RE: Scots Want Higher Speed Limit
Discussion
Mobile SCAMS do nothing for road safety, and everything for underhanded revenue gains and encouraging antipathy for the law in decent citizens.
Scotland (my home turf of Wales too...)has some of the most spectacular roads in Europe, and a unique landscape...one of life's joys is working a 911 hard along a fast, sparsely trafficed Highland A road...windows down, clean/cold morning air, 7k+ RPM...magic...
Government policy - with no sensible justification or basis in road safety - seeks to remove these pleasures. That's totally wrong - so SCAMS OUT!
Scotland (my home turf of Wales too...)has some of the most spectacular roads in Europe, and a unique landscape...one of life's joys is working a 911 hard along a fast, sparsely trafficed Highland A road...windows down, clean/cold morning air, 7k+ RPM...magic...
Government policy - with no sensible justification or basis in road safety - seeks to remove these pleasures. That's totally wrong - so SCAMS OUT!
mojocvh said:
baz1985 said:
Jct 11-13 on the M74 was one of my fav stretches to max
obviously, by "max" we mean 70mph officer
Still a nice bit of road around 5am though
MoJo.
The plods reads these forums watch it they only want us to comply with the law pity they were not so visable about the robbers and muggers eh?
Well personally I stick to just a tad over 70 with my cruise control kicked in, very un-stresfull driving, but my thoughts are this.
Currently the limit is 70, so the majority of drivers do 80, if they raised it to 80, they would probably do 90, I think as the roads are becomming more conjested the reality of it is they never will raise the limit above 70, whilst I agree the vast majority of cars, if not all, are well able to cope with continuous speeds in excess of 70, and with the likes of ABS (which is not an excuse to drive faster anyway) stop safley, sadly a lot of drivers arnt up handling cars at these speeds.
How many planks do we all meet daily on our roads who have trouble driving safely at 40, let alone 80. You dear reader may be the best driver in the world, well 2nd at least, (I'm the best) but joking aside, I think us good drivers are perhaps a minority on the roads sadly.
>> Edited by Vipers on Tuesday 27th September 07:00
Currently the limit is 70, so the majority of drivers do 80, if they raised it to 80, they would probably do 90, I think as the roads are becomming more conjested the reality of it is they never will raise the limit above 70, whilst I agree the vast majority of cars, if not all, are well able to cope with continuous speeds in excess of 70, and with the likes of ABS (which is not an excuse to drive faster anyway) stop safley, sadly a lot of drivers arnt up handling cars at these speeds.
How many planks do we all meet daily on our roads who have trouble driving safely at 40, let alone 80. You dear reader may be the best driver in the world, well 2nd at least, (I'm the best) but joking aside, I think us good drivers are perhaps a minority on the roads sadly.
>> Edited by Vipers on Tuesday 27th September 07:00
Vipers said:
Well personally I stick to just a tad over 70 with my cruise control kicked in, very un-stresfull driving, but my thoughts are this.
Currently the limit is 70, so the majority of drivers do 80, if they raised it to 80, they would probably do 90, I think as the roads are becomming more conjested the reality of it is they never will raise the limit above 70, whilst I agree the vast majority of cars, if not all, are well able to cope with continuous speeds in excess of 70, and with the likes of ABS (which is not an excuse to drive faster anyway) stop safley, sadly a lot of drivers arnt up handling cars at these speeds.
How many planks do we all meet daily on our roads who have trouble driving safely at 40, let alone 80. You dear reader may be the best driver in the world, well 2nd at least, (I'm the best) but joking aside, I think us good drivers are perhaps a minority on the roads sadly.
>> Edited by Vipers on Tuesday 27th September 07:00
The argument for the 70 limit is always let the bad drivers drive poorly bad so long as they remain under a speed limit. Afterall if you don't speed it is impossible to have an accident - or is driving on snow in freezing fog 69mph is perfectly safe on a motorway?
How about a campaign for a referendum to raise motorway limits in exchange for regular training/testing?
cdp said:
Well personally I stick to just a tad over 70 with my cruise control kicked in, very un-stresfull driving, but my thoughts are this.
Currently the limit is 70, so the majority of drivers do 80, if they raised it to 80, they would probably do 90, I think as the roads are becomming more conjested the reality of it is they never will raise the limit above 70, whilst I agree the vast majority of cars, if not all, are well able to cope with continuous speeds in excess of 70, and with the likes of ABS (which is not an excuse to drive faster anyway) stop safley, sadly a lot of drivers arnt up handling cars at these speeds.
How many planks do we all meet daily on our roads who have trouble driving safely at 40, let alone 80. You dear reader may be the best driver in the world, well 2nd at least, (I'm the best) but joking aside, I think us good drivers are perhaps a minority on the roads sadly.
>> Edited by Vipers on Tuesday 27th September 07:00
The argument for the 70 limit is always let the bad drivers drive poorly bad so long as they remain under a speed limit. Afterall if you don't speed it is impossible to have an accident - or is driving on snow in freezing fog 69mph is perfectly safe on a motorway?
How about a campaign for a referendum to raise motorway limits in exchange for regular training/testing?
That is something I have supported for a long while. The stumbling block of the lower speed to help the bad drivers is that it is the bad or inexperienced drivers who are more likely to drive at an inappropriate speed for the conditions regardless of the limit in place!
My idea was this, the public have the option of:
1) Completing a special advanced driving course every 3 years and passing it.
2) Paying a slightly higher road tax and
3) Passing a more stringent MOT for
4) Cars which can safely travel at higher speeds.
This would allow the best drivers with cars that are certainly able to perform at a higher speed the 'licence' to use a special outside lane. The upkeep of the lane will be funded by the additional training and testing and the slightly higher road tax for those who want to use it.
I would argue that if there was a single lane where the limit was 90mph there would be no increase in accidents as:
1) The drivers using the lane will all have cars capable of handling that speed.
2) The drivers themselves will be able to handle their cars at that speed.
3) The additional training and standards will increase the driving ability of those who want it meaning
4) Stopping distances will be strictly used and
5) Driving to the conditions would also be paramount.
Rather than produce a two-tier system for the rich/poor it would produce a two tier system reflective of an advanced standard of driving which would be really useful to aspire to.
I would say that the UK motorways have the worst standard of driving I have ever seen. Most likely because the standard that many people aspire to in their driving is poor, and people are inconsiderate. This may also stem from the fact that there is no motorway training for the driving test!
justinp1 mentioned a "special outside lane", problem is even if that were feasable, which it isnt, you would be sitting there doing your 90 or whatever it was decided you could do having done this super dooper training course, and there would always be some bugger behind you wanting to pass, no denying it.
Whilst I have no reservations about raising the limit, whatever limit you impose, folk will always abuse it, human nature.
Trouble is I think, not all, but quite a few folk get in their nice big Merc, or whatever, and think a)they own the road, and b) they are invincible, any fool can drive a car fast, but controlling it and stopping it is another matter. Sadly that is proven on a daily basis.
I dont honesttly see an answer to this situation, but I do feel raising the limit on motorways to 80 would make a lot of drivers happier, after all if the reason 70 came in was due to some clown nipping up the M1 in his Cobra at god knows how many miles per hour, as the myth goes, its hardly in line with the modern thinking of "risk assessment" is it?
Was that story true by the way?
Anyway meanwhile 70 is good for me, been driving 34 years, never had a ticket or any points, (not even a parking ticket), and I intend to keep it that way, each to their own I guess.
Whilst I have no reservations about raising the limit, whatever limit you impose, folk will always abuse it, human nature.
Trouble is I think, not all, but quite a few folk get in their nice big Merc, or whatever, and think a)they own the road, and b) they are invincible, any fool can drive a car fast, but controlling it and stopping it is another matter. Sadly that is proven on a daily basis.
I dont honesttly see an answer to this situation, but I do feel raising the limit on motorways to 80 would make a lot of drivers happier, after all if the reason 70 came in was due to some clown nipping up the M1 in his Cobra at god knows how many miles per hour, as the myth goes, its hardly in line with the modern thinking of "risk assessment" is it?
Was that story true by the way?
Anyway meanwhile 70 is good for me, been driving 34 years, never had a ticket or any points, (not even a parking ticket), and I intend to keep it that way, each to their own I guess.
jazzyjeff said:
mojocvh said:
The Police at the moment are unlikly to pull you over for 80 on the M'way unless your being a prick.
Sigh. I was being highly considerate to a driver as I slowed and flashed him "out" from behind an artic in the middle lane but I still was done for "speeding" and it was a fair bit more than 80 as well........... what does that make me then munter???????
Well it makes you someone that doesn't think twice about breaking the law. Of course you should have slowed to let him out behind the artic 'cos there's no way he would have been able to judge your approach speed accurately if you were doing WAY over the limit.
I agree the limit should be raised etc. etc. and better driver training blah blah (we wait in vain) but wish people would stop using the 'go and catch proper criminals' argument, it's highly misleading. If you break the law, you break the law, period. No doubt some nutters in this country think prosecution for murder is a silly law, but they have to abide by it like anyone else. And what's to say a high proportion of consistent speeders aren't thieves, muggers, rapists, murderers etc. in their spare time anyway? Tsk
There are laws and there are laws Jeff.
There are crimes with victims, e.g. murder, rape, assault, robbery etc. Even parking across someone's drive!
There are crimes without victims, e.g. speeding.
Right now there is far too much focus on crimes where there is no victim. No-one has suffered.
Too little attention is paid to crimes where there is a victim and someone has suffered in some way.
If we punished people properly when there was a victim and didn't worry about it when there wasn't, we'd all be better off. There would be more effort put into solving assault and robbery cases, for instance. Those who caused death or injury by their dangerous driving would be punished more severely. But those who drove fast but safely (when appropriate) would not be hounded in order to fund more speed cameras (devices that detect victimless crimes).
Additionally, the erosion of respect for the law would be halted or even reversed.
People who habitually speed are not, per se, people who break other laws (where there are victims). But as they come to feel more and more persecuted for exceeding an arbitrary (and often changing) speed limit while driving safely and responsibly, they are more likely to start to question the wisdom of SOME other laws where they had not done so previously.
That is one of the most important reasons why, if we are to have speed limits, they should ALWAYS be set at reasonable levels and, on motorways in good conditions, should certainly be raised.
>> Edited by charltm on Wednesday 28th September 09:20
Why can't speed limits be advisory only?
Dedicated traffic police would be able to punish bad driving based on the driving itself rather than the speed alone. That could mean leaving alone someone doing 100 sensibly, or nicking someone doing 25 tailgating. As things stand, the safe one gets punished and the dangerous one doesn't.
Why all the obsession with speed limits?
IMO there is no benefit to road safety in the continual punishing of millions of drivers for travelling at whatever speed if they were doing so safely. There is only financial gain in enforcing a law merely for the laws sake.
Dedicated traffic police would be able to punish bad driving based on the driving itself rather than the speed alone. That could mean leaving alone someone doing 100 sensibly, or nicking someone doing 25 tailgating. As things stand, the safe one gets punished and the dangerous one doesn't.
Why all the obsession with speed limits?
IMO there is no benefit to road safety in the continual punishing of millions of drivers for travelling at whatever speed if they were doing so safely. There is only financial gain in enforcing a law merely for the laws sake.
deeps said:
There is only financial gain in enforcing a law merely for the laws sake.
The current Labour governments policing is all about how to extract more money from motorists in order to fund the governments over spending. Speeding fines are the easiest way to get the cash they need.
ledfoot said:
Speeding fines are the easiest way to get the cash they need.
So a couple of million speeding tickets at sixty quid a throw is 120 million quid a year.
And the UK tax bill must be at least a thousand pounds for everyone in the country or 50,000 million.
So the speeding tickets are contributing at most 0.24% of the tax bill.
Big deal.
dcb said:
Speeding fines are the easiest way to get the cash they need.
So a couple of million speeding tickets at sixty quid a throw is 120 million quid a year.
And the UK tax bill must be at least a thousand pounds for everyone in the country or 50,000 million.
So the speeding tickets are contributing at most 0.24% of the tax bill.
Big deal.
It depends who the 'they' is... Is we are talking about central government for schools hospital etc, its a small chunk, but the returns from the £60's are actually used to keep the scameraships 'self funding'. the £120million will keep a lot of people in charge of partnerships in a job, and can further cement their position by employing more people and more devices which will need a higher budget in future.
The flawed system is such that their perfect outcome would be a camera on every road which an accident happens. If they 'save lives' then what would be the need in employing the hundreds or even thousands of people in charge of spinning propaganda into approving new sites?
I can hardly see these people being sent to the dole queue, and the spin backlash against risking closing the scameraships down as XXX more people will die on the road next year BS...
dcb said:
Speeding fines are the easiest way to get the cash they need.
So a couple of million speeding tickets at sixty quid a throw is 120 million quid a year.
And the UK tax bill must be at least a thousand pounds for everyone in the country or 50,000 million.
So the speeding tickets are contributing at most 0.24% of the tax bill.
Big deal.
It's a big deal because it's highway robbery, the amount doesn't change that.
It's not so much the ammount raised as the amount saved.
Think about how much is being saved by not adopting a policy of having proper police officers, infact cutting their numbers for financial gain.
How much would it cost to have the roads policed properly by traffic officers? It would cost a great deal and there would be little financial return.
Far more favourable are self financing scamera partnerships, who can concentrate solely on raising speed tax.
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