Safe Speed Forums

I suggest that people who drive within the limit on a 30mph road where it is clearly safe to drive faster are just being selfish. The amount of bunching ,frustration and bad driving this causes is dangerous. These people should risk 3 points and a £60 fine in the interests of safety and drive at a sensible speed.

Nah, not a troll, I actually believe it.

In that case then, and everything else aside, are YOU going to pay their fines and chauffeur them when they eventually lose their licence? If not, then I would suggest you learn to relax a little behind the wheel.

Thing is I kinda agree with fergl in a way - but its not the fault of the 'law abiding driver' its the fault of the 'speed kills' message. Its is frustrating being forced to maintain an unnaturally slow speed, but if every man and his dog is telling you that exceeding the posted limit is going to kill someone, then the average muppet driver isn't going to think about it.

_________________
Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

You got that from that stupid bitch on BBC1's "Road Rage".

how do you know they haven't thought about it? If the limit is artificially low I would say that the chances of enforcement are correspondingly high.

There's no way to tell the difference between someone doing 30 because they have thought about it and suspect a honey trap and those who are simply going with the message as Sixy suggests. But I think there's probably far more of the latter.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

It is precisely this attitude that will lead to mandatory speed limiters being imposed on everyone eventually.

Why? When what I suggest would clearly lead to better driving and less accidents.

They would obviously have to stay alert to cameras. Mobile units are more tricky but less common. Once on 9 points I agree people must stick to the limit to preserve their licence and my idea falls flat at that point.

An I suggest you are utterly wrong. But I'm not going to convince you otherwise am I?



The amount of bunching/frustration is caused by the selfishnes, impatience and irresponsible attitude of the other drivers, period. They are ALL in the wrong (yes, it is quite possible for the majority to be wrong) if they deliberately want to exceed the posted speed limit and are trying to push someone else into going faster.



How would it lead to better driving, its as clear as mud to me. You are mixing good intentions (accident reduction) with muddled methodology (letting people do what they want). If accidents are being caused because bad drivers are getting impatient (impatience is a typical hallmark of a bad driver), then those drivers need to be punished or re-educated. Exposing good drivers to the risk of punishment because of the actions of bad drivers is morally reprehensible, and it won't reduce accidents in any way.



Oh, that spoilt little rich bitch you mean? One day she's going to come across someone who won't care that she's a woman and give her a right slap.

well that and just because you and your car may be up to it doesn't necessarily mean that they and their car are.
Personally I'm far more concerned by the people I encounter who drive at a constant speed somewhere in the 40-50mph range regardless of the actual limit.

I'm not defending impatient driving, it is a cause of lots of accidents after all. But we live in the real world and therefore to reduce a cause of impatience will lead to better driving (as your quote states).
I suppose I am in favour of higher limits accompanied by stricter enforcement of the sort of bad driving you are talking about.
You link good drivers with strict adherence to the limit. I disagree from a purely anecdotal point of view. I see a lot of bad driving from these people.

all the more reason why you shouldn't try to force them to drive any faster than they already are.

I'm not the guy right up there exhaust pipe. I'm only observing what driving inappropraitely slowly does to the driving behaviour of some people stuck behind.

Not directly but perhaps by inadvertent inference. Bad drivers come in all shapes and forms; I'm not getting dragged into the trap of stating that you're a good driver just because you're making an appropriate effort to obey the speed limit. But I'll definately state you're a bad driver if you are trying to bully a limit obeyer into breaking the when they don't need to. NB: By 'you', I don't mean you personally.

Yes we do live in a 'real world', however I'm concerned that this hackneyed phrase has started to become a mitigator for bad behaviour. By deploying the same argument to another scenario we could argue that street muggings would be reduced if we just gave everyone plenty of money.
People in the real world need to learn to behave and to control their impatience, bending society's rules to accomodate them simply invites a further testing of the limits in years to come.

I agree with your points Rigpig. I think however that "real world" although possibly getting Hackneyed is very important to bear in mind. I think that a tremendous amount of new safety thinking is based on "ideal world" scenarios. Eg." if everyone would just stick to the speed limits while maintaining the same level of concentration then less accidents will occur".
Of course if you are forced to drive slower than you percieve to be safe then in the real world (yeh it does sound naff) your concentration is less and the advantage of driving slower can be nullified by this.

Umm, doesn't that put people in a Catch-22 situation? How can you be prosecuted for obeying the law?

If you had said "well below the limit", then I would have agreed with you, but you can't really criticise people for adhering to the law.

And the fact that most drivers travel above 30 at particular locations doesn't necessarily mean that "it is clearly safe to drive faster" than the limit - often it isn't.

_________________
"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

It's the authorities who create these situations in the first place by reducing speed limits to sometimes absurdly low levels. Of course it's going to create conflict - we're only human after all.

There seems to be a definite element of 'divide and conquer'.

Cheers
Peter

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