Safe Speed Forums

Oh yawn... I suppose I ought to ask my customary unanswered question of Weepy then...

Given that the slower you go, the fewer deaths and serious injuries are likely to occur, what do you think the motorway speed limit should be and why?

Good luck with that one Mole...

Erm -10mph using reverse. Anticipates weep saying the reverse gear makes a noise that peds will hear better and 'don't forget the children' will hear and the drivers wont be able to claim whiplash and using reverse gear won't take you above about 20mph...

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

With apologies to one Winston Churchill " never in any forum have so many folk awaited an answer from this few to simple asked questions" . I'd suggest there's more chance of HS2 being diverted underground ,up the chalk strata

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I've been through this so many times though, and said what I think about motorway speed limits. I think the arguments to raise them to 80 are weak and in many places lowering to 50 would mean more people get where they want to go faster and safer.

I don't believe I've seen you answer that one before? Anyway, you've told us you DON'T want an 80 limit (fair enough, I'd kind-of expected that!) and you've said that in some places it would benefit from being 50...

Ok, that's half an answer! Now, in the areas that you don't think would benefit from being a 50 limit. What do you think the speed limit should be and why?

And, since you complicated the issue with the suggestion of a 50 limit, do you feel these should be temporary, depending on traffic (or any other conditions) or permanent?

We've discussed this before, and while in congested conditions a 50 limit may smooth out traffic flow and increase throughput, most of the motorway network is virtually never congested, and even those stretches that do experience congestion generally only see it for a few hours a day. Any widespread application of permanent 50 limits would greatly increase legally achievable journey times.

The same argument applies to permanent 20 limits on urban main roads.

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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

You beat me to it..

When I see my friend in Paignton, 182 miles away, I leave very early in the morning to avoid traffic. Simple maths next: t=d/s

At 50mph it will take me 3h 38m!
At 70mph it will take me 2h 36m (Less likely to fall asleep too)

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

unfortunately, Weepy seems to be like a lot of the "road safety experts" we have today, who, despite being "road safety experts", only seem to travel a few miles between 7and 9AM then home again between 3 and 6PM in large towns or cities and believe, that due to the fact that they experience a bit of congestion during those times, that the road network is exactly the same, countrywide, for 24 hours of the day....oh well....

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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 up - I expect the county council wagons are on high snow alert -Weepy has responded to a question at last . On the topic of motorway limits ,as most folk ( hey ,remember how we worked out speed limits in the old Amiga days ,by 85%) , being educated car drivers would drive at a speed commensurate to the conditions , and with regard to other road users.
Over many years ,I've travelled the length and breadth of the country om a great variety of roads. And I've also driven in Weepy territory -london, where it's one style of driving, more like fencing, and wher folks race from red light to red light. Then again there's a world Weepy never seems to see ( from his comments), the rural country side ,where in the main , ye old fashioned concepts apply and folk drive together in harmony( and possibly if the smokies copied this , London roads might travel at 20 ,instead of 10 mph). I've seen his sort of mentality ,which thinks that if motorway limits were raised ,then everybody would attempt to drive at the new limit. IT'S A LIMIT ,NOT SOMETHING TO AIM AT . (Think I've heard him preach that ,too ). Trouble with cyclists in control is that they seem to think thar car drivers will act like them with no controls. If we did ,there would be massive pile ups at lights ,when we choose which ones to ignore . Strangely enough there's no such pile ups ,and few cyclists that ignore lights get hurt -WHY- because vehicle drivers know that those on two wheels MIGHT lack training .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Ah, but he hasn't really! We've sort of got half an answer, but not a proper answer. I asked what he felt the motorway speed limit should be, but what we actually GOT was that he DIDN'T want it to be 80!

I expect, half an answer is getting places. AN upgrade from the days ,when short of the rack ,ask him for an amswer was to have him ban himself for weeks on end.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

This from me in 2007 in response to the same question.

What is it with this "people don't answer my questions" thing used as an Ad hominem attack, it occurs on boards all over the internet. This is a discussion board, not a question and answer board right?

I asked you this before; can highlight a few questions I've not answered. You didn't.

I reviewed a few of your "questions" at the time, which in general are thinly veiled ad hominems, and mostly not fully formed questions anyway.

Even now, I'm none the wiser!

In your original post (on this thread) you said you DIDN'T want to see an 80 limit, and in the bit from an older thread that you quoted, you said you WOULD accept an 80 limit provided it was enforced with average speed cameras.

Which is it?

Nice try Weepy - like Mole ,I'd like to see you answer his question , then some of my past ones ,and those posed by a lot of other members .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I don't think it's a good idea to increase the general 70 limit to 80, but maybe in some places it could be, although I'd tend to it staying at 70 all over, not sure it's worth the money/effort and increased injury/death rates to change to 80.

In some busier places flow could probably be improved by reducing to a 50 with average speed cams at certain times of day in an effort to stop people chopping and changing, trying to get ahead at junctions, crashing, and slowing everybody else down. Difficult one to justify that though, although entering a box junction is an offence mainly related to traffic flow so can't really see the difference.

I certainly think NSL should go down to 50 with possibly a new 60 or 70 limit for dual carriageways, change 30 to 20 everywhere with exceptions for certain roads if justifiable.

OK, Ta.

Taking the motorway speed limit first, naturally, I'd agree that the limit could go up to 80 (and probably in more places than you'd reckon it could ) but I'm curious to know what circumstances / places you'd feel it could go up to 80?

We can agree on the 50 (or variable) limits smoothing traffic flow in congested areas. To be honest, I think that's the easiest to justify! If you look at the millions of vehicles using (say) the M6 through Birmingham, you get a very different situation to KSIs (where the numbers are so tiny that any statistical evidence is subject to wild fluctuations and difficult to interpret). With the congestion easing, it would be the easiest thing in the world to (say) trial the variable limits every other week for a couple of years. (My own subjective experience of them is that they DO seem to improve traffic flow in general). At the end of the trial, you'd get very statistically robust data on the efficacy of such a scheme.

On the NSL, I take it that's the limit you'd want for cars? Would HGVs still be 40 or would they go down to 30? Here, I have to say that we would disagree profoundly (but that's because I live in a rural area and have to cover long distances on NSL roads). These vary so much (even along stretches of the same road) that I feel any attempt at a blanket limit reduction is doomed.

On the urban 30 vs. 20, Again, I'd be interested to know the criteria against which you'd decide whether the 30 limit was justifiable?

I still just think it’s weird that any speed limit based on the maximum that any civilian driver should ever do can possibly hold true for entire road lengths and every condition. It can’t and it doesn’t, except in a legal capacity, hence my seasonal jack-out-the-box announcements of what about conditions and weather and parked vehicles and at what time and peds and blah blah blah..

Accusing me or anyone else of unsafe or dangerous driving on the grounds that it must be so because you’re over a ‘dumb’ limit, (in a situation where it clearly isn’t unsafe or dangerous), is a complete and utter fallacy.

The idiot who is unaware, (or worse still aware), that he is going too fast for the conditions is not the same person who drives according to the conditions within safe limits, (me). And I get offended by anyone trying to lump me into the first group. The idiot who simply drives too fast for the conditions can be, and often is, under the speed limit. I see it all the time.

I swear if you were a passenger in my car you would feel completely at ease weepej and maybe surprised at how much, or how often, I am under the speed limit - well under at times. You may even compliment me on my driving; I’d just have to make sure you can’t see my speedometer at other times for some strange reason.

Your answer to the cancer of our roads is like chemotherapy, killing off the good cells with the bad. In fact it’s worse than that because at times it catches only the good drivers, but I can’t think of a better analogy right now. In a modern society we should be much more advanced at targeting just the cancerous cells.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

WHY?

Do you never drive at 60MPH on a clear straight A road and if not, why not?

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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.

Not even, say, here, which graball will certainly recognise?

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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