Safe Speed Forums

I noticed in my local paper that North Yorks County Council is applying for 30 mph speed limit orders for the village of Deighton near Northallerton. I know it well and checked my speed when driving through earlier this week - in normal driving I briefly touched 35 but otherwise was around 30 or below as the roads are narrow but capable of passing two cars.

My point is this: there are a few houses, a small church and a couple of farms; drivers are careful because of the nature of road though the village, so what purpose will the 30 mph limit serve? Will it in fact encourage drivers to drive at 30 or more where they would previously have used their common sense and driven at less than 30?

30mph is a good default speed limit for villages.

But these days they are probably applying them and and enforcing them for entirely the wrong reasons.

Somehow we need to put speed limits 'back in their place' as useful servants rather then incompetent masters.

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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 think of many "villages" with 30 limits in East Yorks don't fit my definition of a village at all, so I think its the definition of a village thats a problem.

A scattering of houses, very off set, from a straight, well alligned, high quality A-road with minimal junctions or hazards is what E Yorks council consider to be a "village" and thus worthy of a 30 limit. And suprise suprise these limits are often extended to the last house in the village some several hundered metres before the penultimate house making them even more ridiculous. And ofcourse, it is these so called villages that recieve a disproportionate amount of attention from the local SCP, because of a "speeding problem".

Certainly I think in your example it's probably best left as it is (I assume its currently NSL). I'd say an advisory speed limit or 20 or 25 would be more appropriate, depending on what speeds drivers typically do.

30 limits are good for some villages, others it may be too low, others it may be too high. It is definitely NOT good for safety though, when councils adopt a 30 limit in all villages policy - it encourages drivers to ignore 30 limits where it really isn't safe to exceed 30, especially if the last few 30 limits they've been through have been unreasonable.

Certainly I think in your example it's probably best left as it is (I assume its currently NSL). If a limit is really wanted I'd say an advisory speed limit or 20 or 25 would be more appropriate, obviously depending on what speeds drivers typically do.

30 limits are good for some villages, others it may be too low, others it may be too high. It is definitely NOT good for safety though, when councils adopt a 30 limit in all villages policy - it encourages drivers to ignore 30 limits where it really isn't safe to exceed 30, especially if the last few 30 limits they've been through have been unreasonable.

30's a completely arbitrary limit.

Some places too high, some WAY too low.

We have a village near here, (Oakhanger), where the limit at one end starts right at the first dwelling, but at the other end of the village, it starts about half a mile before with fields either side. So the idiots (sorry council highways officers), have had to put up 30 mph repeaters on this UNLIT section of raod road until the village is reached where there are streetlights.

Why are councils sooooo BARMY ? There is a need for the limit, but the way it has been done just invites it to be broken. Of course this is what they want so they can collect shed-loads of cash, I presume.

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

There is talk of making the "default" limit 20mph across the country.

There's an article on this subject on my website:

http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/villagespeeds.html

30 mph is fine as a limit in what you or I would think of as a village - the problem is that highway authorities are increasingly applying 30 limits to very scattered clusters of development.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I live in a village in rural West Cumbria. it is very spread-out covering quite a few square miles and the houses aren't especially close together. There is an "A" road running through the middle of it with a 60 (NSL) limit. The particular road my house is on is also NSL but is single track. Up to my front door, 40 is perfectly safe. For the next 300 yeards or so, there are two "S" bends only wide enough for one car and with high hedges either side. 20MPH is pushing it there! About 50 yards further on, it widens out and there are no turnings or entrances so 50 would be pretty safe. About 100 yards after that, there is a hump-backed bridge and, again, 20 is pushing it!

I think what I'm really trying to say is that blanket speed limits can never work. It would be like all the shops in the country selling one size of trousers. We need to educate drivers as to what is and is NOT a safe speed in any given combination of circumstances. We need to stop kidding ourselves that speed limits are a "black-and-white" issue. The problem is that this will take a whole generation of drivers to start working and cost a great deal of money. as no government is ever in place for a generation, they won't bother. - not when instead of spending money on training and better policing, they can MAKE money out of motorists who exceed a limit that came "out of a hat" anyway!

All speed limits are like that. Before we had bonkers enforcement it wasn't a problem. The speed limit provided a useful guide to hazard density and a means to prosecute the nutters.

These days we seem to be expecting to use the speed limit as a 'speed to drive at' and that's wrong wrong wrong. But I don't blame the speed limit, I blame enforcement practice.

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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 live in Suffolk and in about 1995 SCC introduced 30mph limits in all villages. The death rate went up noticably after that. There is an article on the ABD website with all the data.
[url]
http://www.abd.org.uk/suffolk_accident_trends.htm
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The problem is that the limits are often a long way from the built up parts of the villages and therefore far to low for the type of road. Things have actually got worse now as they have extended many limits even further.

Suffolk is a nightmare all the villages have 30 limits, but the real issue then is these are extended out from the village 1/2 a mile either way making a fool of the village limit.

There's one I think PeterE posted of a 20 Limit way outside the village area, it drops from an NSL just round a bend and then you're hit with an island, the shortest cycle lane, speed hump and more signs than you'd have time to read.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.