Wednesday, Oct 08, 2014 at 10:14
Landy, that's a good post. As they say - "it ain't the speed that kills, it's the sudden stop, that does it!"
I've driven a vast number of kms and owned some high powered vehicles. When I was 23 I bought a new HQ Holden with a 308 V8 and 4 speed and I installed a high speed diff in it (2.78 ratio).
I was an unashamed speed demon, and I thrashed that HQ like I was Fangio. In the days before blanket speed limits, I would regularly sit on 180kmh on gravel roads and 200kmh on the better sections of bitumen.
I dragged off a traffic patrolman in an E38 Charger one night, he chased me for 40 kms and only caught me, when I just gave up because I was running low on fuel.
He never charged me with anything, he just thought I'd gone a bit fast through the last country town at 11:00PM. He was very interested in what I had, that went so fast, though!
I never pranged seriously, and looking back it was probably just the lack of traffic that aided that.
One thing I learnt about high speed driving is that things happen 3 times faster than you expect, at very high speeds.
That bend that is a doddle at 100kmh, becomes a horribly sharp curve, that makes the tail hang out, as you wipe out the roadside white posts with the back bumper, as you try to take it at 180kmh!
When things go wrong at high speed, they go horribly wrong - and 3 times faster than you're used to.
If you haven't mentally tuned your brain into sharpening your reflexes and concentrating your attention on what's happening - you're toast when things suddenly turn pear shaped.
The autobahns are just fine for extremely high speeds, because of numerous important points, but initially subtle points, in their design.
1. The autobahns are dead smooth, with no ripples, sunken culverts, undulations, or major variations in road surfacing that can assist in loss of control at very high speeds.
2. Everyone is going the same way, the same as racetracks. Having vehicles travelling at extremely high speeds in opposite directions with no centre lane divider, is a recipe for disaster at some point, when a mechanical failure or driver mistake happens.
3. The autobahns have limited entry points and those entry points are strictly engineered and controlled to produce minimal conflict when traffic enters the autobahn.
4. Animals, slow-moving vehicles, ag equipment, and every other accident-causing possibility or conflict, is either removed or fenced out of autobahns.
This is not the case with Australias outback highways.
We share the outback roads with animals on the loose - many highway entry points that allow slow-moving vehicles to enter - and we allow every vehicle under the sun from bicycles to experimental solar cars, to caravans and roadtrains, to share that highway.
This is basically a recipe for disaster, to then allow vehicles to travel at unlimited speed when there is such a disparity in road user speeds, and constant potential for animal collisions.
A collision with a steer or camel would almost certainly result in fatalities at 180-200 kmh - no matter how good your vehicles safety equipment is.
The greatest single concern I have with this unlimited speed scheme, is overtaking.
There is a real and pressing danger that a vehicle travelling at extremely high speed, carrying out an overtaking manoeuvre, could easily collide with someone making an entry to the highway from a side road - as so many people entering highways DO NOT ensure that there's no-one carrying out an overtaking manoeuvre, right at the point they enter the highway.
People entering highways look to the direction and side of the road that they expect cars to be on - but they never expect anyone to be on the wrong side of the road, when they enter that highway.
I have seen some particularly bad head-on smashes caused by this precise set of circumstances.
At 200kmh, you have no hope of avoiding anyone who enters a highway, towards you, right as you're carrying out an overtaking manoeuvre.
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