How to combat use of *inappropriate speed*

[millicrab]

I seem to see a significant minority of drivers using speeds which I would consider wholly inappropriate for the circumstances. Given that, as a forum, we do not seem to be anti-speed in itself, has anyone any innovative suggestions for combating the inappropriate use of speed. I suppose the same question could be asked for Aggressive Driving and other too common faults in either attitude or technique.

[pwig]

Remove all speed limits

[HarryW]

I suppose it's like most 'crimes' at the moment, it requires a police presence to deter the actual event and pull people up and give them the 'ticket' and or educate them should there observations skills be lacking.
The use of Scameras will not achieve this alone, but thats another thread . Driver training is I suppose the only real answer to the question, but getting existing drivers to attend is a problem that cannot be easily achieved. That said, current learner drivers are the 'future of road safety' and these are the ones that should be targeted/trained. The rest of us will die on the vine, so to speak .

Harry

[apache]

A problem that I see being caused by the basic need to push the limits for various reasons, novelty, adrenalin rush or bravado. Tempered only by experience be it positive or negative.
In a perfect world (run by petrolheads of course)training would include plenty of tracktime in a variety of vehicles under a variety of conditions to enable one to gain experience safely not merely to pass a test.

>> Edited by apache on Thursday 13th March 11:19

[millicrab]

Pwig

Could you expand on your response?

[NLJdH]

How about rather than having smooth roads, with occasional humps or width poles etc, we reconstruct all roads to be continuous rumble strips? In other words, like continuous sleeping policeman laid adjacent to one another? Extreme built up roads with higher humps, and with lower hump size on dual carriage ways/motorways etc. That way we'd all be encouraged to swap our normal cars for off-roaders and dune buggies that could only sustain about 20-30 mph on 30 zones without fracturing our spines, and about 50-70 on others without shaking our teeth and eyeballs out of our heads.

Regards,
Nicholas

[manek]

I'd be happy to see build-outs on the narrow, one-way street where I live, where cars go past at speeds up to 40mph, I'd estimate, yet I never go faster than 20-maybe 25mph. Any faster and I feel unsafe, yet the limit, daftly, is of course 30mph.

[scruffy]

Walk.

[P*Ting]

NLJdH said: How about rather than having smooth roads, with occasional humps or width poles etc, we reconstruct all roads to be continuous rumble strips? In other words, like continuous sleeping policeman laid adjacent to one another? Extreme built up roads with higher humps, and with lower hump size on dual carriage ways/motorways etc. That way we'd all be encouraged to swap our normal cars for off-roaders and dune buggies that could only sustain about 20-30 mph on 30 zones without fracturing our spines, and about 50-70 on others without shaking our teeth and eyeballs out of our heads.

Regards,
Nicholas

Sadly I heard on the news a few months ago that such a system is ready to begin trials.

That would be the end of performance motoring, if they can make it cheap enough (which is thankfully rather less than likely!).

[Don]

manek said: I'd be happy to see build-outs on the narrow, one-way street where I live, where cars go past at speeds up to 40mph, I'd estimate, yet I never go faster than 20-maybe 25mph. Any faster and I feel unsafe, yet the limit, daftly, is of course 30mph.

Our estate is like this.

Some idiot last night drove around a *blind* 90 degree corner, which he *cut* so he was on the wrong side of the road at a good 30mph.

That was over the top of the so-called "traffic calming".

If anyone has been coming the other way and had been close to the corner he'd have hit them.

Luckily I was further back and so there was no drama.

But this is on an internal Estate Road where you can expect kids, dogs, bikes etc to leap out without warning and about 5mph is all that is safe...

A GATSO would not have spotted this plonker's piece of dangerous driving. I wish to God the neighbourhood beat policeman had spotted him. Shame there isn't one.

[richard sails]

P*Ting said:

NLJdH said: How about rather than having smooth roads, with occasional humps or width poles etc, we reconstruct all roads to be continuous rumble strips? In other words, like continuous sleeping policeman laid adjacent to one another? Extreme built up roads with higher humps, and with lower hump size on dual carriage ways/motorways etc. That way we'd all be encouraged to swap our normal cars for off-roaders and dune buggies that could only sustain about 20-30 mph on 30 zones without fracturing our spines, and about 50-70 on others without shaking our teeth and eyeballs out of our heads.

Regards,
Nicholas

Sadly I heard on the news a few months ago that such a system is ready to begin trials.

That would be the end of performance motoring, if they can make it cheap enough (which is thankfully rather less than likely!).

This system would not cause a problem for a 2CV's, they can go over speed bumps at ANY speed, even 60mph+, only problem is you need a very long straight to get up to that speed......

[jumjum]

Using an inappropriate speed campain, you would just end up falling in to the trap of the anti speed/anti car campainers, give an inch and they would use your argument to take a mile.

Most traffic calming make things worse, the nutter will still do 60 down a speed bump street in a stolen car, only now he stands more chance of losing control.

The islands/slaloms that force you against the flow of traffic and change right of way are potentailly lethal, I see inattentive drivers go round them into the flow of uncoming drivers all the time, and of course again it just makes it more dangerous for everyone because the nutter who doesn't care anyway will still do 60 down the street.

Motorist and residents down speed bump streets need to raise actions against the council for damage to property/noise nusiance/conservation issues anything to get these things removed.

[reAnimate]

Or just do what I do.

I've just had stiffer suspension fitted to the liz, and dropped the ride hight down to 100 / 110 which means I *HAVE* to crawl over speed humps - or knacker the new suspension.

So now, I come to an almost total halt, creap over them slowly, slowly drive to the next one, then same again.

By the end of all the speed humps (on one road I use there are at least 15) I have managed to aquire a nice convoy of around 10 numpties bumper to bumper.

Then when the 60 limit starts I leave them all plodding along.

This way:

1. The residents who voted this in get stuck in te convoy
2. It shows people how horrible these things are
3. It saves my suspension
4. The small amount of speeding up / slowing down between humps must arse off the residents (my car is not known for it's quietness ...)
5. It makes me feel better.

Now if all pistonheaders did this ...

[Byff]

reAnimate said:

So now, I come to an almost total halt, creap over them slowly, slowly drive to the next one, then same again.

By the end of all the speed humps (on one road I use there are at least 15) I have managed to aquire a nice convoy of around 10 numpties bumper to bumper.

Then when the 60 limit starts I leave them all plodding along.

This way:

1. The residents who voted this in get stuck in te convoy
2. It shows people how horrible these things are
3. It saves my suspension
4. The small amount of speeding up / slowing down between humps must arse off the residents (my car is not known for it's quietness ...)
5. It makes me feel better.

Now if all pistonheaders did this ...

I lost my battle against speedhumps and this is precisely what I'm intending to do - my aim is to make congestion in the village that bad it'll strech back to a busy junction and cause major headaches.

Your point about residents wanting them - no. I went out to get a petition going - I only had 2 hours to do it, but in that time, I got 37 people sign against them and 3 people were for them.

Unfortunately, the council does what it wants regardless of its residents views.

[NLJdH]

Byff said:

Unfortunately, the council does what it wants regardless of its residents views.

Same as the government and police, they invent their 'solutions' for election time and we have to guinea-pig them the years that follow.

The amount of damage to vehicles done by so called speed traps is far too common in my locality because the vehicles are too wide to fit through them at the only angles they can approach, at crawling pace even!

Does the council listen...?

So in the last 12 years I have passed these after frustrated persons unknown have vandalised them or broken them open to allow vehicles to get through at least without insurance claims each time. But the council finds plenty of money to re-plant them a little while later.

Regards,
Nicholas

[trefor]

NLJdH said: How about rather than having smooth roads, with occasional humps or width poles etc, we reconstruct all roads to be continuous rumble strips? In other words, like continuous sleeping policeman laid adjacent to one another? Extreme built up roads with higher humps, and with lower hump size on dual carriage ways/motorways etc. That way we'd all be encouraged to swap our normal cars for off-roaders and dune buggies that could only sustain about 20-30 mph on 30 zones without fracturing our spines, and about 50-70 on others without shaking our teeth and eyeballs out of our heads.

Regards,
Nicholas

I think several councils are doing this already.

[trefor]

P*Ting said:

NLJdH said: How about rather than having smooth roads, with occasional humps or width poles etc, we reconstruct all roads to be continuous rumble strips? In other words, like continuous sleeping policeman laid adjacent to one another? Extreme built up roads with higher humps, and with lower hump size on dual carriage ways/motorways etc. That way we'd all be encouraged to swap our normal cars for off-roaders and dune buggies that could only sustain about 20-30 mph on 30 zones without fracturing our spines, and about 50-70 on others without shaking our teeth and eyeballs out of our heads.

Regards,
Nicholas

Sadly I heard on the news a few months ago that such a system is ready to begin trials.

That would be the end of performance motoring, if they can make it cheap enough (which is thankfully rather less than likely!).

Motorbikes!!!!

[safespeed]

I seem to see a significant minority of drivers using speeds which I would consider wholly inappropriate for the circumstances. Given that, as a forum, we do not seem to be anti-speed in itself, has anyone any innovative suggestions for combating the inappropriate use of speed. I suppose the same question could be asked for Aggressive Driving and other too common faults in either attitude or technique.

We obviously need to send out "safe speed" messages to drivers, and ask the police to concentrate their resources on the dangerous uses of speed. We also have to stop telling drivers that "they will be safe if they stick to the speed limit".

It seems to me that if the cops leave the sensible speeders on the open roads alone then they would have more resources to chuck at the dangerous few.

See: www.safespeed.org.uk/speeding.html and throughout the web site.

Paul Smith
Safe Speed
www.safespeed.org.uk

[tsh]

Quite a difficult question really, but one that noone is addressing at the moment. The current message is that speed is the only important factor, and that speed limits are the correct tool to tackle the problem.

There are, as I see it, two problems. One is noise (and associated perceved risk). The other is actual danger of injury.

Few people seem to consider what it is that causes the problems, thinking that the effect is easier to control than the cause.

The noise problem is easily made worse by simplistic engineering measures. Humps and build-outs wind up the offenders and encourage changes in speed, neither of which are actually beneficial. The average speed might be reduced, but the peak noise probably infreases.

The actual risk is not improved by reducing the average speed of vehicles. More people take less care (both drivers and pedestrians) so mistakes are made more often. The need to be able to judge speed is removed, and what was a safe situation (i.e. with responsable driving) is made more dangerous.

Considering the driver using 'inapropriate' speed, we know that a 5mph speed limit may be apropriate in certain circumstances, but would be universally ignored. Equally, 40mph could be reasonable for short sections (even on an estate) at certain times. A useful aim would be to encourage 'apropriate' speed at all times. Will a 20mph speed limit help here? When is that apropriate? What does it achieve?


Things that might help are more emphasis on risk perception, and reaction to risk (e.g. slow down, only when necesary).

Improved trafic flow. Anything that introduces an unnecessary wait (ever sat at a set of lights at red when the junction is clear?) will tend to encourage people to want to take risks.

Make people stop thinking that a speed limit tells them how fast they can drive.

Encourage people to take pride in their driving? This could be as simple as pulling people over for making small mistakes (and not necessarily something that requires a FPN!)

Start locking people up for being numpties?

Sean