Safe Speed Forums

We often hear and read of the police objecting to lowered speed limits and the result of their objections also equal "the square root of F-All"

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I think the time is long gone when speed limits were used on safety grounds. I am convinced that the wide spread of limits that are set well below the requirements of the road are all part of the scheme to frustrate motorists as much as possible in an attempt to get them to give up using their cars and use public transport.

Hampshire has recently introduced 30 mph limits through villages. This would be fine, except their idea of a village is a road with mainly fields each side and a scattering of houses, often set well back from the road. These roads a few years back were NSL which were reduced to 40mpph a couple of years ago and are now 30 mph. So will the next move be to make them 20 mph?

Whynot

Me too whynot and I think/hope that one day a whistle-blower will, together with the Freedom of Information Act, blow it right open! Maybe then we can start to lower KSI with better roads and drivers using sensible speed limits.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

speed humps next

And of course, we now have 20 mph limits on motorways, as I came across last weekend on the M42 coming off the M6 Toll on a virtually empty sunlit road. First it indicated 40, then 20, and the motorway was clear as far as I could see, at least a mile, maybe 2. The next gantry showed 50 with one lane closed, but with no obstructions on it at all.

So why be so free with the 20 limit, then ? Stopping distance at 20 is (according the Highway Code), 40 feet, yet I had welll ove 2000 feet available. I was also terrified I would be shunted up the *rse. I don't have any porblems with a 40 being imposed if there is an obvious hazard, but what I came across was completely insane, criminally insane in my view. At 20 mph you are virtually stopped on a motorway in clear sunny conditions. maybe OK in heavy fog, I suppose.

Something very wrong here, surely.

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

Yes, and thank you safedriver There is something wrong but there's a conspiracy of silence IMHO

Tony

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I run http://www.wikispeedia.org , a site for speed limits.
Historic speedlimits are fun to study, also perpetitual summertime-construction-zones....
-jim

Of course the way they set the speed limits changed after 40 years. Instead of setting it at what only 15% of drivers would exceed if there were no limit, it changed to the mean average, thus leaving the vast and safest group the 85th %ile driving at speeds that were the least likely to have accident involvement but illegal.
Thus the introduction of reduced limits and so the ever growing need to enforce, the greater 'number of drivers' that are still travelling at the higher (85th%ile) safer speeds.

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

yes but the best (worst) of it is, our local councils don't even go by the mean speeds to set speed limits. They often set the limits BELOW the mean speed, against Dept for Transport guidelines, with the excuse of...."we will check average speeds after the limit has been set, with the hope that the mean speed will have come down, otherwise we will introduce "further traffic calming measures"....you couldn't make this up folks.....

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Was up in your neck of the woods Christmas and Boxing Day. Every time I head home there are new, lower speed limits. Telford used to be a joy to drive around, now it is terrible. Most if the speed limits appear to be at least 10mph too low. I think for every mile of road that is de-rated, councils/highways should have to up rate a mile of road.

The only beauty of Shropshire roads is is that for every mile of road that the fat a@@@ed office bound beaurocrats know about that, they can play with, there are about ten times as many, nice rural NSLs that they don't know about and leave alone....

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Although they have started to believe that a "village" is a group of half a dozen houses with 100yard long drives that lead onto a main road......idiots!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Strangely enough ,last year ,after the Warks speed review,where the police et al were dead against the County Council speed reductions ,we had a massive swing in voting .Possibly a backlash against the Government ,as there had been a lot of daft ideas coming out of this County Council and failure to act in the public interest ,when public opinion was against an idea.I am led to believe that a lot of the Officer led speed reductions were dumped ,but that fact was not advertised.

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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