Safe Speed Forums

I know. Pete317 - go with the electric buggy! As for your question, one of the main reasons why drivers “should” obey the speed limit is because of the effect their actions have on other, law abiding road users. For example I basically try to obey the limit, yet I have to negotiate new speed bumps, mini roundabouts, lights and cameras and all manner of other curbs designed to catch speeders. The pressure on the road authorities to install these devices comes because of blatant piss taking among the speeding community, while law abiding drivers like me have to put up with all this crap as well. The best way to release the pressure for new curbs is for more of the selfish speeders to get with the programme and take the pledge. That way, the camera will be redundant and we can all get back to normal!

If the authorities and law abiding motorists said “go ahead, speed if you think it's safe”, everybody would have a different idea about what “safe” means. So it just doesn't work the way you say. We have to say “stick within the limit and obey the law” - anything else is incoherent and full of dispute. I know the law is inconvenient when you want to break it, and that you hate being reminded of that, but you have a choice now – take the pledge, or go ahead, break the limit, and get points. The availability of information on speeders is set to grow, and the authorities are not going to throw that data away, because they know that casual speeding is the thin end of the wedge, and results in a generally rotten and impatient driving culture overall, which good drivers can survive but which is too risky for the average or poor drivers. So the limit is a balance, reached by consensus and decades of expert opinion, as you already know, and it doesn't hurt any of us to stay within it.

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Hmm - that looks like another idiotic outburst to me! Try again.

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This of course ignores all the totally ridiculous speed limits set by pig-ignorant local councillors over the past 15 years.

Far too many limits are not set by consensus but by malevolent ignorance.

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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

A couple of observations on your comments and the issue in general if I may, although I did previosuly state we should end our discourse on the grounds of unlikliness to agree

Freedom is an meaning charged word, and a very precious concept. Most Britons actually have more freedom than they know what to do with, and probably more so than we've ever previously enjoyed. Lets face it, society doesn't actually demand an awful lot from us as individuals by way of compliance with rules and regulations does it?
But sadly most of us who've grown up in this blissful comfort don't realise just how much freedom we have and as a result we've a tendency to lose our persepctive on things by, for example, confusing the petty enforcement of a simple road traffic regulation with a loss of freedom. Before you know it we're labelling a bloke with a speed camera as a member of an organisation which brought terror to millions - an experience most of us have absolutely no concept of and thus by association, IMHO, have no right to even try to draw.

Secondly, very little that we do as individuals occurs in an absolute vaccum. The rules of the road apply to all regular motorists of whatever skill level in equal measure and it can only really be this way. Driving at speed may be a skill some of us possess, but once sanction starts being given to a few to drive at 'piss take' speeds we can be quite sure that the teeny weeny wedge would begin to grow and grow until those not so skilled start believing they should be able to do it and escape punishment as well.

PS: If I get nailed on my Honda riding at 'piss take' speeds, I too would probably be in a spot of bother. I'm no saint Dave, and perhaps a bit of a hypocrite to boot - I like a good blat on the bike once in a while But I just feel we have to recognise that, in the eyes of the law, we are all equals and have no right to demand treatment that effectively raises us above other individuals. Surely this is what being a member of a society, and not just a bunch of selfish individuals, is all about?

You still haven't answered the question of what relevance sticking religiously to speed limits has to road safety - instead you come up with BW argument #166786. And when we flatten that argument you'll simply come up with another one, won't you?

To get back to the primary argument at the base of all this crap, you still haven't answered my question on this thread

Paul,

I have to commend you on the manner in which you have responded to BW. It was an incredibly well thought out & lucid post and I heartily congratulate you on not going down to "gutter" level in your response.

If I had been you & BW was standing in front of me and said that, I would simply have knocked the pompous c**t out without even thinking about it.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

I agree wholeheartedly,

But individual governments are temporal, they display a passionate aversion to anything which is expensive, complex and does not give results until well past the time when those results may have a beneficial career influence .

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Erm, tell me that again with regards to ID cards, please?

I think the difference is in the ability of the subject to define a place in history. ID cards will do that, improved driver training won't.

Whether the history book will praise or criticise Blair for their introduction, we'll have to wait to see. But either way it will warrant a chapter or two.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

I could get behind that idea - many of you dispute the process for setting limits. But once they are set, it is our specific duty to do our best obey them. If more of us paid a little more attention to that detail, they could put the cameras and curbs away.

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If you mean "coot", don't be ashamed to say it, Prixxer, although I'm a little too young to be an old coot!

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Quick search to find Pete317's important question, which turns out to be -



Which I have never seen before! But the answer is that I never conceded defeat on that point, because I haven’t got a single post on the page in his back link! The thread appears to be a long dispute with a person called 'stevei', who has no connection to me at all! So some confusion there.

Anyway, earlier, I did demonstrate that your (Pete317’s) original claim, that "your risk increases less than linearly with speed, i.e. twice the speed increases the risk less than twice" is utterly false in some circumstances, and I told you not to make it without clarifying that.

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Yse, bt th speeling leafes room for imrpvment – addmitted, apssed ,spount ,understnad?

Do I detect the emergence of a clique - the pugilistic Gixxer allied with the "Quiet Man" PaulF - we could call them "The Agnry Mne", perhaps?

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basingwerk, I think I have the solution. We should keep you happy if we all get one of these:



0-60 in 4.5 secs and max speed of 105mph , but hey, it's electric so that's okay isn't it?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Don’t make me laugh! This might be more “sociable”!

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My "two pennorth": still sticking to all speed limits preparing for IAM test, still going over by 2-3 mph occasionally despite glancing at speedo every 10-15 seconds, still thinking how ridiculously slow some speed limits are. If I was buying a new car I would be prepared to pay the £1,300 extra this new GPS speed limiter would cost but not on my existing one worth £2,000. I am a bit p*ssed off by not being allowed to use my judgement and common-sense because of other irresponsible drivers and the speed-limit setters.
We need a method of challenging the speed limits set without being labelled "killers"?
And the idea of another motorbike would have to be forgotten. If you stick to the NSL regardless on a motorbike where it is safe to go faster you won't enjoy riding it. I had a 125 trail bike once - fun off-road but purgatory on-road, flat-out at 60 mph.

No, the circumstances you mentioned were driving into your driveway at up to 60mph - which are circumstances which simply don't exist in the real world.

My claim stands (in the real world, that is).

You appear to have conceded that in some circumstances, your statement could be false. Now try another test, this time firmly in the real world - a multi-storey car park. The test is to zoom around the concrete posts to find a spot as fast as you can. Try it at 5, 10, 20 and 40 mph etc. and make a nice graph from your results. Try this late at night to avoid injury to other motorists, and have a good supply of cars. You should find that the faster you go, the more cars you will need to complete your test. Let me know how you get on with this. If you use a car park near Cambridge, the nearest A&E is Addenbrokes!

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What is the guff on this new GPS speed limiter?

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Sociable?

25+ million of those on the roads... sociable?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein