Using the motorways I there is a large variance in speed travelled - from elderly people being a 45mph mobile chicane in their Nissan Micra to the Honda Civic (always black or red) in the fast lane bullying all and sundry at 90mph+. It seems to be the unwritten rule that '80 is OK' but 80 can get you a ticket...

Just chatting about this and wondered what you think? Is 70 still 'about right' or should it be changed to reflect new car design or denser traffic?

My opinion is that 70mph is still a good travelling speed and although around 10 years ago it was perhaps a bit slower than the roads allowed, these days it is about right. I will add that 70mph = 74mph on my speedo which feels quite brisk.

i think cars brake a lot better nowadays so it should be raised, this may aid in the better flow of traffic rather than all these 50mph cameras dotted aroung clogging the system up

Moot point anyway. There is so much traffic on the motorways when I'm on then at peak times I'd be happy to ever reach 70.

If it was 90mph people would just drive at 110mph. And you'd just get nobs in small 1000cc engined cars trying to do 100mph when it clearly isn't safe to do do. You'd still have nobs driving at 50 in the middle lane, and the increased differential in speed would be a recipe for disaster.

The problem is too many cars. When was the last motorway built? And how many more cars are there on the roads since it was built.

I'd be for variable speed limits depending on weather conditions. 90mph might be fine on a dry day but 40mph might be risky in the fog.

At the moment you can have 6" of snow and some plonker, probably in an X5, barrelling down the inside lane at 70mph legally (I suppose he could get nabbed for dangerous driving but what are the chances?).

I'd say 70 is a good limit.

When I had my Favorit/Felicia 65mph was its best speed for economy and wasn't that slow.

Breaking limits is waaay to easy in my current car, but i'm hoping I look good if I get clocked by a forward facing camera.

But it'll waft along at 70 and if the need comes squeeze the throttle and can get into gaps safely matching speed without holding anyone up.

i think a variable limit would be the most sensible option.

Although getting people to drive properly would be a beter start!!!

I dont mind people pulling in front of me provided I have enough time to slow down or theres a large enough gap then they can overtake and move back in and I can swiftly pass. For people to just indicate and plonk their car in front of mine is just bonkers!!

For any sort of measure people need to dive properly/according to the conditions first.

Watch out for the roadworks people. I was on the inside lane doing 70 and saw someone dash from in front of the truck!!

Variable limit is all well and good in theory but policing and enforcing it in the judicial system would be a nightmare.

I'd like the see the limit raised but can't see it happening. 70 is a good compromise.

How about for short term:

- no change to existing speed limits

- all motorway speed cameras removed and replaced by -->

- proper (human) traffic police patrolling the motorways. Speeding would *not* be their primary concern, but anti social, dangerous or improper use of the road network would be (tailgating, failing to yield / return to the left, middle lane owners club, driving at an inappropriate speed for the conditions (this is not the same as speeding)).

- i'd make failing to leave sufficient gap (at least 2 second rule) a more severe offence than doing 80 mph on a dry stretch of good condition, empty motorway with a 50 mph posted limit

Then for future improvement:

- new motorways (a little extension or slip road doesn't count, has to be a new full *motorway*) built, but we dont have money for them so make them toll roads to repay the loans and maintainance NB: no tolls added to existing roads, only to the new roads once built

- variable speed limits on the nations motorway network, unlike the existing adjustable advisory limits these would be enforceable

If i was in charge...

I would agree that we need some more motorways or improvement of them. There are many more cars than the 60's and so many roads are clogged these days.

its not the speed that needs looking at, its the drivers on the roads........

I think one way to help "ease" traffic is to Ban trucks from anything but the First Lane on Motorways during peak times.

They do this on the continent, i know a lot of the Autobahn is 2 lane but around the major cities it's 3 or even 4 yet the trucks are still restricted to lane 1. Yes i have been stuck in some good Jams but i lived in Germany for 3 years and during peak times you could still make good progress due to this restriction.

They should be restricted to Lane 1 on Dual Carriageways regardless. This would stop the Slug v Slug scenario where one truck is doing 55mph and because the other one can do 56mph he overtakes for 10 mins. To top that off on Motorways you then get a Coffin Dodger in the outside lane doing 57mph

I would also make it an offence to drive at less than 65mph on the Motorway/Dual Carriageway for cars.

Also the Middle Lane Owners Club would all get slapped with a £50 fine every time and the 3rd time it would be points.

Have you ever noticed though that as soon as a Marked Police car is around everybody remembers how to drive properly and what lane they should be in

its not the speed that needs looking at, its the drivers on the roads........

I agree with that totally too.

What doesn't seem right is that the speed limit on dual carriageways with junctions, roundabouts, traffic lights etc on them is the same as motorways with none of those hazards. It would seem logical to raise the motorway limit to 80 while keeping dual carriageways at 70.

IMHO 80/90mph (it's 85 in most of Europe), with a 50 or 60 mph limit in place when it's raining (or poor weather) like Germany and a set of restrictions of lorries, such as either no peak time use or left lane only (no overtaking) during peak hours.

I think modern cars are more than capable of doing 80/90 without a problem, but that this should be more strictly enforced. The wet/poor weather thing would help here too as people still think they can do 70/80/+ when it's foggy or throwing it down.

Here in Sweden the road authorities perform trials with variable speed limits, e.g. on the M road (E6) passing my home town. Here's a diagram from the evaluation (read more):

The blue bars show the results on "my" M road, the others refer to another road in another province.

E.g. under "difficult skidding conditions" average speed before the trial period was 95 km/h (60 mph). During those conditions speed limit will now be set to 60 km/h (37 mph). People don't slow down that much, but average speed is now reduced to 50 mph. Number of fatalities and and serious injuries have been reduced with (preliminary figures) 40 percent!

System is not foolproof. Thunderstorms may cause damage and shut down the LED speed signs, and then of course people can "legally" drive at 75 mph (120 km/h) even during a cloudburst. But no system can prevent people to strive for the Darwin Award

Edited 19 May, 201016 yr by swedishskoda

....

System is not foolproof. Thunderstorms may cause damage and shut down the LED speed signs, and then of course people can "legally" drive at 75 mph (120 km/h) even during a cloudburst. But no system can prevent people to strive for the Darwin Award

Interesting results there.

As for the Darwin, as long as they only remove themselves from the gene pool and not some innocent other. I guess that's the problem we face on busy roads hey.

I think 80 as a general limit. What SwedishSkoda's just demonstrated is a phenomonon called the "90th percentile rule" where, if drivers are left to select their own speed (free of the threat of prosecution), and you construct a distribution chart of their speeds, you can select a speed limit for the conditions by identifying the speed that 90% of all drivers are at or below.

As another case in point, one time I was going on holiday in York. Travelling South on the Saturday, I drove several mph faster down the A1 (as it was then) than I drove North up the same stretch on the next Wednesday in lower density traffic (but with more trucks, so I wanted to control my speed differential).

Raising or lowering the speed limit wont fix anything. Its the drivers that need improving not speed limits.

The police need to clamp down more on drivers not following the highway code instead of clamping down on people driving above the speed limit.

If drivers had more training and common sense then we wouldn't need a speed limit.

Edited 19 May, 201016 yr by faboka vrs

Raising or lowering the speed limit wont fix anything. Its the drivers that need improving not speed limits.

The police need to clamp down more on drivers not following the highway code instead of clamping down on people driving above the speed limit.

If drivers had more training and common sense then we wouldn't need a speed limit.

No but fixing the limits and including poor weather limits means it would be far easier to identify those people and for the police to have something to charge them with easily.

No but fixing the limits and including poor weather limits means it would be far easier to identify those people and for the police to have something to charge them with easily.

True. The no speed limit was more of a "ideal world" which we will never have.

So what happens when we identify these drivers? Give them a slap on the rist.

True. The no speed limit was more of a "ideal world" which we will never have.

No it's definately not true you were right the first time. The "it's easier to do it this way" holds no water when It's only very marginally harder to do it properly, we're not talking about an insurmountable task - clamp down on tailgating, clamp down on failure to return to the left, clamp down on anti social driving (too fast or too slow for the *CONDITIONS* NB: not too fast or too slow for the speed limit).

Wish one of the politcos backed by some senior police would have the balls to stand up and make the case for this. Theres not even any public discussion on this kind of thing currently.

...we're not talking about an insurmountable task ...

Well, keeping within speed limits (OK, plus a few %%% :cough:) is hardly an insurmountable task either, is it?

Edited 19 May, 201016 yr by swedishskoda

Well, keeping within speed limits (OK, plus a few %%% :cough:) is hardly an insurmountable task either, is it?

You've missed my point :S :(

You've missed my point :S :(

Don't think I did... I often wonder about postings suggesting that speed limits is some kind of infringement on human rights. Your post (unless I misunderstood it completely) backed up faboka vrs's statement that "Raising or lowering the speed limit wont fix anything. Its the drivers that need improving not speed limits. The police need to clamp down more on drivers not following the highway code instead of clamping down on people driving above the speed limit." Between the lines it says that speed limits can be abolished as long as we can get rid of irresponsible drivers

And pigs might fly. Speed limits are there for a (good) reason, simply because there are too many drivers who cannot adjust their speed (or distance to other vehicles) properly when left to their own judgment. And it would be a massive police surveillance indeed if all those should be pinned down efficiently - 'insurmountable' is probably the right word for it .

I admit that there are certain road stretching where the limit chosen looks inappropriate, but some things you just have to put up with. And if your life is completely ruined by the 70 mph limit on M roads maybe you should try to get another one

And when you want to take everything out of your car there's always Silverstone...

Edited 20 May, 201016 yr by swedishskoda

Speed limits are there for a (good) reason, simply because there are too many drivers who cannot adjust their speed (or distance to other vehicles) properly when left to their own judgment.

Surely it's a chicken and egg situation though? Many drivers cannot adjust their speed to the conditions because they've not been taught how to as it's easier to promote an "if you're doing this speed you're safe" message and keep lowering limits? Here we have an advert about running over children where the strap line is along the lines of "Hit a child at 40mph and there's an xx% chance they'll die, hit a child at 30mph and there's an xx% chance they'll live. It's 30 for a reason". So the message is, it's ok to drive at 30mph and hit children rather than 30mph is probably too fast in an area where there are children near the road, let's adjust speed down so that if they run into the road we can stop safely.

The carnage that happened back in 1997 on the M42 where fog "caused" a 160-car pile up is another example where many drivers were driving below at or the speed limit but still way too fast for the conditions. Perhaps the speed limit that day should have been set lower? Or maybe, we could just put a bit more focus on educating drivers so that we don't need to adjust the speed limit on every road in every condition for them - which sounds insurmountable also.

I'm personally undecided about a utopia without speed limits.

Chris

Agree totally there Chris

Also i don't think that Mute or Faboka had an underlying message that we don't need speed limits.

I think the point they were trying to make was that we should just keep the speed limits as they are and educate drivers on how to adjust there speed according to the conditions be that weather, traffic, road surface etc.