80mph motorway to be tested in Kent (M20)

[Eighteeteewhy]

No official confirmation but the M20 is set to trial the 80mph limit. I hope it goes well and spreads to other areas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-17455760

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[jbi]

[redacted]

[TheTurbonator]

Won't anybody think of the children?

[Zed Ed]

Why does it need testing?

So what are the new police guidelines; still 10% + 2mph?

[VolvoT5]

Brake have to be one of the most pointless and tiresome organisations out there. How they can claim to be a charity when they are clearly just an anti-car, anti-motorist, political pressure group I don't know.

It is of course extremely sad when anyone dies as the result of a motor accident, but it is impossible to reduce all risk from life completely.

Given modern cars safety equipment and powerful brakes, I think 80mph is perfectly sensible. Let us be honest here, most people drive at an indicated 80-85mph in good conditions anyway.

Edited by VolvoT5 on Friday 23 March 08:17

[faster_stueys]

Zed Ed said:

Why does it need testing?

So what are the new police guidelines; still 10% + 2mph?

Sadly not, the stories are all saying 80mph with zero tolerance. No doubt enforced with average speed cameras, so probably going to make no difference at all to motorway speeds.....

[Fat Albert]

Are you safer at 70 in a 1965 Ford Anglia or at 100 in a Ford Focus?

Two points to consider:

1. your likelihood to have an accident; ie the tyres/brakes/handling of the Focus would allow you to stop or avoid many situations that the Anglia couldn't

2. If you do arrive at the scene of the accident the Focus will protect its occupants a lot better than the Anglia

[jbi]

faster_stueys said:

Zed Ed said:

Why does it need testing?

So what are the new police guidelines; still 10% + 2mph?

Sadly not, the stories are all saying 80mph with zero tolerance. No doubt enforced with average speed cameras, so probably going to make no difference at all to motorway speeds.....

who is going to pay for the average speed cameras?

[58warren]

Well I'm all in favour of the limit being raised, but lately I've had to commence a regular commute from Kent to Surrey (40 mile journey each way) and I've actually reduced my speed considerably on the motorway to try and save a bit of fuel as it's costing a fortune each week. I'm happy to travel at around 55-60mph with all the lorries! I still have to get through Junction 5 of the M25 before 6:00am every morning though to avoid the traffic build up.

My only other option is by train, which takes considerably longer and costs even more.

It'd be interesting to know if any other PH'ers are driving 'more economically' in their day to day journeys. Yes I know it's not very PH - economy matters!!!

[5lab]

Fat Albert said:

Are you safer at 70 in a 1965 Ford Anglia or at 100 in a Ford Focus?

Two points to consider:

1. your likelihood to have an accident; ie the tyres/brakes/handling of the Focus would allow you to stop or avoid many situations that the Anglia couldn't

2. If you do arrive at the scene of the accident the Focus will protect its occupants a lot better than the Anglia

Probably the anglia. The thing that makes a huge difference is distance travelled at speed. If 2 cars are side by side, one doing 70 and the other 100, and both see something at the same time, the position at which the 70mph car is stationary, the 100mph car would still be doing 70mph! Granted in your example the 70mph car has worse brakes/tyres, but I suspect the difference would be similar.

I'm all for an 80 limit, but I think any more than the would cause too big a gap in speed between lorries and cars

[Carfiend]

I safe fuel money by living closer to work than I used to. Of course it doesn't help when I chopped in the diesel alfa for a skyline as a daily drive... back to square one.

[cptsideways]

Possibly the worst bit of motorway in the UK to trial it on!

Busy interchanges, lots of elephant racing from foreign trucks making it one lane only for cars for many miles.


I think they've thought about this

[so called]

I've come to the conclusion in recent times that more people are driving upto but not over the 70mph limit simply because there are so many cameras about, so much less of the 70 + 10%.
If the authority have come to the same conclusion and so can now raise the speed to 80mph in the belief that drivers will still stay within that limit then maybe it will happen.
If they believe that drivers will do the 80 +10% then I dont think it will.

[mcflurry]

That's a 80-90mph section anyway outside of peak Elephant racing hours (until the cameras go flash).

Can't see it making a huge difference TBH

[SystemParanoia]

should have made it the m5 or the m6

[mcflurry]

Brake said:

"However, Brake, the road safety charity, has accused the government of "gambling with people's lives" and has called on it to abandon its plans for 80mph speed limits."

How come all the children in Germany aren't all dead yet, with their derestricted roads?

[jamei303]

They are trailing it only between junctions 4 and 7. This is far too small a stretch to see if it will have any impact on casualties. Less than one person per year has died on that stretch since 2001. So, if no one happens to die in the year of the trial, then an 80mph will be judged totally safe, and if two people happen to die it will be deemed far too dangerous to roll out nationwide.

They really need to trial it on a much larger bit of road, like the entire M4 or something.

[C8PPO]

I'm 100% in favour of upping the limit, but that stretch of the M20 is just about the worst possible place to pilot this. I live close the the start point (J4). Reasons are:

• It's a relatively short stretch of road within the proposed route
• It's busy at the best of times
• It's a 20mph crawl morning and evening
• There are multiple, complex, non-standard junctions within a short distance. Difficult even to describe; there are 3 lanes to 4, 4 lanes to 3, and two of the junctions are sectioned off behind a concrete barrier with a parallel 2-lane carriageway, on which the speed can be controlled differently to the main carriageway. Just prior to that you have a choice of 5 lanes, 3 for the live carriageway, one to filter into the barriered section, one to filter off at J5. Very non-standard, as I said.*
• the list goes on....

So, you could take the view that this is doomed to fail - or, you could take the view that if this section survives the trial, then any motorway is capable of running an 80mph limit. But IMO it's very much less than ideal.

And I don't believe it's just the M20? There are half a dozen or so other stretches with the same camera tech which are also going to be trialled.


* in fact the Kent Highways designers seem to be on acid half the time - a good number of the junctions around here, including the one at which I was t-boned this week, are absurdly complex and inefficient.

[MC Bodge]

Would people prefer
a) the more "British" way of having an arbitrary 70mph limit that is widely ignored and loosely enforced, within the bounds of a gentlemen's agreement and a sense of sporting fair play,

or

b) A rigidly enforced arbitrary 80mph limit?

If this trial is "successful", will SPECS cameras looking for average speed of >80mph be fitted to all motorways?

If so, driving 100s of miles without cruise control could become very unpleasant.

Edited by MC Bodge on Friday 23 March 08:55

[MC Bodge]

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