Safe Speed Forums

Earlier, I was thinking about the call to increase the motorway limit to 80 and I think it may be a bad thing in general.

At the moment the limit is effectively 79mph before enforcement will occur which is routinely ignored as it is. I think putting a blanket speed limit of 80mph will do nothing for safety. Here's my reasoning:

1. Inexperienced and young drivers have insufficient skills to deal with higher speeds. Including the reckless ones like Billy Chav in his turbo Corsa who will travel at even higher speeds. (I think it's a psychology thing - set a 70mph limit, they'll do about 90 - set an 80mph speed limit he'll do 100, just to be 'better')

2. People will still tailgate but at much higher speeds.

3. People will still do this speed in poor conditions because of the "Speed Kills" mantra - they'll think they're safe if they're under the speed limit.

I am in favour of a variable speed limit, but I don't know how it could be effectively implemented without some sort of speed enforcement. While traffic police are the best idea, it's not humanely possible to have sufficient coverage to monitor the entire motorway network.

Look at it now, when you get the 50mph speed advisories - everyone still does 70 regardless. How are we going to get them to respond? VAS on motorways would be one idea (public humiliation) - maybe have something on a gantry over the motorway for people say 10mph above the current limit?

One final point. I am somewhat in favour of speed limiters. Not 70mph, but something like 100mph. I think this would remove a massive element of psychological one-upmanship from drivers, meaning that all vehicles had the same theoretical top speed - so it's a waste of time trying to show off to your mates by doing 160 on a motorway.

I don't reasonably believe that 100mph needs to be exceeded at any time on a public road in any country (even Germany), except maybe on a track day. (I'm sure there could be some provisoning built-in for that) I am fully aware of the effect this could have on the performance vehicle market but they could adapt by offering vehicles with wicked styling/superb acceleration -- wow the customers with style over brute performance, as is happening in the bike world right now!

I really think the benefits would outweigh the downsides.

What do you all think?

Whatever you set the limiter at will become the speed that a portion of the population will drive at regardless of conditions.

In fact I believe having any speed limiter will make the roads more dangerous because of the tendancy to use the limiter rather than the brain.



You could say the same about any abitary speed.

Erm, the superbikes (Bluebird, Hayabusa, etc) of today all have an average top speed of around 180mph......how is that "wowing" the customer with styling over performance?

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Latast idea from "researchers" is to enforce the 70mph limit on motorways on environmental grounds. B***er safety, lower CO2 is the real issue. Not environmental, just mental.

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

You obviously don't have the mindset of a truly dangerous driver (I hope I don't too). Drivers who engage in competitive practises often do so on country roads or urban areas where there's no speed enforcement, not easy roads like motorways. Having such a limiter will not change their behaviour or the danger they pose.

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

I wish I hadn't thrown away all my Highway Engineering course notes from university now; there was a whole series of graphs showing vehicle emissions per mile for different pollutants.

By no means all were lowest at low speeds. One was virtually an inverse exponential curve (i.e. it started very high at 0 pmh, and tailed away to virtually nothing at high speeds).

The pointy our lecturer was making was that keeping traffic moving from A - B at constant high speed was on balance the environmental thing to do.

Exactly, I didn't say it would happen overnight. There is a gradual shift in focus from supersports machines at the moment towards machines like the Speed Triple, the Rocket, more aggressive naked machines, etc.

I see all sorts of dangerous behaviour round where I live - and it's usually the guys on the supersports machines sadly. With bikes, I find it's a large minority rather than a small minority. This minority are usually the ininsured, untaxed and quite often unlicensed set and it's quite worrying.

I'm not trying to tar everyone with the same brush; I'm a biker myself, but as we all know they're over-represented in the accident statistics, so anything that can make biking safer without removing the enjoyment is a good thing.

Ah but I didn't say set the speed limit at the limiter. You can quite easily do any speed nowadays if your vehicle is capable of it. I had the idea that setting a limited high-speed to prevent mindnumbing behaviour (well over the speed limit) would change driver psychology about dangerous speeding and certainly have at least a measurable effect in preventing showing off/racing on the highway, which has to be a good thing.



Granted, but as we've never had 100mph speed limits in this country (bar minor exceptions when 99% of the vehicles couldn't do that anyway) - what would be the problem?

I can't honestly think if anyone could give a reason for wanting to exceed 100mph when going about their normal daily driving duties - even now on a clear road when it's perfectly able to to do so, the vast majority of people won't.

Good point well made. I think what I'm trying to say is that if we can say all accidents are caused by the psychology of the driver (be that road racing, being miles away on their mobile, or choosing to be drunk behind the wheel, etc) then removing some of the measures that make racing on the highway attractive to the idiots would surely be a good thing?

Maybe there isn't an answer, the problem is always going to be there in some form?!

What is the problem you're trying to fix? How many KSI crashes actually involve drivers "racing each other at high (100mph +) speeds?

I don't know, but it's largely irrelevant. Anything that discourages this sort of behaviour is a good thing in my book.

If we look instead at the 'bad attitudes' that lead to many high speed (higher speed?) crashes I expect we'll find at least 25% of high severity crashes have such attitudes as a primary cause.

It's not easy to target such groups, but effective roads policing is helpful, and I believe we should be explaining the depth of driving responsibility in schools. (I believe that many reckless young drivers are reckless mainly because they fail to appreciate the depth of their responsibility.)

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

perhaps if you had a decent car you might have a slightly different view. In a german saloon 100mph is effortless in the right conditions. The reason you don't see more people doing it is because you face automatic licence suspension if caught.

Too right, not just German though, any decent exec. saloon will take care of business.

IMHO - the rule is: if the cars booked top speed in under 120mph, you probably shouldn't be doing over 100 even if it was legal, if you've got something to smooth out the ride - say V6/V8 uberwagon limited to 155. A ton is a breeze & 60/70 is verging on getting out a running territory.

Think about it, even at lower speeds say, 85mph. In an old 1.0 Fiesta (top speed) it's like the space shuttle on re-entry! 85mph in a BIG Audi A8 / BMW 7 series etc. is so controllable & predictable it's verging on a non-event.

It's only law (Moggy Minor era) that holds competent drivers back from exploring the RHS of the speedo.

Proving, once again, that you can't measure safe driving in miles per hour.

The number on the speedo has very very little to say about the safety of a given use of a given vehicle. In some circumstances 150mph is slow (not many I grant you, and mostly on race tracks). In other circumstances 5mph can be murderously fast.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

it all depends. My first car was an alfasud and we drove that at redline in 5th from sydney to adelaide - 100mph. On the same roads at similar speeds a corolla ('twin cam' version) which in theory is a far more refined car was all over the place, 80 seemed to be its safe limit.

add bmw 3 series to your list. Just as happy to cruise. If you decide to pay attention to the road and not your speedo you can easily find yourself going over 100mph it's so effortless. Last trackday I did I glanced at my speedo on a cool-down lap and noticed I was doing 80mph... it seemed like I was crawling.

I agree, it's easy to catch yourself out (before the scameras do) on a particular 'killer' road You can be paying so much attention to the road (and the ever growing snake of cars attached to you, following your lights / lead) that it could be easy to "blip" (ahem) over the posted limit on several occasions only to then drop back to the posted 60 as soon as you notice, this obviously hacks off the collection of 'wide-boy' BMW's and Scoobies riding your ass, too scared (or something) to overtake - even on the D/C straights.

Now if I were to do this, would I be driving dangerously at any time, nope. Would my 3 passengers notice the unintentional extra speed, probably not - and why should they. I wouldn't be gripping the wheel any tighter, my movements'd be smooth & planned and I wouldn't make panicky little noises or suck my breath in in an "We're gonna die....arrrggghh" fashion.

I now drive a BMW 545i, which in your terms is "a decent car". My viewpoint hasn't changed.

I have just come back from a journey in which I have seen at least 4 drivers doing at least 70mph on a dark 30mph limit. Why do they think this is safe?

Regards,
Martin

fair enough. Have you actually driven it at or over 100mph or do you just think it's a 'scary' speed?


just wondering how you worked out their speed and secondly what it has to do with driving on a motorway?

I agree that it's a comfortable speed for such a big car coupled with a torquey and comparitively low revving engine. However while I agree that 100mph and above can be entirely safe in some circumstances - the speed limit is there and it is a lack of driver judgement to be exceeding it by such a margin. I know a lot of people feel uncomfortable when cars pass them at such high speeds, which has the side effect of focussing their attention on that car (usually calling it a 'wanker' or similar rather than the road ahead. As I said earlier, I think the speed limit should be left as it is, for what is effectively 79 mph before enforcement.

For motorway safety, I think that combining my idea of a 100mph car/bike limiter, scrapping HGV56mph limiters and maybe having a HGV only motorway lane in which cars/bikes/etc are not permitted would be a good thing.

One thing I have been testing is driving at slightly lower speeds than the speed limit for a while while rigorously applying COAST and my driving experience - then moving back up to my normal speeds - they feel a lot more involving after you have been driving slower for a while.

A good example of a road that does this is Middleton Road near Heaton Park in Manchester - a former 40 mph limit reduced to 30. I used to think it was ridiculously inappropriate given the width of the road and lack of hazards, but after I did the above, it now feels as normal as the former 40 limit did.



I am a fair judge of speed. I am not the local pensioners who say cars doing 40mph are 'racing' along - this was ridiculous. Imagine the view you get as you are stationary in a motorway jam and watching the other side flow freely at normal speeds. That's what it was like - even after compensating for the distortion effects of the decreased distance between myself and the other vehicles and enclosed surroundings compared to a motorway.

The road was almost deserted but those sort of speeds are un-neccessary regardless of the conditions on such roads. The risk factor is far too high to be comfortable. The speed limit is appropriate as there are several side roads leading off to residential areas including one blind junction and a river on one side protected by a flimsy metal fence.


BTW. This last bit has nothing to do with driving on the motorway, it was just an observation in my drive this evening!

Martin