You are reading a single comment by @benborp and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@benborp
Yes, lack of enforcement and social anonymity play a huge role in speeding and the cognitive issues I mentioned only modify the degree to which drivers speed.
An illustration of what I'm talking about would be a driver encountering a sharpish bend on a country road, during daylight hours they might consider 35mph as reasonable as they can't see round the corner. At night they can 'see' that there is no oncoming traffic and take the bend faster. Or emerging from a side road in town a driver uses the glare of headlights through the windows of a parked car to locate the nearest oncoming vehicle and decides to go. Over all the driver would be using poor observation in worse conditions to reach a potentially wrong decision sooner. I think that's a factor in why people in London drive more homicidally in bad weather.