Safe Speed Forums

Why do they do this?

The A572 from St Helens to Newton (Cheshire bit) has today been cut from NSL to 50 - and the preceding 30mph zone has been extended about 200 metres. I can't see any point for this, because there's absolutely nothing in the way of hazards (completely rural SC)

Reducing NSL SCs to 50 are a favorite of local councils - they also love to extrapolate 30mph zones to huge, unneccessary distances outside of villages. It happens everywhere.

My personal favorite council measure is the use of 40mph "buffer" zones around 30s, where long sections of rural road are unneccesarily reduced in speed purely to try to curb speed before the the 30, despite no hazards existing on these stretches of road.

Councils must have their powers of speed limit setting removed otherwise the speed limits will become meaningless.

I wonder how long it'll be until the government starts to consider actually lowering the NSL for single carriageways down to 50. In fact, didn't they look into this about 6/7 years ago?

But then councils would then probably introduce more rural 40 limits

Anyway local councils now look at speed limit reductions as easy ways to let them be "seen to be doing something" about accidents - never mind whether they were speed related or not.

Also aren't councils (or at the least the people who set speed limits) often associated with scamera partnerships? If so, it's not exactly hard to think of something more sinister going on