martin* wrote:
Sorry, just a quick reply (and I don't know how to embed quotes)
Councillors don't set speed limits, engineers in association with the police do. Yes, there is sometimes political pressure to set a speed limit, but any engineer worth their salt will fight this vigorously (although I'm not saying it doesn't happen).
Drivers are better placed to judge a safe speed depending on conditions?
Yes, but conditions vary. By all means, judge the appropriate speed up to the limit.
Why not COAST up to the limit?
Unexpected new changes in speed limit. Isn't a child running into the road an unexpected change?
My last point was "without having to ............... take the responsibility from the driver"
Actually, it is not always engineers and police who set limits, and they dont bite the hand that feeds them. Why fight a call for a lower limit - they dont see it as causing any harm?
Councils respond to pleas from residents for limits, and come up with policies of their own, which they then foist on engineers. When police make requests for changes in speeds, and other measures, they are often ignored for political reasons.
I pass daily through a village with a 40 limit which was requested by a group of villagers, who got up a petition etc. during their campaign.
They used a horrific accident in which two motorcyclists were killed to justify their campaign, but the accident was below the 40 limit, and was caused by a foreign driver clipping the kerb, and bouncing out into the oncoming traffic. Finally, it occured OUTSIDE of the 40 limited area which is now in place.
Clearly, MANY motorists who pass through the village correctly feel the limit is unjustified. The straight road, with three lanes was first re-engineered to two lanes, with a solid grass separator, with protected lanes for turning, within the grass median. There is NO reason whatsoever for a 40 limit.
However, after mobile enforcement, there were enough accidents - mostly SMIDSY's or outside the limited area (but within the 1 km qualifying area) to up the "enforcement" to FIXED cameras. NONE were due to exceeding the posted limit!
Now NO amount of "enforcement" can prevent vehicles traveling at NSL outside the limited area having accidents, and there have been several this last twelve months, but the village DOES lie on a busy tourist route, with thousands of vehicles passing every day, who recognise that it is clearly safe to travel at more than 40 mph through a superbly engineered stretch of road (the village lies mostly to ONE side of the road, not across it) and one cannot help thinking that the limit was imposed by the council for the express purpose of creating an opportunity to collect speeding fines.
It certainly has had NO affect whatsoever on the safety of the road in question. Our local police inspector and several of his officers do not approve of the cameras - and some decry the limit - to no avail!
No amount of campaigning will persuade the council that they have made a mistake - after all the camera partnership to which they are signed up, is proof that they care about road safety! They can also make motorists who are NOT compromising road safety pay fines which can be used to pay for the propaganda they produce!
This same council refused
in the face of police concern to provide a PELICAN crossing in fron to a school and sheltered housing scheme on the grounds that nobody had been killed yet! (cost £48,000)
They also FAILED
to address police concerns about a stretch of road about a mile and a half from this site.
Today an 18 year old student at my son's school was killed. Dead. Forever. At best, if the council react, we might see an improvement made in a few yers, but more likely when there has been another fatality.
Road safety has been abandoned in many areas to the speed camera.
They
earn money, provide a sop to feed the electorate, and divert attention from the woeful state of driving standards, and proper enforcement.
They are simply another form of toll,
and inappropriate limits are the toll "gate".
I already judge a safe speed for ALL conditions, and vary my speed as conditions vary.
Sometimes I am well below the posted limit, sometimes I am AT the limit.
In a few instances I might be over the limit, but until the introduction of cameras, I have never felt it necessary to compromise mine and other road users safety by taking my eyes off the road, just to ensure that I was not more than 3-5 mph above the limit even for just a few yards - and the cameras are usually located where proper observation is more important than slavish adhereance to the limit.
You clearly believe that councils do what is best for you, and that the police oversee this benevolent policy. I doubt the children injured so far on the crossing (not seriously YET), or the family of the boy killed today will have the same degree of faith you have.
Our particular council safety engineer is called Nick Raymond.
Personally, I would not trust him to engineer a padded cell.
He decrys cars who make an illegal right turn as dangerous, but accepts that busses can make the same manouvre without compromising safety!!
