Safe Speed Forums

Following on from DCB's thread on the speed awareness course, to what extent do people believe that genuine ignorance of the applicable speed limit is the reason for exceeding it?

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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

By "ignorance" do you mean ignorance of the law - not knowing that road lights imply a 30 limit, for example: or ignorance of the local speed limit because of not noticing a sign?

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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 think the vast majority of the driving population know the limits pretty well. Let's face it, if they don't by now, after the last 10 years of unprecedented levels of enforcement have been a spectacular failure on the part of the authorities! The case in that thread was a bit special in that it's a particularly non-sensical bit of limit law that only applies to some vans - depending not on their dynamic ability but simply on an arbitrary decision as to their launch date. OK, it's pretty clear cut with the larger "Transit-sized" vans (though even there, there can be exceptions) but when we consider the vast range of small vans that could be either passenger or goods vehicles (especially oddballs like imported SUVs pickups and "double-cabs"), can anyone really be expected to know, as they hop in, whether its limited to 50 or 60 on an NSL single carriageway? OK, where a big organisation who operate their own fleet is concerned, there can be no excuse for the management not passing the information on to their drivers (in fact, I've seen some such vehicles with big stickers on the dashboard), but I don't think "Joe Public" could reasonably be expected to know.

There are certainly plenty of roads where it is not always clear if the limit is 30 or 40. The official answer is always going to be to treat it as a 30 though so that cannot be a valid reason.

A dual carriageway with a limit below nsl may be a more valid case, certainly between the main signs and a repeater.

The only time I have had a fine was entering a 30 from an nsl, the signs were on a bend next to a pub and I was paying more attention to a car pulling out of the pub car park than signs. I accelerated after the bend and it was only when I saw the 30 repeater buried in a bush on the opposite side that I realised that the limit had changed. I backed off and at almost at the same time spotted the two rubber strips across the road...

The speed trap was between the limit change signs and the first repeater. I did feel rather hard done by since I was slowing when I got caught.

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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

Either, I would say.

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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

There are certainly a lot of "urban" 40MPH limits round our way, that have the 40 roundels so badly faded or missing that you have to travel quite a way before you realise that you are actually in a 40 limit which is frustrating for people who know the road, following a bemused visitor thinking they are in a 30 limit until they spot a faded sign, eventually.

There are also many 40 limits that have been so for decades, which suddenly have their few 40 signs, "taken away", to form a 30MPH limit...it would be nice if they put a "change of speed limit" sign on these roads, to warn you but they don't seem too keen to do this, although they put "change of road layout signs ", out often enough and leave them there for years.( Maybe a change of speed limit is a better money earner than the latter and maybe the fact that, "speeding kills", isn't worth warning people about, by a "change of limit" sign).

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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.

If there are many people that are not aware of that law,

are they all wrong or;

is the law wrong;

or does the fact that it is the law need more advertising?

I have been driving nearly 20 years now, and I guess by default as I am on here take a greater interest in speed limits than most and there are a lot of speed limits now that are not obvious at all.

80% of the people on the SA course were unaware that the presence of street lamps implies a 30mph speed limit. That fact is well advertised in the Highway Code. The fact that people are willing to embark on an activity as hazardous as driving a motor car without reading all the published advice appals me. II doubt if they would do something as harmless as buying a television without consulting several sources of advice.

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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

See my highlights:

You do have a valid point here DCB, but I think there is something even deeper at work.

I can only guess that 80% failure rate is fairly typical and has been for a while. If so, then why aren't the SCPs et al doing anything about properly educating the driving population about this? Clearly the current presentation of the information is not nearly effective enough.
(granted that 80% need not be a reflection across the entire driving population, but I'm sure you get my point)

Or are they happy to continue to allow drivers, by their own logic, to drive so damned 'hazardously' ? Or should that instead read allow drivers to inadvertently bolster their coffers ?

'Closing the door after the horse has bolted' and all that!

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

This 30MPH limit and streetlighting, "law" raises an interesting point. I assumed that it was something that you had to learn to pass the theory test and something that you never forgot. Obviously , people who drive " a lot" tend to see signs etc more regularly than someone who only drives once a week to the supermarket and back, so you would expect these drivers to remember and understand most signs etc easier. I also would expect that people learning this at a younger age, such as 17 or 18, would have better memory capabilities to retain this information, than someone learning at say 30 yrs or older.

Then I remembered all those years ago when I was 18, I got pulled for speeding, in a 30MPH limit which was pretty rural at the time but the cop who stopped me, pointed out to me that it was a 30MPH limit because of the streetlighting which was within 200yds of each other (although it was pretty antiquated street lighting at the time) and this obviously stuck in my mind to present day, so maybe it is something that is not quite so obvious to people who forget things after passing the initial test.
As for DCBs comparison between owning a TV and driving a car, how many people fully read and remember exactly what functions their modern mobile phone has and how many actually just use it as a basic tool to contact others?
I would guess that there are a lot of drivers out there, who treat a car as a basic tool to get from A to B and don't fully care if they don't remember all the rules of how it works or what they should be doing all of the time on the roads.

Maybe we need more public information films like we used to have in the sixties and seventies (especially about using headlights in fog and poor visibility).

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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.

In those days we didn't have zappers to allow us to change to a more interesting channel.

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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 have long felt that this would be useful. Not to the people who already drive - as DCB says, many will just switch off or switch over and won't like being patronised, but to the much younger kids. I can still remember several of them quite clearly (and even some of the silly little rhymes!) and I would only have been 10 or 12 or so.

As for fog lights, I think deploying the driver's airbag if you put them on in good visibility would be too good for these muppets! If we can develop rain-sensing wipers, I'm sure it couldn't be beyond the wit of man to develop fog-sensing foglights! So far, all I can think of is automatically limiting the car's maximum speed to (say) 40 when they are on. It's only when these brainless idiots are inconvenienced in a major way that they will bother / remember to switch them off! At the very least, cars should make an irritating audible warning every 14 seconds or so when driven above a certain speed with foglights on!

I remember as a teenager, reading an article in (a sunday? ) paper about the new road signs that were about to be introduced in the late sixties or early seventies (especially remember the "man having trouble with umbrella" and "beware low flying motorbikes" ones. I can also remember some early road signs predating these, especially the more common ones, like a flaming torch for a school and the chuffa train for a level crossing.

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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.

Mole: why do fog light in good visibility bother you so much?

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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

Could be because they're *****in' blinding.

Also, in iffy visibility, a) it's often hard to distinguish between fog lights and brake lights, and, b) fog lights can hide the presence of less-visible vehicles and people

And, not to put too fine a point on it, if you can see well enough to be doing 70+ then you don't need fog lights

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

Yes. I have yet to experience conditions where foglights (front or rear) are actually any use and are less than misleading to others.

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

I would say, though, that there is a general awareness that the default speed limit in built-up areas is 30mph, even if the Highway Code definition of built-up areas by the presence of street lighting isn't understood.

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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

Two "real" reasons and one petty one!

First real reason is that rear foglights in clear visibility and be pretty irritating / tiring. I don't know if I'm unusually sensitive, but they anoy the living cr4p out of me! I spend a fair bit of time on unlit rural SC roads. The other night, I followed some muppet for a good 20 miles between Penrith and beyond Keswick on the A66 with his rear fogs on. On one level, they're just irritating and it is a bit more tiring. On another, it makes safer overtaking a bit harder because you're trying to look beyond the glare of the fogs to see what's coming the other way.

Second real reason is that when you have a motorway / DC situation and some people have their fogs on and some don't, it becomes harder to spot the ones that don't. Now obviously, that's what they're there for, but it would be nicer if there was more uniformity about their use. I generally find it better when either everybody has them on or everybody has them off.

The petty reason is a bit like apostrophe misuse - it just bug's me that people can't be bothered to do it right!

I have to admit that I haven't ever had difficulty distinguishing between fog and brake lights (although I always assumed I ought to)! There are regulations preventing the two from being less than 100mm apart and in practice, I find that does actually seem to work.

MODS: feel free to split this if you wish - I've just realised it's a fairly significant topic drift!

Ah. Sound of penny dropping. It is high intensity rear lights (HIRL) that bother you not fog lights - which are, by definition, at he front.

That bother me too. Being behind someone at traffic lights when they have HIRLs, foot on brake pedal and indicator going is a little daunting. Makes you wonder why they don't go into reverse to complete the set.

I think HIRL should be thought of in the same way as main beams. When you come up behind someone you turn off the main beam. When somebody comes up behind you turn of the HIRL

But fog lights - at the front - are too low dazzle and they increase visibility. But I am a big proponent of daytime running lights.

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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

Sorry, yes, its the rear ones that wind me up. Driving with the front ones on in good visibility is pretty harmless (if a little sad)! That said, I know that at least one person on here has commented in the past that they don't like the glare off a wet road that front fogs sometimes cause. I've noticed it, but haven't been particularly bothered.

Perhaps we need a remote control so that any driver coming up behind, can turn off another driver's rear fogs? That would be fun! They could come back on again when either the following driver felt it appropriate or when the car in front got more than a certain distance away.

Not quite so sure about DRLs. I think it's good that bikes have to keep their headlights on all the time and I can't deny that the current crop of Audis are very visible with their LED DRLs, but I don't know how useful they will be when all vehicles are fitted with them. I think people will then stop noticing them and they might even make things like pedestrians horses and cyclists LESS vsisble in traffic.