Safe Speed Forums

Aware of it?? It was the whole point of the post!!!
If we are expected to know when 60 is too fast, then we can also be capable of knowing when it is safe to travel faster than a posted limit.
This is possible, because limits are being posted which are lowered to allow for dumb inexperienced motorists, and offer the scameratti an oportunity to raise revenue, for the benefit of the Chancellor of the exchequer - NOT safety!
A policeman will judge whether a driver over the limit is driving safely or not. A camera does not. It's as simple as that for me, and you seem to accept that the speed limit is not always appropriate - but refuse to believe it could be too low.
A typical "Jones" the Brick attitude!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

You are both wrong. Listen and learn, I'm not arguing here, just telling you the facts. You are NOT expected to know that it it is safe to travel faster that the absolute top limit. Don't take my word for it, fellows, check it out on the code. I don't think you like it, but it is a fact.

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I stole this .sig

You silly silly boy. How do you think we know when it isn't safe to travel at the legal limit (i.e. we need to stay below it for safety reasons.)

Since the maximum safe speed varies continuously with conditions, and can be fairly finely specified, whenever it is safe to travel at or close to the limit almost all the time it must be safe to travel faster.

You can't have one without the other.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I can see what Steve is saying though Paul - the LAW says we cannot tell what is safe, although past posts from Basingwerk indicate he seems to be in agreement with it.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The simple answer to that is that you don't know when it isn't safe to travel at the legal limit. A lot of drivers think they know, but they don't. In fact, a lot of the time when you think you are safe, you are just in a random number game that may get you in the end.



Come on, SafeSpeed. Using this, you would argue that whenever you are safe to travel with one pint inside you, you must be safe to travel with another mouthful. One could argue that whenever you are safe to travel with 1.6 mm of tread depth, you must be OK with 1.5. All this is very true, another mouthful of beer or a 1/10 of a mill of rubber won’t make you unsafe, will it? But take your daft argument to it’s conclusions and limits are, well, not limited! But, luckily, the law does set the limits for tread depth, booze and speed and other things too, and like it or not, they are limits.

So spread the message and get with the programme.

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I stole this .sig

Basingwerk, I believe that you have missed the point, or misunderstood.

SafeSpeed's point was (correct me if I'm wrong, Paul) that:
IF we accept that the maximum safe speed for a particular journey is dynamic (i.e. it varies over time)
AND that it is (legal and) safe to travel at or close to the limit almost all the time
THEN there are also times when it is ACTUALLY safe to travel at above the legal limit.

So, using my own terminology, if we were to define an "acceptable risk factor", ARF, which is based on actual SAFETY, and NOT LEGALITY, then for many journeys we would find that the maximum safe speed for a given ARF is frequently higher than the legal speed limit.

As an aside, how the Real Risk (RR) against which an ARF is compared should be defined would probably make an interesting discussion point for another thread... perhaps we could even make a mathematical formula, though it would undoubtedly become rapidly very complex the more specific we became -
e.g. RR = Road Risc Components + Vehicle Risk Components + Driver Risk Components + Other Road Users Components + [etc.]
... with each one of these components needing to be broken down into smaller elements, some of which would be very difficult to measure, like driver attitude.
Very interesting nonetheless

Stackmonkey, how DARE you imply that Nanny doesn't know best what's good for you?

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'The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal, regardless of the letter of statute'

Rioman, Herts

In my view, after prolonged experience (>100,000km) of driving on de-restricted motorwars (Germany), it is not justifiable to impose a limit on drivers' speeds on a motorway at all, either electronic or otherwise. It's simply a bad thing for road safety, and enforcement makes things worse.

I know this may be a minority view, but I have extensive experience of driving in 12 different countries (2 in Africa, 3 in Asia, plus the US) and having no mandatory speed limit works best. The driver can relax, focus on driving, and set his/her own speed.

Enforcement needs to concentrate on driving which is dangerous:

-too fast in fog or poor viz
-tailgating or driving too close
-poor lane discipline
-evidence of inattention
-poor vehicle maintenance

and anyone who causes an accident, of any kind, should have the law come down on them like a ton of sh.t.

My view is also based on principle: that human beings should have, and be granted, freedom and responsibility. If someone abuses it, then sanctions kick in - but for the abusive individual, not the responsible majority.

I don't suppose it'll ever happen here. Nanny's in charge, and the ignorant control freaks rule.


Does anyone else see things this way?

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'The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal, regardless of the letter of statute'

Rioman, Herts

So you're saying that you don't know that it's not safe to travel at the legal limit, even when you're in a narrow street with parked cars and kids running around willy-nilly, you don't know that it's not safe to travel at the legal limit, even when it's snowing heavily, visibility's down to zero, and there's ice on the roads?

You're having a laugh, aren't you?

If you genuinely don't know when it's not safe to travel at the legal limit then you really should hand your licence in before you kill somebody.

Alternatively, you could start actually thinking about what you're saying, start using intelligent arguments and stop trying to score points and generally being a wind-up merchant.

Stop behaving like an idiot. We're genuinely trying to find ways of improving road safety here, and that includes protecting your backside. So if you can't add anything constructive to the debate then I would suggest you find somewhere else to play.

I think the point BW is trying to make, is that nobody really knows what unforseen event may lie around the next corner, or over the brow of the next hill, or appear from the sky.
The problem is, we canot go around, either driving or otherwise, acting as if some utterly unforseen and random event is going to coincide with our passage through its transient occurence. We'd never go anywhere or do anything.

But that's the whole point, Rigpig, besides that's not what he said
If you don't know what's around the next bend you do slow down and/or use extra caution until you do know.
Obviously, you cannot take all eventualities into account - you have to discount highly unlikely scenarios, otherwise you'd walk around wearing a crash helmet in case someone dropped a piano on your head.
If you're sufficiently well aware of hazards and significantly potential hazards ahead then you know whether or not you're doing a safe speed at the time - unless you're very inexperienced.
And if you're not sufficiently aware, then you should be - because if you're not sufficiently aware then no speed above zero is safe.
And awareness, concentration, attention or whatever you want to call it is by far the most important safety weapon in a drivers armoury. The level and frequency of hazards determine the risk, and the risk increases disproportionately with the level of hazard. And, as an aside, this brings another important point that reducing speeds may be counterproductive because it could vey well lead to increased intensity and frequency of hazards - people take more chances when they feel safe.
Awareness, positioning and speed can all be used to mitigate the risk, but awareness is the most important and speed the least important. The system is far more tolerant of speed errors than it is of awareness errors.
Where a high level of hazard exists it's important to reduce speed, but far more important to increase awareness. We don't make a safe (or relatively safe) situation any safer by slowing down, rather we slow down because of increased danger. There's a very subtle, but highly important distinction here.

If we all drove around at the limit wherever and whenever it was physically possible to do so, and only ever reacted when there was something already in our path, there would be absolute carnage on the roads - which would make the current casualty rate look like nothing.
Driver awareness is absolutely crucial to road safety. It's the negative feedback loop which prevents the casualty output from increasing exponentially. We mess with that feedback loop at our peril.

Cheers
Peter

Pete,

That was a truly brilliant post, thankyou.

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

That's precisely what I meant.
Trouble is, I couldn't be arsed to sit down and type it all out...life's too short

If they limit cars to 70 then what will they do with all the camera vans

I think this is the most ridiculous idea and most motoring groups have already said there are times when you have to speed up to get out of the way of an incident, that is going to be great when you can only max out at 70 MPH.

What happens when you want to go on a track day or the continent

Perhaps a better view is that Speed Limits are a Bible, and those that preach unquestioning obedience and blind faith are the Extreme Religious Fundamentalists. They cannot be wrong, any who disagree are on the side of the devil/corrupt western capitalists (please substitute demon/heritic/anti-christ of your choice) to be destroyed through any means possible, or at the very least converted to the true faith through threat, punishment and indoctrination.

Don't get me wrong - it is entirely possible to feel that it is or is not not safe to travel at the legal limit or to be sure youself, but you don't know until the outcome whether it would have been safe.

No. Safety is relational to risk, and all driving has risk, some of which cannot be determined at all by the driver, and some of which is mis-interrepted by the driver. This is just the way it is, not my opinion.

The only thing a person knows when they are driving is that they themselves are in risk and a risk to others and others are a risk to them. All other things are subjective and cannot be known nor can you show that you know them. This is not rocket science!

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I stole this .sig

That's close to the truth. The site is full of car-luvvin, Top-Gear watching sinners, and needs to be balanced out by conservative, law-abiding Curmudgeons!



I couldn't have put it better, except to refer potential speeders to Ezekiel, chapter 38:


OK, I added the last bit!

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I stole this .sig

You are driving along the motorway at 70MPH something happens to your side, you accelerate to clear it and end up doing 85MPH as a result.

1. Speed Camera Van clocks you and done for speeding

2. Police Car sees you, pulls you gives you a listens to what you have to say and uses his discretion as he has seen what happened and the reason why you sped up. Perhaps he has seen you driving at 70 all the way along the motorway

Thanks for trying to sort this out, RigPig. Although I can't admit to being wrong (that would be unthinkable), I do owe Pete317 an apology for my misleading language when I said that


I should have specified that there is a distinction between the speed limit, and the legal limit.

I do not really have to spell this out, but the speed limit is the absolute max, while the legal limit is the lesser of the legal limit and the maximum safe speed.

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I stole this .sig