Motorway roadwork speed limit

[catso]

Guybrush said:

I'm just amazed that it took so many years for them to work out that higher speeds results in safer more relaxed driving and less bunching. I wonder how many years it will take for them to work out that this also applies to all other parts of the road system.

It is to be welcomed and maybe, just maybe it's a start of sensible thinking regarding the setting of speed limits, rather than just blanket lowering them everywhere?

I won't be holding my breath though.

[B'stard Child]

King Herald said:

robinessex said:

So when does 10mph get added to the motorway speed limit then? I get bored at the present one, so it makes sense, as just acknowledged by Highways England

Nobody other than trucks drive below 70 at the moment. I can sit at a GPS indicated 70mph and EVERYTHING but big lorries and caravans comes past me.

I suggest you buy a white car and cover it with reflective stickers in a battenburg pattern and repeat your experiment

[ferrariF50lover]

"I like the idea because it means I'll spend less time sat next to lorries, which is dangerous".

Except it won't, because a sensible following distance in those conditions is greater than the length of a lorry and, as far as I know, you're still in charge of the throttle. If some of our dimmer citizens are choosing to put themselves in a position where they sit next to lorries, I'm not sure a new speed limit (especially one revised in an upwards direction) is the answer.

[Sgt Bilko]

I can’t see it happening to be honest. The temporary steel barrier deflects quite a bit on 50mph stretches when it gets hit but usually contains the vehicle. At 60mph, I cant see it doing its job. It will come down to the supplier and what they rate it for during installations at road work sites. If they don’t recommend it and a lesser spotted worker gets hit, someone at Highways England will be up for Corporate Manslaughter.

[Engineer792]

Sgt Bilko said:

I can’t see it happening to be honest. The temporary steel barrier deflects quite a bit on 50mph stretches when it gets hit but usually contains the vehicle. At 60mph, I cant see it doing its job.

Would that be hit by cars, or 44-tonners?

[Sgt Bilko]

Both depending on the angle at strike and size (corsa less so than a full size family car obv)

[Engineer792]

It's good then that they're limited to 56mph

It's also better that a car doesn't go out of control in the first place, than maybe / maybe not go through the barrier

Edited by Engineer792 on Sunday 22 October 21:28

[C.A.R.]

ferrariF50lover said:

"I like the idea because it means I'll spend less time sat next to lorries, which is dangerous".

Except it won't, because a sensible following distance in those conditions is greater than the length of a lorry and, as far as I know, you're still in charge of the throttle. If some of our dimmer citizens are choosing to put themselves in a position where they sit next to lorries, I'm not sure a new speed limit (especially one revised in an upwards direction) is the answer.

That's not how I would interpret that comment.

The real issue with "stress levels" sat in 50mph roadworks is that often HGVs will be going a speed greater than what would be 50mph indicated on a speedometer. This means that they bunch up and you end up parallel with one for long distances- which is uncomfortable / stressful. Then of course you get the situation where if another lorry gets to within two car lengths of another, it simply MUST overtake it, even if that manoeuvre will take miles to complete. Side by side elephant racing, great. Now everyone behind has no view of the road ahead and the surrounding signage - again, stressful.

I drove the section of the M3 at 55mph and even then the difference was noticeable. Distances between cars greater, ability to overtake the HGVs with more ease instead of trying to speed up a bit because suddenly the gradient suits them better.

I do 30k+ a year on our roads and any attempts to improve flow of traffic are welcomed by me!

[vonuber]

The lanes widths are narrower within roadworks than normal, that is part of the reason the speed limit is lowered.

[ashleyman]

I've always been told the lower speed limit is because 1. the lanes are narrower and 2. the safety barriers are only rated up to 50mph.

One would think the safety barriers are rated to more to accommodate those speeding motorists otherwise whats the point in a 'safety' barrier.

Personally, I welcome higher speed limits over the whole road network, and especially on motorways and sections of roadworks. The 50 limit means nothing to anyone but cars as trucks just sit on the limiter the whole time. I've even see trucks going in L3 which is a big no no to get past cars doing 50.

If you set cruise control to 52mph which is an indicated 49/50mph on the GPS whilst in Lane 1 lorries will pass you in Lane 2 and sometimes in Lane 3 as I witnessed on Friday.

I for one welcome higher speeds in roadworks and just generally on the motorway.

[Engineer792]

vonuber said:

The lanes widths are narrower within roadworks than normal, that is part of the reason the speed limit is lowered.

All the more reason not to spend too much time sitting next to a lorry then

[Dog Star]

ferrariF50lover said:

"I like the idea because it means I'll spend less time sat next to lorries, which is dangerous".

Except it won't, because a sensible following distance in those conditions is greater than the length of a lorry and, as far as I know, you're still in charge of the throttle. If some of our dimmer citizens are choosing to put themselves in a position where they sit next to lorries, I'm not sure a new speed limit (especially one revised in an upwards direction) is the answer.

It's not sitting next to or behind them. I think this change is about not having the bds tailgating you in their 44 tonne behemoths.

If traffic flow falls below the threshold where trucks are keeping up with normal traffic then what I see day in, day out is dreadful tailgating - I saw one on Friday that was following the car in front on the M62 and there was literally 2 feet between them which was simply extraordinary. I see this many times daily - this is in speed restricted zones and all lanes are moving the same speed, the car is not "obstructing the truck" and shouldn't "get out of the way" - as soon as the restriction is lifted the car will be off. The truck drivers are just being fat, sweaty, bullying s. I am extremely careful to keep other cars between me and them if I'm in front. I'm sick to death of watching them do it. I don't know if they're mentally subnormal, or just bullies or what.

I dare say that some will remember this incident....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiLj3MsLCrw
The trucker claims he couldn't see the car was there. Fair enough, I have no reason to doubt him - what I find alarming is that every day I see trucks on the M62 following cars (and other trucks) at distances similar to the width of that car - how can they see the brake lights?

So the rise to 60 should see cars able to outpace trucks - you see this already on the M62 smart section, there's a big difference when they go up to 60 from 50, at this point the trucks drop back and pull in.

No doubt some apologists will be along to ask how I expect my groceries to get to the shelves in my local supermarket, or to state that if the trucker is late then he'll exceed the time on his tacho. All of which is patent bks - tailgating, 10 mile elephant racing overtakes etc etc do not get your groceries etc to the shelves any quicker.

[thebraketester]

eccles said:

Jazzy Jag said:

MitchT said:

Don't really mind the 50 limit when work is happening but why the hell isn't it suspended when no one is there doing anything?

Exactly!

I drove down the M6 from Liverpool a few weeks ago at 10 pm.
About 20 + miles of 50 limit and not a single worker in sight.

I think quite often it's because the safety features of that bit of road may be compromised.

.... and lanes are often much narrower. Still annoying when the roads are empty though

[Shakermaker]

IanH755 said:

eccles said:

I think quite often it's because the safety features of that bit of road may be compromised.

Which is odd because you can drive at 60mph past oncoming traffic on most A Roads with no safety features between you without issue yet as soon as it's a motorway with everyone around you going in the same direction and a barrier between you and the oncoming traffic, the speed has to drop to only 50mph.

The logic of that has always confused me.

Me too.

Sure, there is a lot more traffic on the motorway probably, but I can legally do 60mph along the road home from work where I might meet horses, pedestrians, cyclists, tractors etc, all on a road that is only just 5 metres wide and has no verge or pavement alongside it, just a ditch and some hedgerows.

Of course that probably means its due a limit of 40mph sometime soon.

[Otispunkmeyer]

mickmcpaddy said:

Its the workers they need to speed up not the traffic. You can easily set the cruise to 57 or so and sail past everything anyway.

This really. It wouldn't be so bad, but roadworks seem to go on and on for a very long time and you never see more than a smattering of worker at any one time. The bit I don't get is why they have to cone off miles and miles and miles of road and then don't have the capacity or man power to actually work on it all. So you get a bit of activity in the first mile and then just cones and nothing for the next 14!

Don't know why it takes them so long. In the time its taken them to do whatever little they seem to have done at J24 on the M1, the guys building the new rail freight terminal and warehousing plot off the back of the Airport seem to have managed to move a whole road and excavated a moons worth of dirt before starting on the foundations. They're really motoring!

[snuffy]

This will never happen.

Why ?

Because whilst you can do all the academic studies you like that show 60 is safer than 50, it goes against received wisdom. And those that kick up the biggest fuss are those that follow received wisdom which tells them that 50 must be safer than 60 (regardless of the facts)

[BoRED S2upid]

Otispunkmeyer said:

This really. It wouldn't be so bad, but roadworks seem to go on and on for a very long time and you never see more than a smattering of worker at any one time. The bit I don't get is why they have to cone off miles and miles and miles of road and then don't have the capacity or man power to actually work on it all. So you get a bit of activity in the first mile and then just cones and nothing for the next 14!

Don't know why it takes them so long. In the time its taken them to do whatever little they seem to have done at J24 on the M1, the guys building the new rail freight terminal and warehousing plot off the back of the Airport seem to have managed to move a whole road and excavated a moons worth of dirt before starting on the foundations. They're really motoring!

That’s the bigger issue with roadworks the miles and miles of no work. Ok cordon off 10 miles to work on 1 but vary the speed limit down to 60 for 13 miles down to 50 for the half miles when there are actually people doing any work. People would be slightly less pissed off with this than trundling along at 50 for no reason.

[Shakermaker]

BoRED S2upid said:

Otispunkmeyer said:

This really. It wouldn't be so bad, but roadworks seem to go on and on for a very long time and you never see more than a smattering of worker at any one time. The bit I don't get is why they have to cone off miles and miles and miles of road and then don't have the capacity or man power to actually work on it all. So you get a bit of activity in the first mile and then just cones and nothing for the next 14!

Don't know why it takes them so long. In the time its taken them to do whatever little they seem to have done at J24 on the M1, the guys building the new rail freight terminal and warehousing plot off the back of the Airport seem to have managed to move a whole road and excavated a moons worth of dirt before starting on the foundations. They're really motoring!

That’s the bigger issue with roadworks the miles and miles of no work. Ok cordon off 10 miles to work on 1 but vary the speed limit down to 60 for 13 miles down to 50 for the half miles when there are actually people doing any work. People would be slightly less pissed off with this than trundling along at 50 for no reason.

I haven't seen it recently, but a few years ago I recall seeing signs by sets of cones that said "Roadworks still in place whilst road surface cures" or words to similar effect.

Of itself, that's fine. You don't want thousands of cars per hour driving over your nice new bit of tarmac before it has properly set, that would be pointless.

But the mere fact that they had to put these signs up in the first place, seemed to be as a result of people complaining about roadworks that otherwise take far too long.

When you are a regular user of a road, you should know when they have laid the new tarmac, because you probably saw them do it. Leave it 2-3 days to settle, come back, inspect it, and then take all the cones away. No-one would complain about that who actually used the road every single day - sure, a few infrequent users would to begin with but their journeys elsewhere would no doubt be improved

[Digga]

Another of the things I've noticed with the motorway network congestion is that the incidence of vehicle breakdowns seems to increase when traffic grind to a halt or stop-start crawl. If you watch the motorway Twitter feeds, the numbers of vehicle breakdowns on the motorway network are huge and - as was the case the last trip down the M1 - just one HGV or PSV conked out can knock out one or even two lanes as they attempt to safely recover the vehicle.

Granted, the breakdown in and of itself is usually a symptom of either bad luck (punctures), poor maintenance, or crass stupidity (like the motorist prosecuted last week for running out of fuel and stranding their kids in a live lane of the M1 in Derbyshire) but nonetheless, the congestion is often the catalyst or exacerbating factor.

[boxedin]

Or retain the 50mph limit.

On a three / two lane carriageway ban HGVs from coming out of Lane 1 and all the stress of having HGVs at 56mph will no longer exist.

On a four lane carriageway ban HGVs from coming out of Lane 1 / 2 and all the stress of having HGVs at 56mph will no longer exist.