lynladd wrote:
My instructor has said there is hardly a trucker in the land that will drive at 40 mph on national speed limit, single carriageway roads, mainly because it causes too much danger for other road users. It used to be, apparently, that the police did not enforce this crazy idea either as they could see how dangerous it was. Nowadays though, speed cameras can be set up to check the speed of different vehicles, so whereas a car could pass doing 60 mph and not get 'flashed', an HGV would get caught! Bloody sneeky I think and yet another con to get money out of innocent motorists!
Whilst i agree with everything your instructor says he is maybe a bit out of touch. Unfortunatly a lot of truckers are now sticking to the 40mph speed limit on single carriageway roads. Whats worse is because they are sitting on the cruise control at 40mph, no power and slug up hills at 30mph, so ends up massive tailbacks.
Police enforcement to me anyways always depended on the road and the police force. As someone just passing your test i'd be keeping to the 40mph until you know the score with certain roads. Some forces will enforce it and enforce it strictly, just passing your test and getting caught speeding wouldn't be very good, police maybe pass it on to the traffic commisionar, who may take a really dim view of it.
Before you think i am pro the 40mph and stick to it, all i'll say is i drive for a Northern Irish company and have to use 100 miles of single carriageway A75. So you can decide if i stick to the 40mph limit or not.
The 40mph speed limit is out of date, back to days pre-ABS and good brakes. Also goes back to days where longer distance single carriageway roads like the A9, A75, A1 to name a few where a lot more dangerous, there has been numerous improvements to a lot of these routes. The improvement in trucks and on certain roads has made the 40mph speed limit very dated.
It was discussed in parliment, the issue of increasing the speed limit for HGV's to 40mph on single carriageway roads, supposedly Tesco were pushing for an increase in the speed limit. The MP's discussing it admited modern trucks would be safe at 50mph but refused any increase on the grounds what about older trucks, company using older trucks would then be dangerous. This was a complete cop out, because of the massive amount of miles covered trucks get old very quickly. Majority of trucks on the road these days are going to prob be from this century, somthing like a V reg from the 1990's would be considered really old. ABS and power steering has been mandatory since about the early 1990's prob very rare for HGV's that old to be on the road.
Supposedly on the A75, most of the accidents with trucks going off the road etc... they find that the truck was keeping to the legal 40mph limit and sitting on the cruise control, with little stimulation drivers loose concentration and end up off the road.