F8i

iTrader: (10)

^--- you're grasping at straws.

FiveO

The only slim thing is mechanical failure caused by speed, but it is a factor in a small % of crashes. Predictability of your driving (including your speed) to other drivers is a huge issue when it comes to crash avoidance with other vehicles.

HabaneroRed06Si

What would happen to me if I raced with a super cape and water wings?

MPR

It's a fact. It's physics. It's common sense. Speeding considerably above what everyone else is traveling at dramatically increases the chance of an error, accident, and severity/fatality of the accident. It not only puts yourself in danger, it puts everyone else around you in danger.

Cablerat

I would say the reverse - you're grasping at straws when trying to shift the focus toward mechanical failures.

I don't know the statistics but based on my casual readings of accidents overtime, not many were due to mechanical failures.. Expect some toyotas more recently of course....

FiveO

Most collisions are caused by direct human driving error, but even leaving out design faults, there are still around 10 to 15% of crashes directly caused by catastrophic mechanical failure. That's not an inconsequential percentage.

Tire blowouts, brake failure, suspension or steering failure, wheel loss, even non-collision-related fire breaking out can result in crashes. Now consider the effect that increasing speeds combined with varying road surfaces has on the mechanical stresses behind such failures.

Cablerat

I'm in total agreeance with you my friend.. Wear and tear on mechanical parts is not linear.

MPR

^+1 FiveO

F8i

iTrader: (10)

I respect FiveO quite a bit for being honest in his facts, though I will argue his opinions with my own.

Cablerat, did you just say onething, then COMPLETELY reverse and agree once someone said something else?
Mike, we all agree physics behind inertia and mass, and the destructive attributes it has. That's beating a dead horse. It's the people saying, 'you wouldn't have been cuttoff if you were going slower' that is my point.
FiveO, If you're at a stop sign and see a car coming, I REALLY hope you take into consideration the speed it's going, and not the speed it should be going. Cuz' what did 'they' train/teach you about assuming?

And we're not talking about extreme cases of speed, i.e. Dangerous Driving. Because that's not my arguement, and there's a reason for that charge to be CCC and not HTA. Plus that would go into the driving like a duoche factor, and again not my argument.

FiveO

If judging the speed of oncoming traffic was so easy and precise, cops would be able to issue speeding tickets based on visual estimation alone.

There's lots of human factors info out there that discuss the difficulties of visual speed estimation. Start here - Human factors in traffic safety - Google Books

AcuratePaul

iTrader: (1)

Racing on streets is a purely stupid thing. I believe every single one of us did it when we first got our licences I'll admit to it. But as I got older what's the point of even speeding over the speed limit yes doing 120-130 is safe as long as your not doing somethin stupid.

The speed factor does come into affect when you get into an accident that's just common sense. You never know what the people around you are thinking or plan on doing. A burnt out signal blub can be a huge problem sometimes.

For those people that were racing on the 401 all i'll say is, it's the 401 it's just plain stupid and sounds like 16 year olds are driving this car. We have seen tons of articles and news headliners involving street racing and it's always young guys and alot of the time they hurt or kill someone that was just trying to get home.

And I wonder why my insurance wants 800.00$ a month from me, well they all think us young guys speed and it's stupid. I have a clean record for 5 years and I still gotta suffer I can't drive my car cuz I can't afford to pay insurance and for reasons like this other peoples stupid action.

Grow up you ignorant ****** go to the track if you wanna go fast it's safe and no one will get hurt. There is always a crew there to help out.

F8i

iTrader: (10)

That's well good and all. But I asked if you simply looked at a car coming down the road as you were stopped at a stop sign, and you would assume that it was doing the speed limit, and blindly turn into that lane.
I assume your strung out reply was to avoid saying, 'Well, no.'

@AcuratePaul:
Many Rally races do occure on Public roads. I've helped run check points in Peterborough before. Peterborough Motor Sports I think. And your insurance is so high because the government made insurance A) Manditory, then B) Made it Privatised(sp?). When I was 17 they wanted $6000 a year for stock 90' civic hatch. They can say anything from high risk drivers, to amount of claims, blah blah... but 20/20 did a program on insurance companies profit, and it was manytimes over the amount of claims. The profit over a few years was something like 1000% higher than previous years.

tkjode

iTrader: (1)

Forget judging speed of oncoming traffic, people have a hard enough time judging distance

I like Five-O's point about mechanical failure, principally because I've been 'fortunate' enough to experience one that was contributed to going too-damn-fast.

Wrangling a Suburban to a safe stop at the side of the road from, well, let's be honest, losing-your-license-permanently speed territory, due to a rear tire blow-out is an enlightening experience. Sure that tire was ready to go, but it had endured 500km of constant normal road speed until I got behind the wheel... funny how the tire didn't last even 150km after that.

The moral of the story: Always check your car before you speed like a maniac. No wait, I got that wrong.

F8i

iTrader: (10)

Cablerat

NO Numnuts.. go read it again..

FiveO

Ask anyone if they would "blindly turn into that lane" and most would say "of course not". They'll say they check first. Unfortunately, and this is where my reply was aiming, few people are very accurate in visually estimating speed. Instead they'll tend to go by what distance worked for them in most cases in past, or in other words they'll revert to simple "safe" distance estimation instead of closing speed estimation. That's where an unexpectedly speeding car can create issues, and the speeding involved doesn't even have to be that much over the limit.

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply with this.

Most rally races occurring on public roads fall into one of two categories. Performance rallies are about as close to a *****-out race as you can get and include all-out racing stages, but this is very very rare in southern Ontario and will occur only on roads specifically closed for the event.

The more usual rally "races" are comparatively slow navigational rallies. No legitimate motorsport club (PMSC is sanctioned by both Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs and RallySport Ontario) will set an average required speed for any section that is higher than the legal speed limits along the route. In fact designated average section speeds for a given section will be set below the posted speed limits in that area. Police are almost always notified of the rally route in advance, and participants who are found to have been ticketed for traffic offences are often subject to disqualification. You might call it a "race", but racing it is not.


That's very funny. Auto insurance in Ontario is mandatory, and it is privatized, but it is also about the most heavily government-regulated and government-price-controlled product in Ontario. Ontario has the toughest government insurance regulators in all of North America, and each insurer has to submit their rates for government approval each year.

The government defines down to the nth detail the terms and benefits of your basic auto insurance policy, and essentially regulates the amount of profit that any insurance company can make off their auto insurance products through a government-regulated rate approval system.

Insurance companies have to submit complete financial information outlining premium income, investment income, and claims and administration expenses to regulators each year as part of the rate approval process. They can't raise rates without approval, can't reduce them either without approval. They have to get approval even if rates are staying the same. If by chance they get lucky one year and make excess profits, the government regulators will see that and look hard at their request for rate approval for the following year.

The net result is that insurers don't make a lot of money off auto insurance as far as ROI is concerned. They make money off the nan-mandatory products such as life insurance, property insurance, etc.


First off, 20/20 is an American television show, and odds are their focus was on American insurance companies in the far less-regulated business wild west of American free enterprise. Canada's insurance climate is a lot different than what you'll find down south with much richer benefits schedules than there, and Ontario's auto insurance claims payouts per crash are the highest in Canada.

Second off, insurance companies profits" is a pretty wide catch-all. You need to split out auto insurance separate and apart from all other lines of insurance if you want to comment about whether or not insurance companies are making too much profit on mandatory auto insurance.

Xscorpio

FiveO some great responses and really good information

F8i

iTrader: (10)

FiveO is a wicked debator. +1 lol

CBC News Indepth: Insurance
Sorry the article is a little out date... It took me about 5 seconds to find on google.
Follow Along!

My Rally Point was, not all 'races' occur on high speeds. So I think people should be more politically correct.

If you're at a stop sign, and waiting your 3 seconds, you would be watching for cars. You would see a car coming, and you would watch it. You would be able to judge, maybe not it's speed, but a good assumption of its arrival or close too. And if you couldn't, but noticed it was moving fast (Or moving at all), you shouldn't pull out and cut them off anyway.

FiveO

That CBC article includes the following, which illustrates my points perfectly.6 cents profit per dollar of premium collected is peanuts. An investor at that time could have earned 3% in an ordinary ING consumer savings account.

I guess my point was that I wouldn't call a navigational rally a race given that there is no "race" involved. It's a competition involving route map interpretation and time/distance calculations, more along the lines of a brainteaser puzzle than a traditional race.


Lots of variables will screw that premise up. Judging speed at night is far different than judging speed by day. Judging speed while looking into the rising or setting sun is different than doing so at high noon. Judging speed of big vehicles is different from small vehicles and is different again from motorcycles. Judging speed with lots of distraction from other vehicles and background clutter adds more to the mix.

In the end, people will go when they think they have enough room, and that will be based on what usually worked for them most often in past. It's not ideal, but the go/no-go decision for most people takes all of about a half-second to a second at most. Few will take a long time to ascertain speed, verify, and verify again before making the go/no-go decision. That's actually a good thing. Imagine the gridlock if every left-turner, lane-changer, or person entering off a side-street were to engage in absolute certainty calculations before easing off the brake pedal?

HabaneroRed06Si

Which University did you goto? Want to make sure I'm going to the right one lol. .