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The Concentration Game
Of the above arguments probably the most ludicrous is the idea that driving within the limit compromises your ability to stay alert, and that speeding is somehow an aid to concentration and safe driving. This is clearly drivel - if you are too tired to stay alert at the limit then you are undoubtedly too tired to be able to make the more rapid judgements required at higher speeds.
Who mentioned tiredness? I've never seen any claim by even the most ardent anti-scamera motorist that speeding wakes you up if you're tired.
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The solution to tiredness is not to increase the danger by speeding, but to pull off the road and sleep.
Well, yes it is. Relevance? None. The concentration issue is not about being too tired to drive but being so bloody bored that your brain just starts thinking about other things. Not a problem on roads with realistic limits, but imagine the chaos if you tried setting a permanent 40 limit on motorways. As it is it's got so stupifyingly dull that people nod off.
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Watch The Needle
Close behind is the notion that it is not possible to obey the limit without spending a disproportionate amount of time watching the speedo. This is fatuous for two reasons: first, most of the time you judge speed by the motion of the vehicle, and only occasionally do you need to glance at the speedo...
In which case we can be fairly certain that the OP has occasionally drifted slightly over the posted limit, just like the rest of us.
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and second, if it's such a difficult skill to master, how come we all manage to do it on our driving test?
And if what we do on the test is the be-all and end-all of safe driving how come insurance premiums are so high for newly qualified drivers? Inexperienced drivers are generally not as safe as experienced drivers, so the speed limits are a more important issue for them. Again, this is taking an irrelevant point to support the argument.
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Some speedophiles raise the spectre of the child who runs out just as you are looking at your speedo. Yes, it could just possibly happen. Luckily if you're driving within the limit you have a better chance of avoiding them, and if you do hit them they have a better chance of surviving, than if you are speeding.
[Counter-rant]That's because we're sick of being bombarded with emotionally loaded adverts showing children being run over by a car going over the limit. Incidentally, why the #@*& wasn't that kid using a pedestrian crossing? Perhaps I'm showing my age here, but I grew up with adverts along the lines of Tufty and the Green Cross Code man in his pre-Darth Vader days.[/Counter-rant] Anyway, back to the point. Agreed, the consequences of hitting a child at 40 will be worse than at 30, and obviously if you’re going to have a collision the lower the speed the better. Also agreed, the lower the initial speed the quicker you can stop the car. All very obvious. Personally when I’m driving somewhere where kids or others might suddenly appear on the road I tend to stay in second and watch what’s going on around me. Checking the speedo frankly doesn’t get a look in. Am I within the limit? Dunno for sure, but I expect so. But surely it’s more important that I have good control of the car and can watch out for hazards. Outside built-up areas I do check the speedo more. Not too often, but more. I haven’t always done this. When I was a new driver I was frequently checking my speedo everywhere, and the danger of the “Speed Kills” campaign is that it could make everybody do this all the time. But if you’re looking at the instruments you’re not looking at the road. At motorway speeds you can travel maybe as much as 100 feet while checking your speedo, and a lot can happen in 100 feet that you weren't expecting. Just because mostly nothing happens is no reason to be complacent. The motorways are bad enough now that tailgating is virtually ignored (or so it seems to me). If we ever get to the stage where most motorway users are checking the speedo every hundred yards or so I for one am leaving the country to go somewhere safer. Like Iraq.
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I actually find this argument offensive
I could find being labelled a speedophile offensive. I am a motorist, not a speedophile. However, I'm not losing sleep because someone else disagrees. Get over it.
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the limit is a limit and should not be exceeded.
And when the limit is changed it therefore follows that the risk factors have changed overnight as well? Round dangly things! Sounds like someone just drives to the limit regardless of conditions on the basis that the limit marks the line between safety and danger, which is exactly what the ABD, Paul Smith and other people with more than two brain cells to knock together are so worried about.
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Now Look What You made Me Do
Top of the list of pathetic self-justifying excuses is the idea that drivers obeying the limit somehow cause dangerous overtaking
... and so on. Okay, fair point. Being held up by someone rigidly driving at the limit on a road where a higher speed is perfectly safe is not an excuse to try overtaking where it is unsafe. No argument there, but again that's not the issue. The issue is, right or wrong, some people will be tempted to try. You can't legislate human nature into being something other than what it is, and no law or limit will stop people feeling frustrated if they are being unreasonably delayed by an arbitrarily low limit. A more rational approach is to legislate to manage human nature, not to change it. In this instance that means setting a higher limit where it is safe to do so.
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I have no doubt that given the creativity displayed by some speedophiles a scenario could be advanced where the dangerous overtake is somehow obligatory, but it is hardly likely to describe the everyday situation of being stuck behind a Micra lout at 60 on a national speed limit road.
And the everyday situation of being stuck behind someone doing 50 in a 60 zone because they've been brainwashed by the "Speed Kills" message? Almost daily I find myself behind someone going slowly enough to annoy but fast enough to prevent safe overtaking. Isn't this anti-social? Won't some drivers, possibly inexperienced ones, attempt to overtake anyway?
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The Limit Is Not A Target
Speedophiles suggest that limits encourage people to drive up to the limit rather than using judgement and setting "appropriate" speeds. The speedophile case here rests on the supposition that the best way to train drivers in safe use of speed is to let them make their own mistakes.
More myth and distortion. Teaching drivers to set appropriate speeds is not the same as letting them make their own mistakes. One involves explaining the different effects of weather conditions, traffic density, hazards, type of road etc. The other involves allowing drivers to bounce off other vehicles, flatten pedestrians and park in trees until they work out for themselves that they were going too fast, assuming they’re still breathing of course. There is a clear and important difference between training drivers to set appropriate speeds and allowing a free for all. To suggest that rational people want anarchy on the roads is simply untrue.
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It also ignores the reason speed limits exist in the first place: drivers don't set appropriate speeds.
Three words. The. 85th. Percentile. ‘Nuff said.
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…most drivers' judgement of appropriate speed is too high much of the time.
By whose standard? In relation to speed limits this statement may be accurate but the argument becomes self justifying. In reality I think most sensible drivers set an appropriate speed more often than not, especially where limits have been reduced without reason.
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In an attempt to mitigate this risk, speed limits were introduced - against strenuous opposition from motorists. The AA was founded to warn of speed traps. So what evidence is there that drivers will set their speed better now than they did back then?
Well, if we ignore several decades of improving accident figures up to the early 90’s, and if we ignore the fact that motorways are our safest roads despite higher and widely flouted limits, and if we ignore the reduced accident rates and relatively unchanged speeds in other countries where limits have been raised, and in fact if we ignore as much evidence as we like then I agree there is nothing to support this.
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Danger: Risk Of Death
Ultimately what is dangerous is not the act of speeding but the mindset that underlies it.
My thanks to the OP for taking a very large axe to his own argument and cutting it to pieces. We all agree then that the act of speeding is not inherently dangerous. As for the mindset that underlies it, well if he’s referring to the minority of drivers who think they’ve got Formula 1 talent then I agree. However, it’s more likely that he’s referring to the rest of us, the vast majority who simply want to get from A to B in the minimum time consistent with arriving intact, and if possible enjoy the journey. How is that mindset dangerous? How is society served by inflicting unnecessary delays on such people? Certainly it doesn’t save lives because the accident figures for recent years paint the picture far better than all the spin and hyperbole used to try and make us believe in a non-existent benefit.
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If your dedication to the illusion of progress is such that you are not prepared to accept the law, where else will you be compromising safety for your transient personal convenience?
But what if, to use a cliché, the law is an ass? The OP is a cyclist, and I notice from his website that he is angry with a bill that makes cycle helmets compulsory for children If this bill is passed into law should we all accept it, even though for all I know he may well be right in thinking that it’s flawed. Let’s go further still. What if a law was passed making all cyclists use stabilisers, regardless of their ability to keep the bicycle upright. It could be argued that when cycling you are constantly at risk of falling over which may cause a cyclist behind you to crash as well, or you might fall onto an old lady and knock her over, and so on. So would mandatory stabilisers be a good thing? Of course not, since such a law ignores the ability of the overwhelming majority of cyclists to control their bikes. In fact if a compulsorily fitted stabiliser wheel ran over my toes I might even claim it was counter productive. The OP talks about being dedicated to an illusion, but seem himself to be dedicated to the illusion that a law is automatically right simply because it is a law. The law is made by humans, humans are fallible, therefore the law can also be fallible. Or to put it another way, garbage in garbage out. When a law is found to be wrong it must be changed.
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The fact remains that higher speed is strongly associated with greater risk of crashing.
A huge over simplification, this time implying that 35 is safer than 80 on the motorway. I can just imagine trying this out with a little voice from the back saying "Why are all those people holding two fingers up daddy?", "Why are people flashing lights at us?" and "Daddy there's a Scania in the back seat with me". As far as associating speed and risk goes the greater risk goes with speed that is wrong for the type of road you are using. This can be too high or too low. Telling only half the story distorts the facts and gives a false impression.
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This smug, complacent sh*tebag is just a example of the thinking behind speed cameras, and if you ask me, he's an accessory to the 1000 people at year who die each year because of them. How does this c**t sleep at night ?????
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