Safe Speed Forums

The only potentially valid[*] reason I can think of why people "need" to speed is the one mentioned by Odin, which is "inappropriately low speed limits".

It's my opinion that if speed limits were set correctly, and by correctly I mean taking into account all of the parameters of safety, throughput, driver requirements, speeding would virtually disappear as an offence.

There is of course a different dimension when you take away the word "need" - accidental speed drifting over the posted limit (which is usually - but not always - attributable to bad signage), boy racer types, those who disregard the law entirely etc.

You may even get a suggestion that if you are tired, driving more quickly will keep you awake. I don't subscribe to this opinion!

[*] I say potentially valid - not in legal terms, and not particuarly in my way of driving, but I can understand the sentiment moreso than other reasons that could be given.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

I'm having a chicken and egg thought process swirling around in my mind over this question - I think many drivers exceed the posted limit because it's deemed socially acceptable to do so (drivers who religiously stick to/below the limit at all times are in a small minority), yet it's socially acceptable only because it's something the majority do... hmm

I think maybe it's easier to simply answer the question - why do I choose to exceed the posted limit? Partly because an increasing number of limits seem to be set for the sole purpose of frustrating the people who use the road - e.g. lovely wide dual carriageways with sweeping curves, good visibility and minimal pedestrian access, on which the 's have been replaced with 's... Sadly, it's often these same downsized limits where you'll find the cameras - catching all those drivers using the road in exactly the same way as they, legally, used to do prior to the limit reduction. And partly because on motorways (and some motorway-standard D/Cs) the existing limit often feels too low for a typical modern car.

However, as with many others here, I'm emphatically NOT interested in breaking the limit just for the hell of it, and where weather/traffic/general area conditions suggest so, I'll be one of those drivers choosing to drive at a speed under (sometimes considerably so) the posted limit.




Well, leaving aside the thousands of drivers incorrectly penalised by cameras set up incorrectly or misbehaving, or where the accompanying signage is incorrect, the placement of many fixed and mobile cameras does seem to suggest that maximising the number of people caught seems to be more important than having the camera acting as a deterrent. Placing cameras within yards of a limit change so as to catch people who haven't quite slowed down enough as they pass into the lower limit, or who going the other way have started to pick up speed just before they enter the higher limit, doesn't really seem to have the slightest relationship to improving road safety.

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Chris

Q1. But if it's the "main problem" why does it (according to the DfT) only cause 1 accident in 20?

Q2. Would you say that it's inherently dangerous to exceed the posted limit by 10mph? I have a reason for asking, so I'd like your answer please.

Hi - you've got round to our way of thinking - give the man a coconut.



YEP -thats why we need more trafpols, NOT CAMERAS.



TRY IT - do a 12/15 hour shift ,then drive up the M1/m6 - , i can tell you from personal experience that at a bit more than the limit you are more awake ., at 70 you NEED to get off.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

There are lots of speed limits out there that are unreasonable and draconian.

That is why I break some speed limits, because they're stupid.

(My bold)

To reduce this to its basics I'd say that the top priority of your job was to remove the word "unexpected" from the equation.

to my mind the goal of every aspiring "expert" driver is to learn to anticipate events that less skilled drivers would regard as "unexpected". Apply this line of reasoning to your sentence above and you realise that speed is not the cause of your hypothetical incident, but merely one of the effects of an error in observation or anticipation.

The speed we choose to travel at during any particular moment of a journey is the result of the process of driving. If we are insufficiently skilled to be able to select the correct safe speed then it is way further back in the process that we need to be looking to find the error; but if on the other hand we are sufficiently skilled to be able to select the correct safe speed then whether it exceeds an arbitrarily set numerical limit is completely irrevelevant to the process of safe driving.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

I do much of my driving on NSL (often single track) raods where the speed limit (for my car) is 60. Now there aren't many places along these roads where I FEEL it is safe to do 60 (or anything like it)! I therefore drive a long way below the limit, having taken (what I consider to be) due regard of all the circumstances prevailing at the time (weather, raod surface, gradient, visibility...etc).

I expect you'd give me a pat on the head for staying so well within the speed limit? - certainly I'd expect the local scamera partnership to do so!

Now, on a different stretch of the same road, I might consider (taking all the prevailing factors into account - i.e. using EXACTLY the same thought process) that 80 was safe.

Why would you trust me to use the same processes to decide which speed BELOW the limit was safe but not which speed ABOVE the limit?

Probably because they are in a flow of traffic which is all marginally above the lolly.

Because many roads which were set at a higher speed are being reduced to 30 mph. Yet the layout and look and feel of them are still safe enough at the previous limit.

Because some roads are set at a lower limit than warranted - yet another road at an inappropriately higher limit. My sisters tell me of A6 (40 mph stretch into Manchester which has houses on each side of the road.) and the A666 Kearsley stretch - wide with a field at one side and 30 mph. They say it has always been a magnet for drivers to exceed speed limit and notorious from Patrol car era to the Gatso as being particularly lucrative per the locals. (The Gatso apparently pings the unwary and it's by a garage and behind a bus shelter apparently )

Which perhaps answers your question







M4 tempo and one tempo in Manchester made lots of money. They were incorrectly positioned and pinged legal drivers

Some are placed too close to a lolly change as well. It all arouses suspicions.



I think I am more interested in what makes them say that.

Gadgets/technology seems to be duping people into thinking a modern car's "on board toys and gizmos" plus a speed camera = "zero KSI". I think some of this deludes and removes the actual skill involved.

I would say that as cars do develop - so does the need to update and assess skills accordingly. People need to understand just how the modern thingummy bob which added £xK to the car acutally works

This is, of course, in addition to good old COAST which is a useful system for keeping things more safety-led

But do I speed? No. Not really. I fluctuate marginally above and below like you will do and everyone else who drives a car - including Dick Brainstrop. I do have some fun on German A/bahn and find the standard of driving over there better disciplined over all. I also have the odd blast when I book a jolly on a track too. But in my normal driving - my consideration is to my own safety and that of passengers within my car and by default includes the same duty of care towards others on the road with me.

Oddly enough - no one on here wants a free for all and no limits.

They want safety and they want justice. Speed cams are not delivering any improvements in standards. Quite possible to drive like a twazak and below the speed limit

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We use our smilies on YOU today
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KEEP SMILING
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Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
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I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Speed limits CANNOT be set correctly - or at least if they were set at such high thresholds that reasoanable men would never exceed them, then they would do no good.



So the problem is that even if we set the speed limit for 'good' conditions, it will still be way too low for 'ideal' conditions which are obviously present from time to time.

It's especially bad with national speed limits - applied equally to narrow busy bendy roads with novice drivers in crappy vehicles and to wide deserted straight roads with experienced drivers in high-spec vehicles.

The ONLY solution that I can propose is discretionary enforcement. Otherwise we're unavoidably telling some drivers to drive far too fast in poor conditions.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

you trot this out too often, it's getting boring now.

The "limit" is not the "travelling speed".

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

But if the limit is set at or below the free travelling speed most people would choose in the absence of a limit (or if the limit were higher), then it does in effect become a target speed.

That is Paul's point, if the limit is set at the highest speed at which it is ever going to be possible to travel along a road safely, for the vast majority of the time it is going to be too high.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I accord with many of the replies that have been made in answer to your question about why drivers speed. An increasing number of limits are set too low. Some urban 40 areas have become 30 for "consistency" - no other reason, and certainly not a safety reason. And, as others have said, the police will be most vigilant in enforcing artificially low limits because they know that these are the ones that most people will exceed. In other words, the reduced speed limit has had no effect - except to create a revenue raising opportunity.

I believe the majority of motorists feel the way many as people on this forum, including myself. If "exceeding the speed limit" were such a heinous crime, answer the following:

• why would the vast majority of people (including myself) turn a blind eye if they saw a speed camera being vandalised?
• Why are speed camera alert systems like RoadAngel™ and TomTom SatNav (bundled with speed camera alert software) so popular, and sold so openly - at car dealerships, and even advertised on TV?
• Why is it that when I bought a new road atlas recently, all the offerings I could have chosen had "includes speed camera locations" emblazoned across the front cover?

Do the purveyors of the articles I mentioned above belive that their customer base is composed of inconsiderate, reckless drivers? I don't think so.



Last year, GATSO cameras generated about £120 million. Assuming for one moment that everyone became a speed limit obsessed numpty, eyes glued to the speedo, then that £120m the government rakes in would vanish. How do you think they would make up the shortfall? Perhaps we'd have a Portsmouth job - all urban roads reduced to 20mph to create more enforcement opportunities.

If there are any Police reading this post, sorry if I sound disrespectful of the law. I am not, but like many others I am disrespectful of the current flawed policies which are forced on the British motoring public, and which SS is committed to oppose. I have a certain amount of sympathy, but have to say that if disrespect is a problem, the Govt./police/councils have brought it upon themselves.

Turn the question around and view it from a higher perspective - why do we need rapid, efficient transport of food, goods and people when a couple of old nags and a wooden-wheeled cart will do?

No matter how low the limits are screwed down, there will always be some crackpot with a personal agenda who disagrees.

On many roads these days - even most roads - the limit is now quite obviously the travelling speed.

It's also quite obviously the target on the driving test.

Show me any evidence at all that the speed limit isn't the target on most road types in good conditions for many drivers.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I don't conciously choose to 'speed' or exceed the posted limit.

I just drive.

I don't often look at the Speedo, when I do on an open road I will often see 3 figures in build up areas I won't reach 30.

If the majority of drivers exceed the posted limit then the law is morally indefensible.

As an advanced driving instructor I'd be interested to hear your view as to whether or not a speedo actually has any value beyond technical and legal compliance.

Out of interest Paul, and I only ask because I'm not aware of your stance on it.

Are you opposed to legally limits entirely, do you think limits should be removed and replaced by advisory limits instead? I'd very much support advisory limits myself, it seems much more acceptable. However, I do also feel that this would set free the boy racers who would then take it upon themselves to drive unsafely. We'd need far more traffic police (which is what I understand SS and most people on here propose) to police the roads to catch unsafe drivers, rather than 'speeders', but would it not require too many traffic police... is the money about to employ that many?

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/manifesto.html

also:

Proposal for discretionary enforcement

And

Speed limit discussion

Basically speed limits are a small but important part of road safety.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yeah - I find repeating the truth can be boring too...

However, the truth will out.

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Yeah, after I replied to Handy I wished that I had asked him to specify the flaw. Of course there isn't a flaw, and Handy appears to have called it 'boring' because he cannot otherwise find fault with it.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

what evidence do you want? A photo of a car travelling at, gosh, 60mph on an empty motorway? I could provide hundreds, if I felt so inclined to fit a camera that could see both my speedo and the road ahead.

Open your mind for just one minute and understand that "current behaviour" does not define what the words mean, it is just what goes on. Change the environment and by it's very nature the behaviour has to change.

Whilst your mind is open to that suggestion, consider that what everyone seems to agree on is that the solution is education. It's not rocket science to assume that words that have a definition ("limit" and "target") that has existed for eons compared to this little forum could be included in that education.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.