Safe Speed Forums

A lot of villages are on NSL A Roads. Should we slow down through these at night? What is the purpose of slowing if no hazards present thmeselves? What constitutes a village? Two houses not visible from the road?

It will be be residents of the two houses who petition to reduce speeds at midnight to cut noise.

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

I dare say that general societal changes 'leak' onto the roads. And I dare say that you are quite correct in observing a decline of consideration.

But I also think that there are 'special' standards of courtesy and consideration that apply to the road system and to drivers. Whatever changes are going on in society might tend to be reflected in the roads, but that doesn't mean we can't manage and influence standards of courtesy and consideration on the roads independent of wider standards.

I've been trying to come up with a good analogy, and this is what I've got so far. The societal courtesy 'budget' is likened to a total domestic 'budget', while courtesy on the roads is likened to the food budget. If there's less courtesy in the system the domestic budget is less. But that does not necessarily mean that the food budget must be less. Clearly the tendency is there.

But the analogy falls down before the good bit - any system that promotes higher standards of courtesy and consideration on the roads has a good chance of leaking any improvement into wider society.

Anyway, the bottom line is this: I will not accept that improving standards on the roads is a lost cause!

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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

Dpratt, I've read through quite a bit of this thread and from you and a few others, it seems like this is a genuine issue that the majority may be going too fast for conditions in the village. But I've still heard little from people as to WHY this may be the case, as opposed to thinking about whether VASs/cameras/police etc. are needed.

First of all I think there still needs to be more details about the village, particularly developement, road layout and speed limit history.
Examples below:

Has the village speed limit always been 30? If it was, say 40 up until a few years ago and better observed, then reduced to 30 without any change in environment/road layout then really you can't just suddenly expect motorists to observe the new limit.

What about speed limits on other nearby roads? If many nearby roads have inappropriately low limits (for example, 40 limit on wide, straight rural roads), then that’s likely to reduce respect for your village limit, whether it's appropriate or not.

I think with regard to speed limits, then what you say here, dpratt may be a problem:



The problem could be that motorists approach the speed limit which starts off in a rural setting, dismiss it as daft and speed up, then carry on too fast into the village.

Do you feel that there may be hazardous parts of the village which may not be immediately obvious from the motorists point of view (e.g. a school just after a bend)? If so then perhaps you should ask for more signs to notify motorists.

Failing that, then perhaps you should ask VASs or police presence.

With cameras, I'm sorry but they are not a good solution. They divert too much attention away from the road and onto the speedometer. A driver who is doing 31 to, say 40, in a 30 limit and looking well ahead and watching for hazards is going to be far safer than someone making sure they aren't exceeding 30 past a camera. Even if someone is doing less than 30 they are still too much of a distraction. Its human nature to be focused on the speedo when going past cameras because after all, losing a quarter of your license in a flash for blipping over a limit isn't a nice punishment.[/quote]

What if drivers were asked to coast (engine running) when passing such villages during the small hours? Good or bad idea?

edit: besides, driving slower would just prolong the noise

Paul - your bit about "me.me and me " and villages makes me think back several years to a village on the A82, somewhere near ranoch moor - suspect it was Bridge of Orchy.

For years there was no limit on this bit - i used to slow to about 40 for the hotel et al, and i noticed others doing so . Last year i remember a limit on it - did cars slow down - didn't notice any .Now is the speedup due to the limit or to modern values.
And as to Mrs Smiths idea of "'Me, Myself, and I' society - i would suggest that this is the main cause of the malaise tht infests uk driving today - and the wedge driven by the SCP is not helping .

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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

The answer is here :


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5559334970172983683&q=safe+speed

good post boss !!!

i hope you observe the problems

dpratt keep us updated - although IMO i doubt if you will

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now retired

I'd just like to make it quite clear that the amusing suggestion in the video does not form any part of the arguments presented by the Safe Speed campaign.

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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

Apologies Paul! I should have stated that myself.

I live in a great little village, not on an A road but its a pretty potent rat run at rush hour.

The rat run has been created because of council policy elsewhere.

when its busy no-one can 'speed' I suppose we have the odd high 'speeder' but the issues are many, various and complex. WE had some of the villagers up in arms about parking outside the school and calling for a speed camera!

All I would say to the original poster is that I understand and sympathise but 'be careful what you wish for'

Indeed. This aspect (and many other aspects) of human behaviour can
be rationalised using the Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario. In very short
order, there are two types of behaviour in this model, cooperative and
treacherous. If two people both cooperate, the outcome for both is good.
If both are treacherous, the outcome for both is bad, but if one is
cooperative (call him the Sucker) and the other is treacherous (call him
the Englishman, sorry, just joking!), the outcome is fairly good for the
Traitor, but poor for the Sucker.

I think that’s how it goes, anyway. There is a plethora of interesting
extensions to this game, but in essence, people are often too self
interested to act cooperatively, and suspicious of being a Sucker, so they
tend to defect to temptation and act treacherously (and ask for a
camera), just in case.

Basically, people rationally want to have calm traffic conditions around
where they live, but want free, open roads everywhere else. Although if
they all acted cooperatively (e.g. obey the law etc.), we could have calm
traffic where appropriate, and free flowing traffic where appropriate. But
no-one can quite clinch it, so we have pockets of local resistance (humps,
bumps, bollards, cameras, chicanes, etc.) and general distrust of the
system elsewhere as a result. People bottle themselves behind their own
barriers, yet expect others to open their roads up.

The political system aids this. It is based on geographical constituencies,
so people appeal to their local politician. There is no politician for roaming
groups in other people’s areas. So drivers on the roads are basically
unrepresented when away from their home areas, and thus disgruntled.
Perhaps we should have a “democracy of the roads” to solve all this?

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I stole this .sig

Hurrah! The basingwerk brain put to excellent use! At last!

However, I don't agree with all you wrote, or really with your conclusions. Around 90 to 95% of citizens (my guess) do co-operate at least adequately to make the road system work. I'll call them the good.

Meanwhile a small percentage are causing problems ranging fom irritation to mayhem. I'll call them the bad.

The 'management problem', becomes how to build on the very real success while also dealing with the bad. The danger - and present failures of policy - stem from failing to value the good. But the good are the true foundations. We're damaging the foundations in a misdirected (and over zealous) attempt to deal with the bad.

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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

This all stems from a failure to recognise that success in anything that involves "the population at large" involves achieving consensus. This failure has become endemic in modern government, which ironic given the love of party leaders of taking "populist stances".

So what we see is populist ideas translated into the language of control. The consequence of this is loss of consensus, and hence laws which alienate the "good" in the attempt to control the "bad" as you have said. Public policy has to achieve consensus to be effective, but populism is not about consensus, it's about knee-jerk and lowest common denominator.

To reach consensus, we have to have metrics, else one person's "consensus" is another person's "disagreement", which would be absurd. Consensus is about agreeing togther, which means we have to guage what we are all agreeing to. Then, once the bargain is struck, consensus is about filling our side of it. While I can see the motivation that some people have to break the limit on motorways and other pedestrian-free areas, the social consensus given by speed limits in built up areas is real, and drivers are expected to be seen keeping thier side of the bargain.

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I stole this .sig

You HAVE to be joking!

If all urban traffic suddenly decided to travel at exactly 30mph (or whatever speed limit applied locally) we'd have complete mayhem and the only consensus would be that the world had gone barking mad.

It is not legitimate or reasonable to claim that the speed limit is PURELY a maximum, because that requires drivers to continually mode-switch between adjusting their speed for legal reason and for practical / safesty reasons. Such mode switches are imperfect at best.

Anyway the point is that the general consensus that does exist isn't based on numerical metrics. It is based on judgements of behaviour.

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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

BW - I'm impressed! I think you're nearly ready to cross over to 'our side'.



I'll probably get banned from this forum for saying this, but I agree with you again.

But it's where the limits have been inappropriately set and harshly enforced, that leads to the general distrust now of speed limits. Indeed, I was out for a thrash on my bike the other day, on the A422 through Inkberrow to Stratford (fantastic! ) and I slowed down to about 20-25mph while going through the village. Hopefully, I was seen as showing respect for the fact that it was a small village, and not just tearing through it.

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

No chance. Not funny.

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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

You should not be surprised to find my ideas agreeable. It's great to know that you have been helping to promote sustainable driving. It's not as hard as these guys think, is it? Others see this and, in this small way, you are doing far more than SafeSpeed is to release us all from the threat of compulsory controls.

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I stole this .sig

Why?

Because if these people treat as "target speed" and do not adjust to safer speed (usually lower - but sometimes even blipping over by a small margin) and believe that they will be "safe" regardless of whatever hazard so long as the dash points rigidly at the speed limit.. then we have problems.

Jeff - it does sound farfetched when put into words - but then there were thos Belgians who rear ended on a motorway "because they set the cruise control and thought this controlled the car" It got to the stage where Belgian police put out a public information message advising folks not to rely too much on in-car gadgets!

Some people, sadly, do no use the single brain cell they were born with.

Durham jail is getting a bit full of this type now

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.