Safe Speed Forums

Hmmm. For someone who likes to talk in terms of empirical analysis I see a little too much opinion in the above. Do you actually have some concrete evidence of this effect, or is it just prejudice shining through??

What grey area? There isn't one anymore, except in Durham where In Gear and his colleagues hang around looking for bad drivers and generally policing the old fashioned way. Er, not Constable Savage or "he fell down the stairs Sarge" stuff but differentiating between the safe and the dangerous and probably just checking out any that don't fall definitely into one or other category to see what's what.

The misapplication of the law is what's brought the law into disrepute, not drivers. I'm certain the limits are useful and necessary when sensibly set, but fewer and fewer are sensibly set these days, and on top of the damage that's been done by pinging so many for safe yet illegal speeds. Law is left but justice has sadly departed. And in her wake we've got an increasing number of drivers who drive along nervously eyeing their speedos instead of watching where they're going, or worse, the "I'm safe as log as I don't go faster than the limit" variety TIBMINs.

No perhaps it isn't possible to send one message out that means different things to different people, at least not when it consists of a black number in a red ring and nothing else. But when it's backed up by sensible polcing we get a lot closer. The alternative, and not a very attractive one IMO, is to ditch all limits and have one message - drive safely or the BiBs will have you. However, I've already said why I feel this is far less desirable than limits with discretionary enforcement.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I'm gutted to have heard that this was repealed in 1960 (possibly earlier) as it was such a good one to raise against the "it's the law so obey" arguments of the Daleks I mean anti speeders. Still, since it was apparently brought in during the reign of Richard III the point still remains that archaic and obsolete laws can hang around well beyond their use-by dates, and that long before the C20th it was routinely ignored as being no longer relevant to the age. The fact that we no longer have to drag the vicar out to the nearest green space every Sunday to watch us stick arrows in each other for two hours doesn't mean that there aren't still more daft laws left on the books that, law or not, are rountinely ignored and probably unknown to almost the entire population.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Still in two minds about that one. It still relies on the limits being set for practical reasons rather than politcal ones as the trend seems increasingly to be at the moment. Without that it just seems like more expense by putting extra signs up. Also it doesn't advance the most pressing need which is to get road users thinking more about what is a safe speed for themselves and their vehicle in the conditions. Without that we just give them another set of numbers. Also the implication is that the absolute limit will often go up, and that can leave the police unable to prosecute a bad driver with anything when DWDCA or whatever can't be proven to the standard that a court requires. At least with the current limits there's often something they can pin on a bad driver, even if it's only speeding. Still, I don't think these are insurmountable, and I think it'd be interesting for TPTB to trial this somewhere. But I still think it would be easier to keep to one limit on each stretch of road, use discretionary enforcement and make inexperienced drivers more easily identifiable to plod by use of mandatory P plates.


I agree that tailgating is a problem, but I don't think that forcing faster drivers to go at the pace of the slowest is the only solution, and if the slowest is going ridiculously slow it could be the least desirable solution. We're losing safe overtaking spots on many roads, and that's inevitably going to lead to tailgating (though I think the pressures of modern life have a huge influence too). Why not simply change the roads back to enable overtaking to be done safely? Of course, it would also be a good thing to teach safe overtaking in a way which has never really been done before.

I'm not sure about the use of tailgating cameras. IMO any sort of camera is an incentive to a certain group of drivers to make sure they can't be traced. I know one person who's had their plates nikced recently, and he's now waiting to see when he's going to get fined for something done by the car on which his plates ended up. Another has just been done for not paying the Kengestion charge on a day where the car was outside her office window forty miles away. Another has had a threatening letter for not paying a parking ticket in Chelsea, again when the car was outside in the car park all day long. The reliance on cameras is encouraging this sort of crime as the chances of getting away with it are very good. Also, about tail gating cameras in particular, I first heard about these being tested in Israel maybe ten years ago. Since then nothing. I suspect they're having trouble getting them to work as reliably as, say, Mark 1 Eyeball as fitted to large donut fuelled bloke from Hendon.

I hate tailgaters as much as the next man, but I honestly feel (again) that BiBs sorting it out gives better value for money. Top reason for this is that a camera won't do anything about it right away. That postal delay in getting the offence identified and processed and stuck in an envelope and given to the post office and finally arriving on the offenders doormat (assuming he wasn't the guy who nicked my mate's plates) is time in which the eejit is likely to continue to tailgate others. Whereas being pulled over by plod will (a) give him valuable advice and (b) punish him right away.

And BTW, if any plods ever tug someone tailgating me and feel like giving 'em a quiet kicking, I'll hold your coat.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I dont get this "Tailgater made me speed" argument - a tailgater is a hazard - a 6 foot separation would require a low speed to meet the two second rule - so give it to them!!!!
They either drop back or pass, or follow you for miles at little more than a walking pace! You only contemplate outrunning them if it was necessary for some unique reason. Otherwise get rid of them as quickly and safely as possible. If you have witnesses, and a passenger, get them to write down the numbers and phone it in.

Red lights and emergency vehicles.
If it is safe to do so, advance onto the junction - hazard lights on (if safe to switch them on,) and block off the traffic from whichever direction would present the most risk. The emergency vehicle driver will do the rest.
If you watch Road Wars on Sky, you will get the picture of what is required, and what is safe.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

The old system, although it had its faults, did actually work. However, it relied on a blurred interpretation of the law which some people feel uncomfortable with. Stevei has clearly expressed the understandable desire to have things cut and dried, so that you know for certain whether or not you might be subject to prosecution.

But the trouble is that, by definition, speed limits cannot be that cut and dried as a definition of safe vs unsafe behaviour. 5 mph can be too fast under some circumstances, and if a speed limit was set so that it was effectively never safe to exceed it, then it would be so high as to no longer act as a useful guide for drivers.

Speed limits should in effect be enforced on the basis that they are "strongly advisory" rather than mandatory, although this is not something that can really be expressed in law. They were never intended for the level of scrupulous numerical adherence that is now demanded, and as we know that has seriously adverse consequences in terms of drivers being distracted and setting inappropriate priorities when at the wheel.

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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

You cannot extend that line of thinking as you did without crossing the border between the humanitarian camp and the ideological camp. And that border is very wide indeed.
There are very few people anywhere in the world who would not - in the heat of the moment - take extraordinary steps to protect another person from death or injury.
And a similarly small number, I imagine, who would take extraordinary steps to cause death or injury to another person.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Come on, Steve. The faster driver is already inherently slowed down to the speed of the slower driver by the very fact that the slower driver is in front. In any case, how is forcing a driver to do 30mph going to keep them from driving 2" from the bumper of the car in front doing 29.9mph?
How about encouraging the slower drivers to speed up to the speed of the faster drivers? It is, after all, the slower drivers who - by driving at low speeds for no good reason - are causing the problem in the first place.
I wonder how the passengers on the 7:30 train to London Paddington would feel if they were delayed by the train ahead of them doing 25mph just because the driver felt like doing that speed?

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

No, I can't agree with this at all. People don't tailgate when they only want to go a little bit faster, they tailgate because they want to go significantly faster than the car in front. They've only caught the car up in the first place because they were significantly exceeding the maximum legal speed limit. Why should slower drivers be encouraged to break the law just because some people want to drive at illegal speeds? And "no good reason"?! How about the fact that they don't want to be prosecuted for speeding, it seems a good enough reason to me.

Perhaps we're thinking of completely different scenarios - the scenario I have in my mind is where in this area, if you drive at 30mph in a 30mph limit, any cars ahead of you will rapidly pull ahead into the distance, and a queue of impatient drivers will rapidly form behind you. You'll have people weaving about a few feet from your rear bumper, demanding a lot of your attention so you can take evasive action when they almost drive into you trying to squeeze past. It makes trying to drive within the law extremely difficult, and to be quite frank, dangerous, but only because we still have so many drivers on the road who are quite happy to exceed posted speed limits. If it were only a matter of 30mph vs 29.9mph it would take them a heck of a long time to catch a car up that is 100m ahead, what we're talking about is a lot of people who want to drive at >40mph in 30mph limits. Of course, I would agree if you suggested the 30mph speed limit is too low if so many people want to exceed it by so much, but whenever I advocate increasing limits to sensible values I'm told that would confuse inexperienced drivers. So the only solution I can think of is to make everyone slow down to the posted limit.

But the authorities have been trying to do that for over a decade and their own figures show that they have made no difference to the speeds people choose to drive at. 60% are exceeding the speed limit at sample sites in free flowing conditions on most road types.

Yet the public is beginning to revolt and the Police public relationship is at an all time low.

We're never going to get there are we? In fact there would be riots in the streets long before we made any significant difference.

So I suggest your idea is proved to be unachieveable.

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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 believe that it has been achieved in specific areas. For example the Anglesey thread where the poster asserts that all the locals "crawl along". Or take Burnley, for example, where there are a lot of speed cameras. The subjective view of the Burnley residents I know is that traffic has slowed down significantly, and tailgating and aggressive driving has been very much reduced. The statistics here:
http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/environmen ... asp#Btrend
show a definite improvement in KSIs in the area as a whole, and this really can't be attributed to RTM as the Burnley average from 94 to 99 is so clearly higher than the average from 00 to 03, and it's the whole town not just specific locations where temporary blips occurred. I believe that nationwide saturation enforcement would get people to slow down, and that the public would only revolt if the speed limits are too low. Electronic driving aids to ease the burden of compliance would most likely also assist in gaining widespread public support, so the public can see that the agenda is to slow people down, not to prosecute people for speeding.

I agree that there's anecdotal evidence that 'people speed less', but the DfT haven't managed to document the fact. I'm inclined to believe the DfT evidence in this case.

It's completely unsafe to use KSI as a trend measure. Have a look at this:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html

It's unsafe and unjustified to equate reductions in KSI (which may well not represent a road safety improvement) with anecdotal evidence of reduced vehicle speeds. People simply don't crash where they speed (as a broad and general rule).

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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

Complete and utter tripe. Driving in Burnley is now a mish-mash of drivers at different speeds because some are driving at the speed limit and some are driving at a speed appropirate for the conditions. They regularly come into conflict. It hasn't helped with the ruduction in speed limits on good roads roads. Take Eastern Avenue Stevei - it was engineered to be a 40mph road, and is far more suited to 40mph then the present 30mph. Also, think where the cameras are - 1 near the Queen Vic, yet there are no houses, very few pedestrains(if any) and is wide enough to travel 4 abreast! At no speed camera sites in the whole town can I remember any accidents. None that have made the newspaper, and lets face it there is little else to go in there! Add to the Gastapo traffic wardens and then the coucil wonders why everyone is buggering off to the Trafford Centre!

That's not a valid assumption. Have you never once been stuck behind someone bimbling along at 20 in a 30 limit? Or stuck behind someone doing 35-40 in a 60 limit (particularly if you've just moments earlier been following them through a 30 limit watching them slowly disappear into the distance because they were still doing 35-40...)? When some drivers, for whatever reason, get it into their heads that travelling significantly slower than the prevailing limit is a good thing to be doing, you'll then end up with other drivers who want to legally make progress but are prevented from doing so by these go-slow'ers.



Granted, this is also a scenario which occurs with regularity, but it's not the only one - the scenario I describe above also occurs with what appears to be an increasing regularity (presumably as more drivers become brainwashed by the "speed kills" messages). If you live in an area where nobody potters around at 5+ mph below the posted limit acting as a mobile chicane, then consider yourself fortunate to only have to deal with the type of numpties you describe - some of us have to cope with both types...

Your posting neither said, nor implied, anything about sticking to speed limits:



Within that context, what your posting says to me is that your preferred solution to the problem of drivers doing 40mph on NSL roads for no good reason is to limit everyone else to 40mph.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I was in Burnley last week, and I have to disagree - drivers were generally driving along Eastern Avenue at roughly 30mph, even though there is no speed camera there. Then further along, as you say, on the Queen Victoria road section there is a camera, near the junction with Queen's Park Road. My mother assures me that on her twice daily journeys past this junction she used to frequently see debris from collisions at that junction, but it seems to happen much less often now that traffic is approaching more slowly. I have a friend who cycles to and from work there every day, and he finds the traffic much less aggressive since the speed cameras were introduced. Even taxi drivers who I've spoken to when getting back in Burnley at night have been in favour of the cameras, which surprised me.

Don't misunderstand me - I detest the personal risk that I incur when driving there, in terms of possibly incurring points and a fine. I got taken by surprise by one when my attention was focused on a cyclist that I was passing, and I slammed on the brakes as an instinctive measure when I saw the lines on the road at the last minute, but that isn't my point at all, my point is purely that I believe they have changed the way people drive, and have slowed the traffic down. At the moment, I don't think that is necessarily a good thing, but I believe most of the negative side effects could be eliminated by more enforcement, and driving aids to remove the need to focus on the speedo and look out for cameras.

Looking at this from the perspective of the driver behind - it's not so much the fact that the driver ahead is sticking to the speed limit, even though the limit may be patently too low for conditions, but rather - especially if there's a line of vehicles ahead, he's having to vary his speed quite a bit, and having to divert an inordinate amount of attention to maintaining the gap to the car ahead. If you have a line of cars in front of you in a 40mph limit, you often find that your speed varies from 40mph down to as little as 20mph - and that on a straight road without traffic lights etc. Or are the drivers dodgier in my part of the world?

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Perhaps not dodgier, just different roads, different conditions. My car can out-accelerate the vast majority of cars on the road, so I can open up a 10-20m gap when setting off at traffic lights, without exceeding the speed limit. I cease my acceleration at 30mph, and the cars behind will simply catch me up in a very short distance, which means they must be exceeding the legal limit. There's no question of them having to inconveniently vary their speed behind me, I'm just driving along at a constant speed.

Sorry, unstated assumptions on my part, usual problem of different experiences of typical roads. On the roads I drive along, I rarely encounter continuous driving in free flowing traffic at less than the legal speed limit. Some people are frustratingly slow to accelerate to the legal limit, and frustratingly hesitant at junctions / roundabouts, but I don't see many people driving significantly below the legal speed limit away from places where they've had to slow down.

I would say this occurs routinely on pretty much any single-carriageway NSL A-road, even those such as the A49 Shrewsbury and A46 Evesham bypasses which, to be honest, are good for 70 or more.

Where do you live, as matter of interest?

I also come across a noticeable minority of people who drive some way below the posted limit on properly-set 30s and 40s.

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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