Safe Speed Forums

This blog post by the ever-stimulating Al-Jahom makes a very pertinent point about the theft of time by speed limit reductions:


As I have commented, this is an issue that has gone largely unreported by the mainstream media.

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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

...and regularly countered with "you'll get there just as quickly" by supporters of the measures!

(Hmmm. Must remember that next time I'm thinking of geting out of the way of an emergency vehicle with blues and twos on)!

In fairness, I must say that it WAS mentioned in the recent government consultation paper that we (Safespeed) responded to. They did acknowledge that any potential benefits of speed limit reduction would need to be offset against productivity burdens to the nation as a whole...

...and then promptly proceeded to ignore it.

I don't like this reasoning (as technically valid as it may be).
The inevitable rebuttal, from those both sincere and financially conflicted, will invariably be:
"What price a life, a couple of minutes of your precious time?".

I’m much more concerned about the effects of driver fatigue when forced to travel at a needlessly slow speed, that resulting with reduced driver arousal over an even longer duration (per journey) – a double whammy!
Fatigue already accounts for a significant portion of the contributory factors of the fatal accident pie (a quarter of all motorway/dual carriageway collisions [Road Safety Research Report No. 52]). This will only increase with the rise of needlessly lowered limits and new enforcement on currently low limits (such as motorways).

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

There's also the time exposed to danger side of things. The longer you are out on the roads the greater the opportunity of being involved in an accident. Plus if everyone has longer journey times then there are more cars on the road at once so magnifying this effect.

But if there is no significant disbenefit to slower speeds, why not impose them, even if the evidence they improve safety is weak?

This is not an argument against enforcing speed limits, but against constantly ratcheting down the speeds that are considered acceptable.

In other forms of transport, particularly railways, we are constantly told that higher speeds will be economically beneficial, but on the roads we have to go slower and slower.

In the early 80s I had a car with half the power I have now and yet I could accomplish cross-country journeys in considerably less time.

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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 agree with all of that. The point I'm making is that the argument of 'saving a couple of minutes' in itself (as presented on the blog) won't fly.

This argument is emotive and selfish nonsense, and I believe that's how it will come across to the average reader; IMO we could do without casting ourselves in such a negative way. We already have plenty of strong logical arguments to support our case, we have to get those ones out there.

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

Accepted. But it is an important point that the wholesale decimation of speed limits really has never been picked up by the national media - you still read articles suggesting that 60 mph is the usual speed limit on country roads, and 30 limits are confined to built-up areas, when this is no longer remotely true.

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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 find the same. Even on routes where the speed limits haven't changed. It is mainly down to more traffic lights and more traffic. IMO the wholesale retiming of traffic lights over the last decade has had much greater impact on journey times than has the lowering of speed limits.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Assertion.

Also, what do you mean by "this"?



I could equally say that there is less of an opportunity of being involved in an accident, but that would be baseless too.

I think and hope that the re timing of traffic lights is an attempt to eek the last bits of capacity out of the particular road system. While it is infuriating to sit at a seemingly pointless red light, that red light might be relieving a bottleneck further down the system. That's what I hope anyway.

It does make my smile that were are going to have to pay a "duty" (tax) on our phone lines to speed up our broadband and we have 185mph trains as the leading good news story. Then we want next day delivery on any item we buy, not matter how far it has to travel and everybody seems to want the job doing 10 minutes before we start. Yet we happily sit back and accept slower and slower road speeds after we are told it is in the name of safety or the saving of the environment, or whatever good cause is the flavour of the month.

Logical deduction.

Do you dispute the reasoning that current levels of driver fatigue will increase if drivers are forced to travel even slower (making the journey longer and also more tedious), therefore making that factor more prominent in accident stats?


What was I talking about immediately before the word "This"?
How did you think you were in a position to question that statement when you obviously didn't understand the meaning of it?
I guess I should be more careful around those who have interpreted statements in really strange ways!

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

That reasoning is certainly open to dispute. Travelling more quickly is certainly more fatiguing than travelling at a modest pace - you only need to see a racing driver at the end of a race to verify that. Where the low point on the fatigue * duration v speed graph lies is not obvious. Personally I find travelling at the maximum possibly speed my skill can cope with extremely fatiguing - let us call that 100% fatigue. Travelling at 2/3 of that speed the fatigue level falls to 30% but the journey time is increased by a half. In the first case the fatigue-exposure time product is 100%. In the second it is only 45%. But below a certain speed thee fatigue level remains constant whilst the exposure time increases. So I would contend that there is an optimum speed which minimises this.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Just who is driving right at the very edge of their envelope, for several hours without any form of let up, on a public road? Come on Dave!
There's more than a bit of a difference between exhaustion and drowsiness.
80mph on a clear road like a motorway doesn't exactly qualify as 'edge of envelope' stuff does it

We're not calling for drivers on public roads to be forced to drive at the very edge of their skill envelope. I outright condemn such competitive (even with only one's self) driving on public roads.

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

Nor am I. I am taking issue with your unqualified assertion that reducing speed increases fatigue.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Nor am I. I am taking issue with your unqualified assertion that reducing speed increases fatigue.


No. But it is substantially more tiring than driving at 60mph.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I freely admit I don't have data (I don't believe such data exists), but it doesn't invalidate my point. Also, I speak from bitter experience and have the experience of others to support me.


From my personal experience I disagree. There is additional driver stimulation at 80 than 60, but 80mph (for those who choose to drive at it) is not in itself exhausting. It may be for some, but for those people that point is invalidated: no one is forcing them to drive at 80.

Driving at 70 on such roads in good conditions induces fatigue – specifically: sleepiness.
You need look no further than the report I quoted to see that. Sleep Related Crashes already account for about half of all crashes (A roads and motorways) during the night, not exhaustion, but sleepiness.
Driving at say 100 (not that I'm calling for this) will reduce the onset of that sleepiness. Driving games where people remain well within their limits on straight featureless roads isn't really stimulating and doesn't keep gamers awake at night; does that not count for anything?
Of course, driving faster will also reduce the time spent behind the wheel. Fatigue/sleepiness increases with time, so even one were to say that speed doesn't affect fatigue (at today’s speeds), my overall point still remains valid anyway.

I was once caught within the M1 roadworks with a specs enforced 40 limit during the night (after driving for about 30 minutes, from Milton Keynes). The speed restrictions continued for several junctions (longer than 10 miles). Towards the end of the restrictions I felt disturbingly drowsy (no I was not able to stop or pull over, nor could I anticipate this being as it was my first time). Once the restrictions ended I resumed 'motorway speeds' and was fine all the way to Portsmouth without other any sign of ill effect, even though I didn't stop for a break. Granted some may not experience the same effects as I did, but you have to accept that some do; this is where the problem lies.

When I stated my experience of this on a driving forum (PistonHeads), the responses given were of sympathy and similar experiences, so I know my experience is not atypical.
(oddly, when I did the same on a cycling forum (C+) I was quite literally hounded out of it)

Remember, we're not wanting to force everyone to drive at 80+. Folks who find those speeds excessively mentally exhausting can remain at 70/60; no one else will care so long as they apply the expected lane discipline. We’re all different, everyone should be able to drive what they feel is best for their level of arousal; unfortunately, today’s limits simply don’t cater for that and therefore are reasonably ignored by a great many.

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

i would argue against this. As someone who used to drive 10 hour shifts on a cross section of roads between 8PM and 6AM, I would find that the monotonous motorway driving was the most tiring followed by the 40MPH(striaght but limited) rural stretches. A NSL twisty road whereby you could maintain a steady speed as close to 50MPH (legal max for the van I was driving) were by far the best roads for staying awake as the balance between driving skill/alertness needed and sense of steady progress never had you feeling tired, whereas the long stretches of crawling through "villages" at 30MPH or 40MPH (on roads that would have been NSL a decade ago) were very tedious and brought on feelings of tiredness and once I exited the busier M6 for the empty M54, I really felt the tiredness kick in.

If you want to experience the differing levels of fatigue on your body due to differing road limits etc, I highly recommend a 300-400 mile drive cross country in the hours when there is little traffic about but keeping rigidly to the "modern" limits and see what speeds are most tiring.

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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.

That said, people still die falling down stairs but following that argument, if we could save "just one life" by mandating bungalows...

Ok. You have convinced me

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

About as baseless as saying that the longer you stay out in a storm the less chance you have of being struck by lightning.

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