Safe Speed Forums

I spoke on the BBC Radio Northampton today about speeds and safety.
Their discussion was based in what the limit should now be. Should they not be raised.

There still needs to be a limit, and that limit needs to be properly assessed by road engineers. Consideration must be given to the 85th and 90th %ile research and applied appropriately.
Limits act as a guide to road users try and set a safe speed appropriate for that road
Proper con, and enable enforcement when a road user is seen to be dangerous.
Road users must always be able to stop in the distance that they can see to be clear.

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

All good stuff, but I'm increasingly perplexed as to HOW one might give consideration to the 85%ile speed? I mean, in the early days of the M1, when there was no speed limit, it would seem like a perfectly sensible thing to do in order to set a limit (assuming, of course, that it was necessary in the first place)! These days, however, there's no situation where one can observe the "natural" free speed of motorists on any given section of road. Partly because we have a generation of motorists that have grown up with a variety of speed limits, and partly because even those motorists who tend to exceed them (i.e. the vast majority! ) only tend to do so, for the most part, by about the same amount as the enforcement tolerance. This isn't necessarily the natural speed at which they would choose to drive, it's more like the most they think they can get away with!

In the early days of the M!, very few cars would be able to achieve speeds much above 70MPH anyway, especially to cruise at that sort of speed. This is probably why 70MPH was chosen, it was probably the 85percentile speed of the day.
Let's also remember virtually all of the cars would have had drum brakes all round, no servos,crossply tyres, very few seat belts and non of the latest safety gadgets.

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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.

[mischief mode]

Aren't there a lot of people on here who believe that young people should learn to drive in death traps like these? No modern technology and all that.

[mischief mode/]

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

mmmm,

I don't know if "death trap" is a fair label for these earlier cars, the car is only as dangerous as the driver. If you are used to driving cars with crossply tyres, non servo brakes,leaf springs, power steering etc, you drive accordingly and when you then move up to the next level, whether that be radial tyres, servo brakes,better suspension or whatever, you appreciate what you have compared to what you used to have.

Modern "basic" cars, even without esp, lsds etc are far better handling than the older "sports" cars of say the mid seventies and frankly, I believe that this is a good thing but I believe that you can take it too far in how much "driver control and feel" that you take away from the driver.

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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.