Safe Speed Forums

I think people are just point out real-world practical problems with it. If you want it to be a mandatory limit, then you have to have the metal discs on poles otherwise it can't be enforced. If it is only to be advice given in the Highway Code, then will it make any practical difference anyway?

I would imagine the proportion of serious accidents that occur on single-track rural roads is pretty small anyway, and of those that do, inappropriate speed in excess of 40 mph is likely account for only proportion of that.

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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

andymusic I too have been brought up on such roads, what with the countryside being my natural habitat and all , I use these roads on vehicles big and small. Any road up, most of the traffic on minor roads like single track lanes is probably going much slower than you think. The roads are narrow and so they give the illusion of "speed".

What the vast majority of people on this fine site what to see is better drivers using their brain as they drive. We want to see people reading the road conditions and adjusting their speed accordingly. That is why most people on here are very much against blanket speed limit drops, such as the one you propose. If as you mentioned, people are already exceeding the national speed limit of 60 mph on a single track road, what good do you think reducing the limit by 20 mph will do?

Most single track roads have limited visability and people like me drive wide machine down them and make them dirty , so we adjust our speed so we can stop before any exchanges of paint occur.

andymusic, I hope you haven' been offended or frightened off my our remarks to your post and once again

My bold above, specifically to highlight that there is a difference between speed and speed limits.

The point is, a speed limit is just a rule which a driver can chose to obey or not, the relationship between a limit and the safe speed for a specific point of the road is often tenuous. What we need to do is teach drivers to correctly assess for themselves an appropriate speed for the situation not just blindly follow a number on a pole or in a book.

In the case of the collision with your car, I would have thought a due care and attention prosecution would be more appropriate than a speeding fine.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

We had a young lad killed on a road such as you describe a year or two back. It was a 60 limit and the newspapers reported the police as having estimated his speed when the vehicle left the road as about 80MPH. Naturally, this was followed by the usual calls for the limit to be reduced to 40. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the limit was left as it was. This young lad (and plenty of others!) wanted to see how fast his car would go along that stretch of road. I was a young lad too (some years back, it must be said!), but I haven't completely forgotten how young lads think! The fact that he was exceeding the speed limt by 20 MPH would simply have become the fact that he was exceeding the speed limit by 40 MPH. I think you believe that lowering the speed limit will mean that speeders may still exceed the new limit but they won't go as fast in absolute terms? In my opinion, this lad didn't set out to exceed the limit by 20 MPH. He wouldn't have gone down the same road with a 40 limit and thought to himself "OK, I'd better call it a day at 60"!

We have a few roads round here that HAVE had their limits reduced from 60 to 40 recently. In my opinion, these roads are "safe" for a variety of speeds between about 20 and 50 at various points along their length. I don't think I ever saw another car doing 60 along them (although if I had, it might have been the last thing I saw)! Most drivers tended to do betwen 20 and 50 depending on which bit they were on. Now that the limit has been dropped, I am starting to see the complete opposite happening to what you suggest. People appear to be driving FASTER on the 20 bits than they used to and at about the same speed on the 40 parts and maybe a bit slower on the 50 bits!

I am at a loss to explain this behaviour. The best I can come up with is that there has been a general "dumbing -down". It's almost as if they're thinking "oh, there's a sign here telling me that 40 is a safe limit. It used to be 60 but I could see that was obviously too fast for this road so I never used to drive that fast along here anyway". This is a pretty crummy theory, I know, but I am truly at a loss for any other explanation! In all honesty, these are not heavily trafficked roads and I am not aware of any increase in the number of accidents as the limits haven't been in place for very long. It's as if with the higher limit in place, most people were actually selecting a speed that they felt to be safe depedning on the conditions. Now that a lower limit has been imposed (with shiny new signs at regular intervals where previously there was none), it's almost as if drivers feel absolved from the responsibility to make their own judgements.

Errmmm....

If you drive into a parked car then you were either driving without due care and attention or driving dangerously. It's a pretty clear cut case in my eyes, regardless of the speed or the speed limit.

As others have said, lowering the limit would have most likely made no difference. I too grew up driving on such roads and would think nothing of nailing it and driving so I could stop in the distance I could see to be clear.

If you want to make these roads safer then you should campaign for the "NSL" sign to go back to it's old meaning and remove the blanket 60mph limit altogether. Then people will have to think about what speed is safe. You may find (as has happened in other parts of the world when it has been tried) that average speeds actually fall.

Or the parked vehicle was dangerously positioned.

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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

He wrote my car off with over £7,000 worth of mainly front end damage where he smashed into it and his car then bounced off. His car looked like a concertina in the front (there was no engine bay left) and he had to be cut out of his car. My car was properly parked out of the way, due to the nature of the road to some degree my car actually protected my girlfriends house, as he may have ended up in the bedroom (bungalow) if it wasn't for my car blocking him.

I'm a bit confused by the circumstances. Could you describe how he came to hit the front of your car?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Ah yes, I see what you mean. That isn't punishment enough, what we really need is for the police to be able to make some easy money from him too. That makes sense.

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Andrew.

6 signatures so far....

What about the cost of the police, ambulance men and fire brigades time to mop up after such a "silly mistake" (I know our taxes pay for the emergency services but, if someone chooses to rally around selfishly then may be they should pick up the bills created by the accident). I understand he was punished by the traumatic way he had to be cut out of his vehicle and I've no doubt or I'd hope that will stay with him through the rest of his driving days so that he doesn't repeat his error. It's early days with the petition and after what has happened to me and the general way the traffic races through these types of road I still feel this problem needs to be looked at.

Andy come back when you've clocked up 35 years of motoring at over 20k a year and in some cases over 50k a year and then offer an opinion like that. You might as well introduce a blanket speed limit to the uk of 40 mph except for motorways and dual carriage ways with what you are proposing. Grow up son and get some driving experience behind you on roads that are NSL before wanting all good roads reduced to 40 mph. You say that the road was straight and quite wide when your car was hit so why have a 40 mph limit? The bloke that hit you was obviously drunk or stupid so why condemn the other millions of motorist to a ridiculous limit just because of one idiot who probably wouldn't stick to a 40mph limit anyway.

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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.

He should be prosecuted for dangerous driving since that was what he was doing. It doesn't concern the speed limit.

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Currently undergoing training with the I.A.M.

If you need to be micromanaged in order to drive safely, you are not driving safely. I hope you take yourself off the roads before something happens to you, but I can almost guarantee - almost, I admit -that, without malice aforethought or psychopathic recklessness, you might take out my car, but you won't get me, or anyone in my car[e].

I can say that because I have continued, and still continue, to learn how to drive, after I passed my so-called road test - which was and still is a joke, and a disservice to every driver, and every other road user. It was difficult at times, but it's paid off over and over. It largely explains my previous guarantee.

If you cannot drive safely without posted speed 'limits' - or traffic lights, or stop signs, or whatever - you shouldn't be driving in the first place; you fall on the wrong side of the calculus of negligence.

If you are driving, and the posted 'limit' seems too fast, for whatever reason, SLOW DOWN. Either way, I'm ready for you.

To put it another way, people create their own advice, unless they are sheeple - who should not be driving at any speed if they can't determine, mentally and physically ... wait for it ... a Safe Speed for themselves. (This may explain your confusion.)

Where would you prefer to drive: Germany, as it is now, or Washington, D.C., as depicted in Minority Report?

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The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

Andy there are thousands of miles of single track road in the uk. By single track road I mean roads narrower than 6.0m. 95% of those roads are safe to see and travel at 60. There are sections of twisty small lanes that we all agree need caution. But if you have to sign the exact safe speed for every bend , brow, etc it will still be wrong.

If its right for a mini it will be wrong for a transit van. It might be right for a tall vehicle but wrong for a sports car.

If its right to stop in the dry its the wrong speed for the wet.

Ultimatly, the driver needs to choose the safe speed.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

jeepers andy you're taking all this very personally, which worries me a little to start with.

also you're relying on a single example which rightly or wrongly you think a reduction in the speed limit would have prevented.... how about some more examples? how about some of those stats (we all love so much) as to just how many accidents/injuries/deaths this is going to save?

how many other places have you promoted this ? how is the response elsewhere ?

sorry to say it seems to me you're on a slightly misguided one man mission based on a single incident.

Andy, as you've probably gathered by now, you've stumbled across a bunch of people on this forum (myself included!) who are generally pretty much against solving road safety problems by simply reducing speed limits - at least until all other options have been thoroughly evaluated and exhausted! Sorry if it all seems a bit "adversarial", but it's an emotive topic and I for one (can't speak for the rest of the group but I guess many will share this view!) feel very strongly that reduction of speed limits and increasingly draconian enforcement of them is used far too often by the authorities as some sort of panacea. Whether or not the fact that all the other possible measures COST the authorities money and this particular measure happens to MAKE them money is a conincidence is anybody's guess!

Getting back to this issue, what do you see as a "single track road"? Is there a prticular definition you have in mind?

I don't know the legal definition but the only roads I've seen so designated are that narrow two cars can't pass and are signed as 'Single track road with passing places'. There are a few in Wales and quite a lot in Northern Scotland and the odd one or two in the Lakes and North Yorkshire.

Whether a reduction in the speed limit would have any effect is to my mind doubtful but regardless it can't simply be put in the Highway Code - because lets face it a huge majority of drivers ain't read it since they passed their test years ago.

Please don't be put of posting here abouts though. Lot of regulars put up notions and ideas that we then poke holes in, it is a forum after all. But Mole has explained our general outlook rather nicely - not that the powers that be take b*****y blind bit of notice

Have a good look at some of the older threads. We get accused of wanting to drive like loons on a rather regular basis, but if you read some more you'll soon discover where we are really coming from. Unfortunately despite 2 million drivers signing the 'no road pricing' petition it is head our way so I wouldn't hold out much hope for yours.

Barkstar

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The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has limits.

I don't think there is a legal definition of 'single track road'.

It really does depend on the size of the vehicles. HGVs, vans, large cars, small cars, motorbikes, and that's only motorised vehicles.

I would think we could come up with a reasonable definition somewhere along the lines that two average sized cars can't pass each other without leaving the road, however the government would almost certainly have a different definition, say a road where two average sized HGVs can't pass each other and still leave an excessively large "safety" margin. Then they would start 'policing' (stealing money from the users of) the widest roads which fit into this category.

Who wrote "The government solution to a problem is usually at least as bad as the problem."?


And they won't read it now because it is too big!

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Andrew.

Andy sir, just another thought..

My fancy new tractor has a top speed of 53.7 kph which is about 33.6 mph . I've not got used to her yet and haven't even been brave enough to unleash her on a dual carriageway. Using your new reduced speed limit, in my new steed I would be under your new limit so would be perfectly safe because the limit says so. However if I met something at that speed, even without anything behind or carried on the back, I doubt I could stop and would end up on top of even a Range Rover. So as an averagly intelligent person I adjust my speed for the road conditions and vehicle I am driving regardless of what the signs say I can and can't do.

PS, please stick around and listen to what is being said, we're quite friendly really