Safe Speed Forums

I've just had the displeasure of driving along to coast to Kilmarnock, it's been a long time since a stationary object has caused me to swear loudly and repeatedly but that installation has done it. I've seen some bad camera installs in my time but this lot are seriously taking the piss.

None of it makes sense, you have some monitored sections that are designed to make overtaking as unsafe as possible. ie. some people would overtake the 50mph HGV or Volvo with a 10mph speed difference, then 400yds from a roundabout the monitored zone ends (thanks Origin B2 for that info) so they floor it to finish the overtake and drop anchors before the roundabout.

Plenty more in perfectly safe spots forcing me to overtake people in the twisties (thanks Subaru, for making a car that can do that safely) rather than the nice long straights with a couple of miles visability or overtake and then slow down to the same speed as the overtakee to compensate, which must confuse the hell out of the overtakee.

Then things got really weird, we had specs zones with a couple of roundabouts in them which are going to shove the averages down. I dont get it but I'm not complaining so much.

Then around Kilmarnock itself where it seems every stretch of the bypass is SPECS'd, the effects are clear, I was getting an air of paranoia from every driver, they were all doing 60 even though it was :NSL: none of them were looking where they were going, several times they pulled out in front of me without looking in order to overtake at 61mph, in one case they would have hit me with their rear quarter if I hadn't dropped the anchors. I felt like I'd driven into some weird motoring version of Orwell's 1984.

Suffice to say that I'm striking off the entire Dumfries & Galloway area from my list of potential holiday destinations for the next couple of years and will be recommending that most of my friends (who enjoy driving) do likewise, so if anyone from here owns a BNB or an amusement park in the area and you're short of business, now you know why.

I'm tempted to write something like this to the tourism board while I'm at it. There is no sense writing to the SCP since whoever put this lot in is clearly insane, even by SCP standards. Anyone got any figures for colissions on this road for the last 10 years or so?

The same thing happens when driving through the SPEC's section of the A14. I'd also suspect it happens through any other SPEC's enforced roads.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

This was happening even in the non-SPCES'd sections, not helped by the fact that they like to put up "average speed check" signs even when there aren't any, or perhaps just because the placement is so random it's hard to tell where is monitored and where isn't.

I've never seen anything like it, and I've driven though a lot of SPECS installations.