Safe Speed Forums

Yeah, like boredom and frustration, which in turn causes some drivers to go for stupid overtakes?

The second requirement you mention, is only a legal technicality - it doesn't have (not always) anything to do with safety...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

That may be true, but imbuing illegal activity with properties
of ‘appropriateness’ is, as RigPig says, mealy-mouthed (excellent choice
of words, “Riggers”). So let’s just call it ‘selfish speeding’ rather
than ‘appropriate speeding’, because speeding is NOT appropriate
(axiomatically, dear boy).

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I stole this .sig

Oooh, three pages in one morning; I wonder who's posting in this thread....oh.

Your blinkers are well and truly in place today aren't they?

I tell you what... Why don't we forget all about driving safely and carefully and let's just try to drive legally. After all nothing could possibly be more important than obeying an arbitrary law. Would that make you happy?

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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

Yeah, that SafeSpeed fellow is at it again. As far as I can tell, he now
reckons coppers should tell some people who go speeding through
villages and towns that their behaviour is OK because it’s "appropriate". I
just can't work him out at all.

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I stole this .sig

Thanks for that show of concern, but if you want to make me happy,
please tell your group to encourage people to drive legally AND safely,
like they are supposed to.

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I stole this .sig

Where has he said that?

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

That's the central anti-enforcement message be beams out whenever he
gets up on his soapbox. He's taken a well-deserved beating today, but
you'll see. He'll soon be back undermining the work of the coppers and
the highway code.

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I stole this .sig

Ooooh, so in fact, he didn't...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

What’s the point of being legal
if we’re already being safe?

I tell you what, let’s come halfway
and make ‘legal’ more reasonable.

Hm.. I wonder if others fail to get SafeSpeed's main message. Maybe
he's not such a hot communicator after all.

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I stole this .sig

If behaviour is appropriate where's the harm?

We obviously need to concentrate our scarece road safety resources on those behaviours and factors that cause harm.

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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

If someone is stupid and selfish and lacks proper self control, perhaps. But we can address these things through education can't we?
However, I believe that we (collectively) are of the opinion that most drivers are responsible and don't regularly get up to such nonsense.



[My bold]
Which is why you keep trying to give it a damned good ignoring
ONLY a legal technicality it may be (or whatever other words we choose to use to try to hide it or casually dismiss it as a factor), but it still exists and obeyance is still a (general) requirement.

Thus, it is possible to drive within the limit (or attempt to) AND drive safely AND NOT get all bottom lip wobbly about having to do so.

Hmmm, Boolean logic anyone ?

Standby

OK, we can try that idea for a laugh. This might be coded in Java like this -



Now, that’s so very easy, isn’t it? So what is all this fuss about?

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I stole this .sig

The boredom and frustration thing is peddled continuously as a negative to lower speed limits. If you are applying COAST correctly, this is bunk.

Being able to stop comfortably within the distance that you know to be clear is an excellent approximation with no ifs, buts or maybes.

Using the speed limit as a guide is a deadly mistake and worse than nothing for a responsible and experienced driver.

We have zillions of 20mph bends on 60mph roads (think: 'country lanes'). What's going to happen if people start to drive as it the legal limit was the best reason for chosing a speed?

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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

No ifs, buts or maybes! Last week you were vehemently claiming
that a person who ran over a pothole had NO responsibility for it.

And this week, you expect people to check that they could "stop
comfortably within the distance known to be clear".

What gives? You wouldn't even see the flippin thing, so how would you
know it was OK up front? Think for a moment. That's right, you can't
be sure everything is OK up front, so let's not pretend.

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I stole this .sig

Paul,

you have an oft-stated mantra that road safety is not black and white but a million shades of grey (I'm paraphrasing here, your actual words are more elegant descriptions of the complex safety system). Yet you have fallen into a trap of saying that "drivers will either do as they please or drive at the speed limit all the time". (again, paraphrase).

It's not a binary situation. The limit is the limit, not the target, nor an advisory mean. On a dry, empty straight road with no hazards, perhaps that applies (and arguably, limits are too low in lots of - probably most - cases), in all other situations the limit is one of the outer boundaries of acceptable speed; the other main one proposed on this site being the "maximum appropriate" measure: to borrow from car service interval language, "whichever one is lower".

Andy

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

It is, and you have a higher chance of achieving that at an appropriate speed within the speed limit!



I think this is dead wrong. The speed limit is a useful approximation of what _minimum_ set of hazards we can _reasonably expect_ to occur on the road. It's also useful to keep a psychological reign on drivers.

Take a former wide 30mph road with some residential buildings , a park, a school, etc. If you didn't have a limit, and stated "Drive at a speed you think to be appropriate" then you would quite likely have a range of speeds from 20 to 100+mph, which would be outrageous.



I don't quite understand your point. You have just reinforced why driving at an appropriate speed within the limit is vital! If it's a 20mph bend, then drive at 20mph round it. The hard limit at this point in the road is clearly irrelevant.