is building a culture of "if the car lets me do it, it must be safe" and dilutes the need for proper observation, planning and control of the vehicle. All this, coupled with the lack of decent traffic policing that @Bletchleyite has previously alluded to, just paints a grim picture for the future of driving standards.

Hear, hear.

It will be very interesting to see what happens when an inquest or a trial for causing death by careless or dangerous driving in which an attempt to blame driver assist features is made comes along.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Hear, hear.

It will be very interesting to see what happens when an inquest or a trial for causing death by careless or dangerous driving in which an attempt to blame driver assist features is made comes along.

Or indeed one where the driver assist features were turned off and whether this leads to contributory negligence type allegations.

This would be hard to prove at the moment, but I suspect the proposed "black boxes" would record things like that.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

I'd be concerned with auto-lane switching (as described in the quote in #1) as potentially likely to move into X lanes on smart motorways (or other undesirable lanes)

 

[thejuggler]

Driver assist on my wife's new car advised me the speed limit on the road was a mere 135mph. That system is now turned off.

 

[stuu]

I'm on holiday and I have a hire car, they gave me an MG HS which isn't what I had been offered when I booked it. The speed limit reading is appalling, it seems quite capable of reading low limits but somehow misses the 120 signs so I spent two hours driving down a motorway with the dashboard flashing 60 at me. It also has adaptive cruise control which works fine in some ways but leaves far too much space to the car in front, 3-4 second gaps. Several times cars have pull into the gap and the cruise control has braked sharply, far more than I would. So I'm not using that.

These systems are all good in theory but the implementation is variable to say the least

 

[cactustwirly]

Continuing this in a new thread:



I'd question how good tech is that knows if you're too close to the car in front. I drove a friend's car last week which had adaptive cruise control, and on none of the settings did I feel comfortably distant from the car in front - the "nearest" setting I felt was downright dangerous and well under the "two second rule" which is an absolute bare minimum in perfect conditions. I personally think it should not be legal for these systems to allow closer than the Highway Code stopping distances, and they should always brake (or at least lift off) to re-create the distance as soon as safely possible if someone cuts you up - the system on his car (a newish Qashqai) did not, and I found that dangerous to the point of quite scary.

There are also considerations like how far the next car to overtake is and how busy the motorway is, and if it is three or four lanes. Changing lane comes with risk in itself, so sometimes staying out for a second overtake is the best and safest approach where that overtake will be quite soon. Diving in and out at high speed as is common for drivers of premium German cars is really not a sensible practice.

So people shouldn't just sit in the middle lane while overtaking nothing, but if overtaking is taking place and is about to take place again there are too many variables for sensible automation.



I do like blind spot assist, yes. My car doesn't have it, but it is nice to have as an addition to turning your head (not instead of it!)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Aug 2025 ==

FWIW an automatic move left feature could be quite dangerous if someone is trying to pass on the left at speed, a lazy act which is encouraged by adaptive cruise control. It is most annoying when you are overtaking someone, they pull back in and before you have chance to execute the correct checks, indicate and move left (NEVER move at the same time as them as it removes their ability to abort the manoeuvre if something happens) some idiot in a premium German car (for it always is) shoots past 20mph over the limit, followed by several more which make getting back over difficult.

You can adjust the distance that it's set at.

My old Volvo did lift off to maintain a gap.
I thought it was really good system, the collision avoidance was good, it would warn you if you're getting too close to the car in front etc

This was a 2013 car, now in a 2017 BMW with standard cruise control

Didn't use it a huge amount, made long journeys too boring, I preferred to drive without any cruise control just modulate the accelerator with my right foot

 

[Mawkie]

I'm on holiday and I have a hire car, they gave me an MG HS which isn't what I had been offered when I booked it. The speed limit reading is appalling, it seems quite capable of reading low limits but somehow misses the 120 signs so I spent two hours driving down a motorway with the dashboard flashing 60 at me. It also has adaptive cruise control which works fine in some ways but leaves far too much space to the car in front, 3-4 second gaps. Several times cars have pull into the gap and the cruise control has braked sharply, far more than I would. So I'm not using that.

These systems are all good in theory but the implementation is variable to say the least

A lot of the issues raised so far, including yours above, are problems with individual systems working in different ways and in isolation - some suggesting the gap on cruise control was too big and some suggesting not big enough.

Do you think the industry will eventually standardise these systems so for example, all cruise controls will leave a mandated gap?

Is there a time when individual cars are connected to other cars around it, so they all brake in unison, all leave the same gap, open a gap in motorway traffic to allow a car to join the motorway, and so on?

 

[Bletchleyite]

You can adjust the distance that it's set at.

You can, but it's typically just three levels and the furthest one was in my opinion too close - it made me very unsettled. The closest one was downright dangerous and should not be allowed - I can see no case for such systems to be legally able to be set closer than the Highway Code stopping distances, because those are bare minima - in most cases more space should be allowed, the principle is that you should never get closer than that, and if someone else causes you to be (e.g. by cutting you up) you need to back off again as soon as safely possible until you are.

This was a Qashqai by the way, if anyone else has direct experience of those.

 

[edwin_m]

This was a Qashqai by the way, if anyone else has direct experience of those.

I drive a 2016 Golf and find the adaptive cruise control very helpful as a backup to my maintaining safe distance. It has a wide range of distance settings and backs off gently if someone cuts in ahead (which frequently happens as I'm one of the few that maintains a "safe" spacing!) rather than slamming on the brakes. I don't have experience of this system in any other make or model but this thread does suggest that they may be some variation in how good they are.

 

[thejuggler]

You can, but it's typically just three levels and the furthest one was in my opinion too close - it made me very unsettled. The closest one was downright dangerous and should not be allowed - I can see no case for such systems to be legally able to be set closer than the Highway Code stopping distances, because those are bare minima - in most cases more space should be allowed, the principle is that you should never get closer than that, and if someone else causes you to be (e.g. by cutting you up) you need to back off again as soon as safely possible until you are.

This was a Qashqai by the way, if anyone else has direct experience of those.

I appreciate all systems are different, but on my vehicle the set distance changes depending on speed of the vehicle. Mine has four distance settings and the distance at 30mph is less than the distance at 70mph on the same distance setting.

Whilst it may appear close, the systems work because the 'thinking' time required before applying brakes is far far less than human reactions and brake application pressure is far higher, the total stopping distance is therefore far less than highway code figures My systems reacts to brake lights of the vehicle in front and the brakes are applied well before I could go for them.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Whilst it may appear close, the systems work because the 'thinking' time required before applying brakes is far far less than human reactions and brake application pressure is far higher, the total stopping distance is therefore far less than highway code figures My systems reacts to brake lights of the vehicle in front and the brakes are applied well before I could go for them.

This is in theory so, but because such systems can and do fail I don't think it appropriate for the systems to use closer distances than for a human. Once full self-driving is approved, with the kind of backups and redundancies that apply to aircraft, then that situation changes, of course, just as I don't object to trains driving at 125mph in thick fog when using cab signalling because the inability to see out of the front is basically irrelevant (nor similarly to aircraft flying on instruments through cloud).

So long as I'm required as a human to remain in control and alert, and am considered responsible for the safety of the vehicle, I want any automatic driving features to respect the clearances and spacings I would wish to apply when driving manually, and all such systems to as a bare minimum respect the stricter of the Highway Code specified spacings and the classic "Two Second Rule". Not only do I want these for myself, but I don't want someone else driving behind me with a tighter spacing than that unless the vehicle is approved for full automatic driving (i.e. it would be acceptable for the driver of it to have no licence or to have had a skinful of alcohol because they have no part in its operation and are not even provided with controls to do so in that mode).

 

[nlogax]

My 2014 Golf GTi had adaptive cruise control and it felt.. weird. Too rapid an approach to the car in front and when it did brake it was not at all smooth. Needless to say I opted to not bother with the feature almost all of the time I spent on motorways.

My 2020 3-series has everything but adaptive cruise control and I've always been curious to know what it'd be like in a BMW of that age compared to the slightly older VW.

 

[PaulC1309]

My 2014 Golf GTi had adaptive cruise control and it felt.. weird. Too rapid an approach to the car in front and when it did brake it was not at all smooth. Needless to say I opted to not bother with the feature almost all of the time I spent on motorways.

My 2020 3-series has everything but adaptive cruise control and I've always been curious to know what it'd be like in a BMW of that age compared to the slightly older VW.

I had a 2017 Golf GTD with adaptive cruise and I liked it. It worked smoothly and was great on long motorway journeys not needing to turn cruise off and on. Especially good though average speed sections of roadworks or on long sections of average speed cameras like the A9. My current car just has normal cruise control and makes me miss adaptive cruise.

 

[Snow1964]

You can, but it's typically just three levels and the furthest one was in my opinion too close - it made me very unsettled. The closest one was downright dangerous and should not be allowed - I can see no case for such systems to be legally able to be set closer than the Highway Code stopping distances, because those are bare minima - in most cases more space should be allowed,

I think the Highway Code includes thinking distance that includes time to put foot on the brake and press it. Distance then has a stopping distance of a 1960s car with drum brakes and cross ply tyres.

The electronics will activate brake (strongly) in milliseconds, and with anti-lock brakes, disc brakes and modern tyres would probably stop under half the old Highway Code distance.

The big risk is not if you can stop before hitting something ahead, but if the idiot behind you can stop before rear ending you.

 

[The exile]

Is there a time when individual cars are connected to other cars around it, so they all brake in unison, all leave the same gap, open a gap in motorway traffic to allow a car to join the motorway, and so on?

Pioneered on the Stockton and Darlington 200 years ago!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think the Highway Code includes thinking distance that includes time to put foot on the brake and press it.

Which is still necessary when using adaptive cruise control, because it is not certified to drive the car independently - the human may need to intervene. Thus spacing needs to take into account that possibility and thus still include reaction time.

This will change when fully certified automatic driving is allowed and specific vehicles are approved for it. I'd class that as having been reached when it is permitted to travel in such a car as the sole person therein when one is asleep, intoxicated etc, i.e. one would not need to in any way control the vehicle manually. Present adaptive cruise control and auto-steer do not offer that (though Tesla is getting close).

 

[D1511]

As someone involved in the StreetCAV autonomous vehicle trials using driverless Ohmio shuttle vehicles, I can state with some confidence that the technology already exists for a car to drive itself far better and more safely than a human can.
Once every vehicle on the network is driving autonomously without human intervention, we will have a near zero crash rate, and network efficiency will increase by 50%, due to reduced headways and less dithering (We've all sat behind some plonker that takes 2.5 seconds to pull off when signals change......not good for network efficiency)
The tricky bit is mixing autonomous vehicles with general traffic operated by unreliable humans......as CAV to CAV data communication is excellent, but humans do erratic things in motor cars that makes them hard for CAVs to deal with.
As others have said, the problem is the lack of a regulated and standardised protocol for V2X (vehicle to everything) comms, so that each vehicle knows what all the others are doing.
The perfect driver assist system would therefore need to be receiving data about what all the cars around it are doing, and we're really not too far from that.
@Bletchleyite.....you sound local to the MK StreetCAV trials, so you should pop along for a ride in the vehicle when the public testing phase starts in September and see the technology in action. It's pretty clever!

 

[Bayum]

Continuing this in a new thread:



I'd question how good tech is that knows if you're too close to the car in front. I drove a friend's car last week which had adaptive cruise control, and on none of the settings did I feel comfortably distant from the car in front - the "nearest" setting I felt was downright dangerous and well under the "two second rule" which is an absolute bare minimum in perfect conditions. I personally think it should not be legal for these systems to allow closer than the Highway Code stopping distances, and they should always brake (or at least lift off) to re-create the distance as soon as safely possible if someone cuts you up - the system on his car (a newish Qashqai) did not, and I found that dangerous to the point of quite scary.

My 2025 mini actively begins to slow you down if you’re too close to the car in front.

 

[styles]

The thing about a lot of driver assistance systems is I imagine that when assessed across a significantly sized population, they probably do improve safety. Drivers who have spent years (decades) driving without them may find the adaption tricky or even irritating, but any negative safety consequence of this is likely outweighed by the positive safety impact of their wider rollout.

While they may not be perfect, the only way of identifying problems and enhancements is really through real-world adoption. There's only so much a simulation or a sanitised test environment can cover.

Personally I leave most such features left on. Lane assist is perhaps the one I do find myself switching off as it can get a bit funny with roadworks/temporary lane changes in a lot of vehicles. The one I leave on but override fairly often is adaptive main beams, as I just find it a bit slow to react in the cars I've driven with it in.

Cruise control and adaptive cruise control aren't yet great for adverse weather, but that's why car manuals say not to use it in adverse weather I'm sure it'll get there eventually, and in some cars the tech may now be good enough to use it in heavy rain etc.

I live in Scotland and in general I turn a lot of driver assist systems off when it snows, is icy, or is heavy fog etc because they're really just not designed for it (yet). Driving in Iceland I accidentally put cruise control on in blizzard conditions and very quickly worked out how to turn it off again!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Personally I leave most such features left on. Lane assist is perhaps the one I do find myself switching off as it can get a bit funny with roadworks/temporary lane changes in a lot of vehicles.

I dislike the implementations of this that pull the wheel, invariably towards a wall. Beeps and vibration I'm all good with.

The one I leave on but override fairly often is adaptive main beams, as I just find it a bit slow to react in the cars I've driven with it in.

Yes, I've found this. Better to do it manually, you can drop the beams when you see a car start to approach a corner ahead rather than when you've already blinded them, and you can put them back the second they pass you if you don't see another car - none of the automated systems seem to do this. The two second delay in putting them back up on the Kia I really dislike. Also I'm yet to see any such system that dips for a cyclist or pedestrian as you of course should.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Aug 2025 ==

I live in Scotland and in general I turn a lot of driver assist systems off when it snows, is icy, or is heavy fog etc because they're really just not designed for it (yet). Driving in Iceland I accidentally put cruise control on in blizzard conditions and very quickly worked out how to turn it off again!

Dead easy to turn off any cruise control - touch the brake. Immediately back to manual mode. A few let you use the clutch when it's on if speeding up but I've not come across one that didn't disengage if you use the brake.

 

[Topological]

My dad was very sceptical about the adaptive beam on my car, however when watching it work he realised it actually adjusts quicker than his mind would have done the manual adjustment. The adaptation is direction specific meaning that I still have full vision on the left whilst the parts facing cars adapt. I cannot watch it working whilst driving, but have noted its pretty effective when traveling as a passenger.

I have another car where the adaptation is not quite so advanced (you get what you pay for I guess) but it still dips everything faster than doing it manually.

The lorries on the other side of the motorway don't like it though, they often flash me. I tend to then turn it off because motorways are well enough lit even in South Wales to drive on dipped beam. Of course it then turns itself back on again and/or I do need it for driving around the darker lanes.

 

[Cloud Strife]

I'm sure it'll get there eventually, and in some cars the tech may now be good enough to use it in heavy rain etc.

I used it last year in an absolutely horrendous storm in Denmark. I was stuck on the motorway, visibility was terrible, and it was genuinely frightening to be in that situation without anywhere to go. By using cruise control, I could keep both hands on the wheel and focus entirely on what was going on around me, rather than using some brainpower to handle the accelerator. If I had ACC, it would have been even safer. I had my foot placed on the brake without actually braking, but I wouldn't have been able to do that without cruise control.

I drove a brand new VW T-Cross on holiday in Spain earlier this year that had ACC, and it was absolutely fantastic. The previous VW implementations were known to be twitchy and jerky, but it seems that they've figured it out now. I tested it on several occasions by setting the limit to 125km/h (in practice, 120km/h according to GPS) and simply drove, and it performed flawlessly, even on the mountain section between Malaga and Fuengirola. If someone cut me up, it would brake smoothly and precisely, and it happened on several occasions that the car maintained the selected distance perfectly without jerkiness.

This would be hard to prove at the moment, but I suspect the proposed "black boxes" would record things like that.

There's certainly a case for when proven safety features have been turned off, such as traction control and electronic stability control. I've driven a friend's 300HP Cupra without those enabled, and the car was incredibly difficult to drive without them enabled, to the point where I'd seriously question whether the car was drivable without them. It would be difficult to argue about some other safety features such as lane assist, but certainly TC/ESC/ABS should be on as standard unless there's a very good reason for them to be switched off. I would oppose using some safety features against a driver as they're not foolproof, but it's hard to imagine a situation where a driver could defend switching off TC/ESC/ABS unless it was in a very specific set of weather conditions.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

Call me an old dinosaur but the only assistance I really find useful are the parking sensors. I don't even use cruise control as my local motorway doesn't really allow for a constant speed

 

[styles]

Call me an old dinosaur but the only assistance I really find useful are the parking sensors. I don't even use cruise control as my local motorway doesn't really allow for a constant speed

I'm the opposite.

The parking sensors may stop be bumping something one day, but they're quite sensitive and when parking on uneven gravel/mud can be not so useful.

Cruise control is a god-send through average speed areas though. Stick it on 65mph on the A9 single carriageway sections, bliss (unless you encounter a wagon).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Call me an old dinosaur but the only assistance I really find useful are the parking sensors. I don't even use cruise control as my local motorway doesn't really allow for a constant speed

I like a speed limiter for that situation, it helps me remember the limit when it is changing often e.g. on a smart motorway, a bit like the Driver Reminder Appliance reminds about a signal state. I use the limiter far more often than I do the cruise control.

I'm very much in favour of Intelligent Speed Control that offers me this without the need to set it manually, but most systems I've seen so far are rubbish, often failing to read signs correctly and not using GPS based backup to confirm outside of places where limits can change. I instead like to have Waze on the display which usually tells me the accurate limit (where fixed).

 

[bramling]

The thing about a lot of driver assistance systems is I imagine that when assessed across a significantly sized population, they probably do improve safety. Drivers who have spent years (decades) driving without them may find the adaption tricky or even irritating, but any negative safety consequence of this is likely outweighed by the positive safety impact of their wider rollout.

While they may not be perfect, the only way of identifying problems and enhancements is really through real-world adoption. There's only so much a simulation or a sanitised test environment can cover.

Personally I leave most such features left on. Lane assist is perhaps the one I do find myself switching off as it can get a bit funny with roadworks/temporary lane changes in a lot of vehicles. The one I leave on but override fairly often is adaptive main beams, as I just find it a bit slow to react in the cars I've driven with it in.

Cruise control and adaptive cruise control aren't yet great for adverse weather, but that's why car manuals say not to use it in adverse weather I'm sure it'll get there eventually, and in some cars the tech may now be good enough to use it in heavy rain etc.

I live in Scotland and in general I turn a lot of driver assist systems off when it snows, is icy, or is heavy fog etc because they're really just not designed for it (yet). Driving in Iceland I accidentally put cruise control on in blizzard conditions and very quickly worked out how to turn it off again!

I have pretty much every system turned off except for the basics like traction control, and I’m more than comfortable with that. Driving standards are massively declining in this country, and one wonders if the prevalence of these sorts of systems is one cause of that.

The only system I use regularly is the speed limiter function, which I do miss on my older cars which don’t have it.

 

[styles]

I have pretty much every system turned off except for the basics like traction control, and I’m more than comfortable with that. Driving standards are massively declining in this country, and one wonders if the prevalence of these sorts of systems is one cause of that.

The only system I use regularly is the speed limiter function, which I do miss on my older cars which don’t have it.

I actually think a lot of this is amplified by social media. The absolute number of fatalities, and absolute number of all casualties, has been on a steady decrease in the UK for over a decade. Deaths are down 5% and all casualties down a whopping 28% over the past 10 years alone.

Those are absolute numbers. The number of vehicle miles driven has risen 8.2% and the population risen 6.6% over the same period.

No doubt there's a whole host of measures at play here from 20mph zones to safer walking/cycling infrastructure to better crash safety features. But I fail to believe that driving standards have massively declined given the injury and death data.

I suspect a large part of this view comes from social media. Every man and his dog has a dashcam or a headcam or a camera phone now. I find on social media I get loads of dashcam footage in my feeds. But in practice, for decades unconfident drivers have failed to join motorways properly, people have passed cyclists far too closely, and people have got behind the wheel after half a session down the Red Lion. It's just we didn't have people filming it all for Facebook. This is noticeable in Fife in particular where we have a social media page which has gathered even international attention called 'Fife jammer locations'. It was initially a page to post locatrions of the Polis with their speed guns, but it's basically become a Fife-wide news/gossip site. 50% of the latest 10 posts just now are about driving. If I hadn't looked at the page I would be none-the-wiser about any crash, despite being out for half an hour this morning, completely trouble-free. It makes it seem like the problem is worse than it is imo.

For what it's worth, as recent as 2021 (last full data year), the WHO puts the UK 10th in the world for road deaths per capita. Norway, Denmark, Sweden beat us, as well as a couple of tiny places like Niue or Monaco. There's room for improvement, but the UK is actually quite safe for driving.