Safe Speed Forums

I've just joined and read some of the messages in this thread as I leave in hte NE but have driven the A9 many times along with all the major routes in all four corners of this wee island.

Some of the posters (esp the instigator seem to have lost the plot as far as driving safetly and considerately for their own and others sake.

" I drive at 60mph on the A9" ..................... plonker. You end up with a queue behind you?? So what!! Do as the highway code indicates and pull over. YES they may be travelling faster thatn the "posted" speed limit but who says that is right??

Some jumped up git 30 odd years ago thought that speed limits would be a good idea during the fuel crisis. And they stuck. Then we find the councils casually dropping limits on roads for what purpose?? To park a "safety van (lol)" on it to make more money.

If you can't drive at a sensible speed for the road you're on and end up causing a jam ....get off of it!

There are times when 60mph is ridiculosly slow for a road and there are time when 60mph is dangerously fast for the same stretch. Use your common sense (if you have any) and drive to the abilities that you possess. If that falls short of what progress the rest are making .....MOVE over

On the whole, I prefer to pull over to allow those who cannot resist speeding to overtake. However, like Troll, I understand that in so doing I am aiding and abetting an illegal activity. Ultimately, I share responsibility for any immediate consequences and any consequences in the future. It is not good for our future safety if, as Safe Speed argues, we allow the idiot to pass to reduce the risk - that will only encourage the idiot to do it again and again, whether on the open road or tearing recklesslessly through our residential areas.

Frustration may cause accidents, yes, but the driver at the head of queue does NOT cause the frustration. That is down to individual drivers. And the antidote to frustration - patience - can be learned. It is appropriate that the initiator of this thread is a Troll. I have just been driving in Norway, Sweden and Finland, where the driving culture is rather different. You can tootle along mile after mile of perfectly straight Norwegian road at 55mph with a queue of cars behind you, and nobody will bother passing. The limit there is 56mph. Admittedly, this patience has been forced on the driving population by stringent regulation. Exceed the limit by 15 or 20mph and you can find yourself in jail.

A Troll is a mischievous, though extremely ugly, creature. In Scandinavia they are still used to teach children the dangers of the deadly sins. Long may he live!

Do you think this is justified, reasonable or ludicrously "over the top"?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

No you are not. You don’t actually know your real speed; also you won’t know how fast the overtaker will go when they pass you.


This doesn’t make sense. The frustration can still reside, the cause of it will merely be shifted from individual to policy. The fact there are still speeding prosecutions is a good indicator of it.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Och Aye, the Submariner returns!

It is clearly well over the top. Whether it is justified or not, I have no idea because I don't know if it is effective in reducing accidents on Norwegian roads.
Presumably, the Norwegian authorities have decided that force is the only recourse, if the driving population is incapable of teaching itself patience and restraint.
I do know that it is an effective policy in one respect. There appears to be very little latent frustration on the roads I was travelling on. Even when the head of the queue is driving at well under the speed limit, there are seldom any signs of anxiety to overtake - no tailgating, for example. Norwegian drivers tend to hang well back and only overtake if there is a nice straight bit of road.
In the ribbon villages that are so characteristic of fiord country, drivers seem happy to trundle along for mile after mile of empty road at 30mph. If they see a pedestrian approaching (not standing at) a zebra crossing, they will stop.
One method of enforcement, by the way, is by radar/camera pointing towards oncoming traffic. How would you like that here?

I am sorry to keep asking questions of you but I would like to understand the points you are making.


Do you think it is acceptable for "the authorities" to use "force" on its public to get its way even if the populace is seemingly "voting" another way? Aren't the public sending a message to the authorities that they have made a mistake?

There is a famous quote (on here somewhere) to the effect that a reasonable act performed by the great majority of citizens should not be regarded as illegal.


We have it here, albeit using sensors in the road instead of radar - Truvelo. The mobile use LTI20-20 is also a forward facing device but uses lasers. I'm not sure why we would be especially worried about radar with forward facing detection.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I know everyone is trying to respond politely, but the style of this looks familar. Fixated, closed logic; looks like Steve to me!

Who the hell wants to live in Norway Anyway? It's like France but with money and bad weather....

I did not see any evidence that the Norwegian driving public think the authorities have made a mistake.
I am simply trying to suggest, from observations of another culture, that if you take away, by force if necessary, the desire to speed, the entire driving experience can be more pleasureable than it is in this country. There appears to be less tailgating, fewer risky overtaking manoeuvres, less use of angry headlight flashing and so on.
The means (heavy fines, loss of licence, jail) may not be very pleasant but it can be argued that they justify the end.
The end for the government may be to reduce the accident rate, but to me it is to have a more relaxed life on the road.
Drivers were once reluctant to be educated in the value of wearing seat belts. It had to be incorporated into law before they understood. Now, almost everyone belts up without thinking. I think that eventually almost everyone will obey speed limits without thinking. Just as they do in Norway.

That's what I'm afraid of!

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

I don't for one minute think that this is possible (other than by brain surgery). All that has happened is that the act, not the desire, has been suppressed by draconian penalties. Ridiculous penalties must be backed up by ridiculous and costly enforcement if they are to have the effect desired.

I think what you need to ask is if this is a cost effective way to improve safety.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

This kind of advice is all very nice, but when people start to act by themselves and driving for others assuming the following driver knows exactly what you are doing and what is going through your mind, thats when problems arise. Unless this is within the highway code and the teaching process of every new driver the it can cause confusion. If I see a veh ahead of me that I wish to pass and suddenly it moved over to the side I wouldnt assume 'oh here is a driver who is letting me pass' no I would be more cautious thinking is he drunk, whats he about to do why has he just put his full beam on? I see more of the latter from confused motorists than the competent. I want to see someone driving correctly in accordance with the rules and the teaching practice, if I wish to pass, I will, when I choose as it is entirely my choice and responsibility. Going back to the point about the lights...doing that can lead to a crash......eg. you drive along at night someone comes up behind and you decide to move over and put full beam on...........ahead of you is slight brow of a hill and the glow from oncomming veh lights can no longer be seen because of the reflective glare of your full beam, something that might be seen if you had not done that. Correct use of headlights is important, people should really get used to dipping headlights at night aproaching bend or brow of hill momentarily before resuming full beam as lights from oncomming vehs can be spotted more clearly and much earlier, the glare of your own full beam can restrict this. Likewise people who drive all the time on dip beam are failing to use lights correctly and give them a better view of road ahead. The only requirement should be that you drive correctly and do not speed up when being overtaken, when you change the way you drive to be helpful, sometimes its not. the only way to be courtious to other road users is to follow the highway code and law and not make up rules and practices of your own no matter how nice they may seem. I came up behind a chap in a truck once, he was pottering along at 35 to 40, the limit for truck was 40 and I was stopping at the next layby anyway which was about 4 miles. I stayed well back from this chap and just accepted it, however he decided that he should let me passed...over the next 4 miles I was down to nearly 30 most of the time, a queue was building, he ended up going on the grass verge twice , indicating twice.....when reached layby, he pulled in too, huge queue of traffic passed blasting horns as you might expect, as the old boy couldnt get going strait away I took the oportunity to go ask him if anything was wrong. I said are you ok "Bugger off, next time I wont bother letting you pass, your bloody ignorant."came his reply. Before I could explain what he had just caused he was off in a huff. To him who chose to make his own highway code up, I was a tosser in a truck and he was mr courtious. Now lets recap...he was guilty of speed minus/drifting about in the road/mounting the verge/causing an inconvenience to others/inapropriate or ambiguous signals/gesticulating to other road users and finally agressive to another road user. All from his persuit of what he probably saw as courtious driving.

... and if, having realised early on what he was about, you'd either flown by at the (nearly) earliest opportunity or given a single left indicator flash, he'd have got the message and resumed normal progress. 95% of the time his helpful action really would have been. What's best - do something a tad out of the ordinary that has next to no risk and will help in most occasions or do nothing to save an occasional hinderance? Not an easy call.

Another possibility .. you say you were in a truck. Was it laden? Could the lights have been high and mistaken to the lorry driver as on full beam?

I have only just joined this discussion forum after seeing an article on the bbc news site about regulating the speed of vehicles.
I am certainly not on this to promote speed but seek to help in achieving a more intelligent approach to the speed issue.
I am not a speed freak but have survived 40+ years of driving without a single accident claim in many parts of the world including a spell as a taxi driver in Australia..
I therefore would consider myself a fairly competent driver. I also lived in Germany for 5 years and experienced the feel of driving with no limits.
Over the years I have owned and driven fast cars and for many years felt it more important to drive well even in breach of speed limits than follow the letter of the law. I have always been fit, sporty and with good reactions and the fun element of driving has not been lost on me.
Looking back, however, and taking into account the presence of other road users with competencies out there ranging from idiot to professional standard, luck plays a more significant role in avoiding accidents than most people realise.
I do not think it is fair to gamble with other people's lives in this way. Killing yourself is one thing. Killing someone else for a moment of indecision or error of judgement on their part is something quite different. How would you feel if you wiped out a family fora moment of fun on the public roads
Bringing up children who also become road users either as pedestrians, cyclists or young drivers brings a different dimension and at a certain stage in my life I woke up to the fact that lady luck had smiled on me on numerous occasions throughout my driving career. Also, as you get older you actually know and can put a face to road accident victims.
I'm not in favour of pointless laws that do not work and would like to see the government come up with something that achieves the balance between freedom and safety in a smarter way than the ban and punish regime we have lived with.
Using the mix of technologies available in an intelligent way to limit the speed and power of some of the vehicles on our roads can, I believe be used to limit the dangers speed poses particularly on certain roads and stretches of road.
I don't think we should have carte blanche to use the roads as rally tracks or race tracks but neither would I want to fall asleep at the wheel holding to a 70mph limit on a motorway after being lulled to sleep by the monotony of it. I would say i have had more close calls that way than any other.
I hope the spirit of this forum is to preserve life rather than promote selfish "freedom".

Welcome Piperb.

We certainly are calling for the return to Intelligent Road Safety, through proper research. The Gov had been barking up the wrong tree and their are lives lost because of this - that 'fatality gap'.

We want all drivers to do better and understand more, about their driving skills, knowledge and risk management.
This can happen with through education and incentives. We all improve with greater experiences as our knowledge is increased and are skills honed. To improve, road safety we need to look further afield than this, to the Governments Road Policies as these can improve the roads and the rules thereof to increase better environments and safer environments.
However when the Policies are not improving Road Safety and drivers skills are falling to the tune of from the Best Road in the Worlds Title and now number 6 this is a very big concern and especially in just 15 yrs too. Upon investigation of these figures in depth Paul found that there were many aspects that had fallen due to the over concentration of a numeric error.
So we are Campaigning for the return to Intelligent Road safety, and the encouragement on driver responsibility and abilities. Risk management and good attitudes are at the core of safe driving, but the current Road Policies are a long way from these basic fundamental values.
So we lobby Government to try to improve the road safety values that have gone so badly wrong.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Hi piperb (if you're still around)

Total freedom would be nice for any individual – if others couldn't be involved to affect them or them affecting others; however, as it is we all have to interact with other road users.
Those with an amount of intelligence and conscience will appreciate there are some individuals with less conscience, and a few with practically none; these are the people who must be reigned in. This is the reason for speed limits and ultimately why they need enforcing; without this the actions of these individuals will be unpredictable to other road users; the resulting uncertainty creates needless risk. The principle of speed limits is a good thing, as highlighted within the safespeed manifesto.

As you rightly said, some speed limits aren’t set right. There are generally way more casualties resulting from fatigue than exceeding the speed limit and this gulf increases on roads with low hazard density (e.g. motorways outside of busy periods); adding speed cameras to the mix usually results with panic manoeuvres or greater risk of fatigue, or worse yet - fatigue immediately followed by panic! Why do we persist with this worst-case blanket limit?

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

QUOTE: "Total freedom would be nice for any individual "

I can tell you Total freedom is very nice. I am a Freeman.

You all being members of "A Society" obey and accept that Societies rules.
I obey Common Law, Do no harm, Do not Steal, Do not make false contracts.
Therefore for a Freeman their is no "crime" in speeding.
Should damage or loss occur by someone speeding the are guilty under the Common Law.
NOT under Statutes or Acts of your 'society'

I can cite John Harris tupc.org [Freeman on the Land] recently summond to court to face the charge
of not wearing a seat belt.

We believe speeding, seat belt "Laws" are purely tax gathering by the Corporate entities which most people subscribe to.

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Dave ~ Freeman on the Land
http://www.freemanhighland.co.uk/
A paradigm shift in law and politics

Unfortunately, there is also the issue of risk.

It's all very well saying 'no harm done' but does that suggest 'it's only a matter of time' ?
Unpredictable behaviour presents risk, that's why I (and society, as well as the Safe Speed campaign) believe speed limits are fundamentally a good thing. Such limits place boundaries of behaviours reasonably expected by others who need to interact; for example, it is not reasonable to expect young schoolchildren to be able to reliably judge and interact with traffic doing 70mph. Issues come when these boundaries are set inappropriately - too low as well as too high.

Few people will argue that going too fast (faster than others can expect or judge, or too fast to be able to stop in the distance one can reasonably expect to be clear) isn't some sort of crime.
Edited to add: The problem we have is defining 'too fast' (without the abuse and misrepresentation from those who stand benefit from enforcing needless restrictions [as well as the ineffective method chosen to enforce them]).

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

So how do you specify responsibility, knowledge, specify skills and abilities and who so you compare yourself with to guage your progress, or do you 'stay' at a level and find that acceptable ?
What happens if your are stopped by Police - how would you expect to behave and what if they decide to (now-a-days) take your car or impound it ?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.