Safe Speed Forums

Simpler, but expensive.

Just remember that every street on every housing estate in the country would need to have 30 repeaters, as well as all of the A and B-roads in urban areas (otherwise there'd be people complaining that there were no repeater signs to get off a speeding conviction in a residential area.)

That's an awful lot of repeaters which need putting up. If this were to become mandatory, I can see council tax rises beyond even the current rises.

not if the law says "the limit is 30 unless there's a sign to the contrary."

RichardB touches on the reason I actually agree with the way the law is framed currently. 30 repeaters need to be either mandatory or prohibited, there can be no grey area.

Imagine if 50% of 30 limits had repeaters. What message would you then get if a road didn't have any? Is it 30 or isn't it? The more roads that were fitted with them the more chance you'd have of wrongly interpreting the lack of them as meaning a streetlit road was unrestricted.

As it is, if a road is streetlit then we assume 30 unless proven otherwise, which gives us the best possible chance of hanging onto our licences! Let's keep the signage as simple as we can, rather than encouraging more of it.

The problem has only really arisen due to over-zealous enforcement of 30 limits on roads where a higher limit would be sensible and appropriate. If we could stop that then the problem would go away.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Sorry forgot to put it in a different type text! thought the link would explain all.

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My Other car is a FH12 Globetrotter!

Surely if it was about monitoring our driving habits then maybe they should consider a wee bit of flexibility when they catch offending motorist, perhaps in the form of a written warning you could get 2 warnings and then they could start sending you NIP's, it would certainley make the motoring public look at camera's in a different light.

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My Other car is a FH12 Globetrotter!

I hope that the people who put this up on the website had this guy's permission to do so. I would hate to think that a letter I wrote protesting my innocence of an offence, with full name and address etc. would be posted on a SCP website, especially if it was without a right to reply as appears to be the case here.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Indeed, if he were to plead NG and go to court would he have a defence that the publication of his details by the Prosecution denied him the right to a fair trial?

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

You’re quite right... I didn’t look at the link and that’s why I thought it was a genuine NIP. The trouble is you don't know if it is genuine.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

The last statement is the crux of the matter. The over-zealous enforcement has lead to a problem that didn't exist before. There are very many roads that have street lights that clearly aren't intended to be 30 mph limits, but which don't have repeater signs. There are others where the repeater signs are so far apart, it's difficult to know whether it's supposed to be 30 or another limit, so some drive at 30, others at a higher limit. Other roads have lighting that doesn't meet the requirements of street lighting, so a 30 mph limit does not apply. Some drivers may know that and some don't. Drivers have traditionally used common sense, and driven at an appropriate speed - but with automated enforcement, it's just not possible to rely on this any more. The whole system is an absolute farce.

I simply don't buy the excessive cost argument (From a local/national Government standpoint, anyway).

IF you believe that breaking the speed limit costs lives, as the authorities persistently claim, and that the cost of each fatality is £1.4m, then there's a fair pot of money to go for by installing repeater signs. Each one would only need to be at, say, 600 yards. I would guess that they would cost around £100 each to install, so that's 14,000 of them for each fatality - covering a total area of, say, 3,000 miles of roads. I don't have a feel for how large an area that would be, but you're probably looking at a small city or large town. One life saved in a whole city to pay for the lot.

On the other hand, if you don't believe that breaking the speed limit costs lives, then yes, they may not be needed, but then rigorous enforcement of the speed limit is, at best, a waste of time.

The law as it stands on repeater signs, and the rigorous enforcement policy is totally incompatible with one another.

That's a shame. It could have got interesting.

None of this ever seems to cause problems in France, where some roads have repeaters and others don't. The rule there is that the 50kph limit applies within the bounds of a town or village delimited by the signs that announce the name of the settlement, unless the limit is overridden by other speed limit signs. Where the limit might be in doubt, becuase perhaps of the nature of the road, there tend to be repeaters.

ISTM that there are two things we need to get right.

1. There must always be a sign of some sort where the there is a change of speed limit. The presence of street lighting alone should not be sufficient. I was fooled by this myself recently, where a road that had previously been a 40 limit was reduced to 30 simply by removing the 40 signs. It does have street lights. But occasional users of this road might not be aware that the limit had changed unless it was brought to their attention by a sign.

2. Repeaters should be allowed where they would serve a useful purpose, even within 30 limits. We do not need to mandate that they are needed in ALL 30 limits, only that they should be allowed where they might serve as a useful reminder.

The sort of road that Camera Partnerships refer to by the technical name of "a nice little earner".

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

14 wheels said"Surely if it was about monitoring our driving habits then maybe they should consider a wee bit of flexibility when they catch offending motorist, perhaps in the form of a written warning you could get 2 warnings and then they could start sending you NIP's, it would certainley make the motoring public look at camera's in a different light."

Or get rid of the cameras and partnerships , and cameras , go back in time to when we had traffic police ( as in Durham) , who used to do something like this , only they didn't earn the government as much money.

Such as those areas where cameras operate.
In this case, it should be a requirement. After all, if cameras are located in high danger areas, then the minimum that should be required is a reminder of the speed limit that they are supposed to be ensuring compliance with. Prohibiting the use of repeaters in such areas is absurd.

Anyway, there are a variety of opinions here, so I've started a new poll here.

- these sort are starting to be seen more, but very cnically - as they often appear just before a scam, meaning a lot of people who think that the limit is 40 have to slam on the anchors or get a ticket.