seeing as the 70mph limit on motorways doesnt actually hold ANY F***ING WATER with a LOT of people these days, and 80-85 seems about the going rate for people getting to places (rather than crusing in the left lane) on a great deal of free-running 3-lane motorways (such as it is across europe...!) .... or more in places* .... thats a whole lot of finage waiting to be handed out.
maybe its just a way of preserving the fine/points gap between regular roads and motorways? police dont actually bother to collar anyone doing less than 94?
*last time i went on the M6 (this monday) and tried to keep with the fast traffic.... I couldnt. Bit embarrassing that. Was even tailed in the middle lane with the pedal to the floor. And I wouldnt say it was an empty road.
funny that 94 more or less = the recent rise on Autostrada for "clear, straight stretches in dry daytime"... cruising legally at 150kmh, not attracting any attention until you've passed the ton.. nice.
Si - dont be a git. Chances are they have somewhere to get to. If you really want to work for road safety, pull over and let them past rather than pissing them off further, as there aint nothing like an overheated, stressed out motorist for having an accident (assuming we stay in the world of the chemically sober). Being cool and calm at 40 after being let by, vs them losing it and trying to overtake you = not good. I think you'll even find that one in the highway code (or the theory test?), hypocritical as it is of me to quote such chapter and verse. Go at your own speed, fine (even though you still have chance of running foul of the nobs in a lax moment unless you use cruise control or are watching the speedo every other second) but dont cause obstruction. You wouldnt bloody like it.
Excessive and stupid tailgaiting that's causing a risk, fine, lower your speed to compensate after allowing them a few seconds to back off on their own - in case it was just a bad bit of driving. If someone's only just "zoomed up" though, cut a little slack?
Oh, and, eh... giz your GTi
Road hazard improvement in the UK through the 60s and 70s was a marvel, concentration on Engineering, Education and Enforcement.
There were many very dangerous bits of road, which gradually were remade and improved to engineer out the deadly spots - hidden dips, sudden hairpins, bad camber and the like, improved warning and directional signage and restrictions (speed, overtaking, u-turns etc) where necessary also being instrumental. The motorway system might be considered a part of this! (how come the govt thought nothing wrong with it being unlimited originally? the 70mph restriction came in after some foggy pileups)
The public were educated. Better driving tuition and tests. Warnings about the dangers of driving on ice and snow, and in the wet; seatbelts; drinking and driving; looking out for motorcyclists; and indeed speeding.
And enforcement for the herberts that would insist on making a nuisance and a danger for everyone else. Only vary rarely would a sadistic, bored, or overly keen rookie copper nab someone for 75 on a straight, clear but single carriageway** A road, but they may take more action if a driver's conduct appeared to be causing a danger to the public.
** i'll support a reasonably low limit here - with the appropriate study and dialogue by actual industry experts who aren't being bought - in places where there's actually some real risk of people regularly straying out of their lane into the incoming one for some reason. Reduce the impact speed and energies of a head-on collision. Though if you were to hit a parked car at 60mph let alone 120 it would usually be considered you were good-as-toast anyhow...!
OK, hypocriticals again. The stuff above about the three E's has no firm factual basis other than what my dad has told me from his growing up experiences, and a few things gleaned off anti-camera websites (showing, for example, the massive drops in road fatalities and injuries from the 60s thru to the 90s - where they level off with the introduction of camera instead of constable based "enforcement") .... but it's still got more evidence than all i have seen for the argument of "Speed Kills!!" and "Speed Cameras Save Lives!". Oh yeah? Where's your bloody FIGURES then?
Hey now folks! I got something terrible to tell you. Mars bars kill children. Yeah. That's right. The special chemicals used in the manufacturing process to soften up the nougat slowly build up in the body and then one day.... (draws line across throat with finger) *klllurghrck!!*
But I'm not going to show you any solid facts to back that up, no sir, and anything I do eventually roll out, low key, won't hold any great deal of statistical water even by first year AS-level standards. But I still want to ban a well loved item of confectionary, and a hill walker and diabetic's mainstay emergency ration, because of some hokey thing I thought up and just "proved" with a rather measly correlation.
(in case you havent done stats before, correlation does NOT = cause. men with coronary heart disease can be shown to more often be obese. therefore i can say that heart disease causes obesity - or more dangerously, that ALL heart disease is caused by obesity. doesnt effing make it true .... though you know... sometimes... if you repeat something enough... you can make people believe the lie and even defend it. Perhaps i'm a victim of this programming myself, in reverse. But i'd just like to see some thoroughly and professionally collected facts for now, by both sides)
Goddamn.
By the way. This country used to have a 20mph limit (and so did tanker-trucks for quite a while after it was raised to a quite arbitary 30 in town and 60 in country). Ponder that.
Is the government trying to say that it has so little faith in the driving populace as-a-whole's ability to judge a safe speed that these measures are neccessary? That's a down right INSULT. May as well put autopilots in all the cars because if i can't judge whether i'm going fast enough to stop in time (last time i unintentionally locked a wheel under braking? a LONG time ago, and it was an emergency/avoiding-action situation rather than keeping a safe speed & distance. ironically given the detail of it, you could say i was going too slowly..)
I can tell you this much, and im trying to dull as much male bravado as i can. I am less likely to have an accident at 40mph in the 30mph zone leading to the aston expressway, as my mother was at 15 inside of the expressway's 50 limit this morning. She simply wasnt paying any goddamn attention and probably thought it was perfectly safe as she was going so "slowly" at the same time i was stomping an imaginary brake (trying to avoid the neck snapping stomp of her own, which did inevitably come when she put 2+2 together to realise long line of brake lights = shouldnt be accelerating towards that. good job there wasnt a sleepy trucker behind us). You can still get hurt at 15mph, and all else besides, think of the repair bills, and the congestion from an already chocka road losing a lane.
I'm going to go now, as i could easily spout here all night and i have done before.
PS unless you have SPECS, the camera aint going to do anything against anyone that doesnt trigger it, whereas a policeman's vision isn't limited to a 20-yard stretch in front of it (or a pair of 3-way sensors, for truvelo). Once you've clocked on to the camera you can go 50-50-50-50-BRAKE (lock a wheel up)-29-29-29(to the annoyance of someone cruising at 32-34 who now catches you up)-30-Drop a cog-FLOOR IT-35-40-45-50-50-50-50...
A nice big, very simple ACCIDENT BLACKSPOT - DRIVE SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY sign might be more effective, with a DEATHS / INJURIES THIS YEAR count at the bottom. You may not even need to post a camera to see people slowing down, if they are properly informed they are entering a dangerous area. They'll ease off naturally, as who but a psycho will race willingly towards death?
Education and engineering again, you see. With enforcement as the last, rather than the bloody FIRST resort.
That and giving out some solid advice on how much increased speed affects your fuel bills, rather than laughable esoteric stuff such as "travelling in 4th rather than 2nd gear halves consumption" (if you cant tell you're racing the engine... GET OFF THE ROAD!) or "a car at 75mph can be up to 3 litres per 100km less efficient than at 56". (litres per what now?)
How about "an average car making 50mpg at 70mph will only manage 35mpg at 90" (that figures been pulled out of thin air BTW), backed up with a graph showing average consumption from 20 (likely higher than 35) thru to 100 and a note of the reference title for finding the study that the figures were culled from. A comparison chart for how much time doing 85 instead of 75 saves over 100 miles vs the extra fuel used.
Might see a lot more relaxed cruising then. People not rushing or being angry trying to avoid being late. Tucking in to the inside and middle lane at about the same speed. Leaving the outside lane blissfully free for anyone who DOES need to go fast. Because suddenly time is not just money, but speed is also tangibly money, and speed can be related to time.
I'd like the same people to also show me exactly HOW doing 35 instead of 30 doubles my chance of brutally slaying some dopey tw@t who hasnt yet learnt to associate tarmac with big metal things that can kill you. I know F=MV² and all, but 30²=900, 35²=1225 for starters. I make that 36% more killing energy... not 100%
It's unignorable that there is increased risk of an accident in a risk situation when you're going faster - those where an accident is avoidable, anyway - and that the outcome of such can be more dangerous with greater speed. But, I am not convinced that it is anywhere near as severe as we are propaganda'd into repeating (like, 1/3?), or that there is anything inherently safe about that baseline (after all - 30mph means NOTHING if you measure in kmh, or knots, or m/s --- the french town limit is 60kmh, or ~36mph, in many areas... another arbitary limit! but one that, despite being more than "twice as dangerous!" doesnt look like it's going to sink to a safe, sedate british 48kmh any time soon). These things tend to have a certain threshold level anyway - which is the speed a decent driver "should" always keep below.
I'm an intelligent human being for chrissakes, I enjoy the illusion that i'm responsible for my own decisions. I'd rather have the full truth of the matter and decide "cripes - better slow down then" for myself (the same way it can be more easily demonstrated that, when you've had 4 pints, you cant even control your legs enough to walk properly, so what makes you think they'll find the brake pedal?) rather than being told.... We say this is so, therefore you'd better damn well do as we say and not question or rebel against it.
I dont think i've ever written such a lot of spontaneous b*******s in my entire life, save the final four pages of my degree dissertation. I think there's some truth in there though.
Does anyone know the way to go about presenting a reasoned argument on these subjects to whoever it is who actually holds sway, anyhow? Any time i go off on one of these soapboxes i feel more compelled to kidnap .... sorry, imprison without charge on the suspicion of terrorist crimes against the users of her majesty's highway ... whoever is/are responsible for policy decisions such as "more cameras, yes please!!" and "lets run the 'speed kills' advert again, instead of investing in better signage"... do some SOCA-inspired "interrogation" on them and see exactly if their motivations are pure or if there's corruption at work (when so much is hidden, the pure of heart can appear wicked and other tripe like that) .... and if any of them can satisfactorially answer the myriad fricken questions flitting round my brain here.
