Safe Speed Forums

Why can't you drive at a safe and appropriate speed within the limit? Why is that so hard? It would make safety cameras irrelevant.

Because you're assuming the limit is always set on the grounds of safety.

Regardless of whether it's set by Santa Claus or a senior road traffic engineer, why can't you drive at an inappropriate speed within the speed limit?

Because strictly enforced speed limits distort drivers' ability to drive at a safe and appropriate speed. A speed limit is just (for most) one fixed number which applies to all conditions, all drivers, all cars, all day etc. and when strictly enforced just makes drivers focus unnecessarily on the speedo.

I can tell you that driving on a typical NSL rural B or unclassified road is lovely, because you'll rarely be able to exceed 60 and you are constantly adjusting your speed for the bends and for the distance which you can see in front without any reliance on numerical speed/legal speed limits.



Do you honestly believe that if every driver observed the speed limit that camera partnerships would stop there and think how lovely it is that all drivers are now good people? Of course not. They'd more than likely just get speed limits lowered again or do what ever it takes to create more driving offences.

Yes, it is a limit! Why do I get people continually driving past my house at 40+ mph when it's a 30 area? Why do I get tailgaters flashing me when I'm driving to the speed limit? Why do these drivers then blast past and get stuck at the lights 200 yards further on?

... and yet again there's that "speedo focus" - are drivers so bad that they really can not know or keep to a prescribed speed without continually staring at the speedometer? Maybe they are, I don't know - but it's not like you don't have any tolerance for prosecution, is it!



Why then, do most KSIs occur on rural roads with NSL? I suggest that's where the vast majority of "inappropriate" speed (25+%) crashes occur. Reducing the limits on these to 40 or 50 mph with some enforcement will make them safer, IMO. These roads are rarely enforced, so people can get away with it. If they are blasting up to a tightening radius corner at 50-60, fail to judge it correctly, slam the brakes on and slide into a tree or hit an oncoming car, then in future making them travel at 40 or 50mph with a well lit safety camera enforcing at the point where they would probably be travelling at the greatest speed (without enforcement) may give them more chance of taking the corner at the correct speed without having to slam the brakes on.

Well when you say that do you mean most drivers, some or boy racers? If most drivers are going that speed it then means either A) it may just be safe to 40 or so, or B) drivers may be unaware of something, in which case your solution would be to increase awareness and ideally negotiate with local police/general driving experts as to what should be done - and definately not just simply ask for a camera.

With your second point about tailgaters, I do of course agree with you that that is a simple driver attitude issue.



It's not just about staring at the speedo though, it can be just the constant thinking over what the numerical speed is. As speed cameras can only be placed where the 85th percentile is at least 10%+2 then drivers WILL be watching their speedo when they go past a camera because sticking to the limit at that point will likely be unnaturally slow to them.



It may be true that there are more KSIs on NSL roads, but then there's a heck of a lot more miles of road with NSL than 30/40/50.

Adding rural speed limits encourages drivers to stop thinking for themselves what a safe speed is! To give you an example - a road near me a few years ago had NSL all the way through, with plenty of bends not safe for 60. Then 40 and 50 limits were introduced. In the 40 sections, 40 was an appropriate speed. Same for the 50 limits. After the 40/50 limit section it returns to NSL but after a few miles there are more bends where it's not safe for 60 but the limit remains NSL. Anyone driving along that whole section could easily become "zombified" with their speed selection and then could easily get caught out going too fast on the bends in the NSL section. Certainly for me, I've found myself being MORE cautious on NSL rural roads especially when it comes to selecting speeds for bends.

What is needed is to remind people that speed limits are not targets. Adding more rural speed limits will not help.

What does it matter what I (or anyone else here) can do?

What matters is what people (in general) do do.

AND

The other thing that really matters is what behaviours do we need to try and change to make the roads safer?

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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'll add nothing to this discussion except anecdotal evidence.

I never exceed the ACPO guideline on posted speed limits. Ever. Even though an indicated 80 on a clear motorway feels slow. Despite this, my interaction with other drivers always seems to be rather good. Yes. OK. I may get the occasional twat sniffing my rear bumper on a motorway. Fine. Complete my overtaking manoevre, and return to an inside lane allowing twatty to seek his next shunt.

Indicated 65mph on NSL. I get overtaken. Fine. Check mirrors and quarters, and ease off to leave a sufficient space for said overtaker.

So, mpaton, I would suggest that it aint us normal drivers causing problem; it's the idiot drivers who have no conception whatsoever of the task of negotiating and controlling a 2 tonne lump of metal amongst other 2 tonne lumps of metal.

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Simon

I can - and do. However it takes considerably more skill to do that than to select an appropriate speed for the conditions considering only safety factors. There are two reasons for this:

1. The additional workload required to constantly check the speedo;
2. The constant mental kick in the pants to avoid falling into the highly dangerous trap of assuming that the posted limit is safe.

The latter is, I suspect, a major factor in a significant number of crashes that occur within the speed limit (which is the vast majority of accidents). Unless people start to think for themselves, the situation can only get worse - and this is why the current speed camera policy is so dangerous.

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Will

This is absolutely the way I feel. Most of the time I endeavour to drive at a safe speed within the law. However, when workload gets too much for the brain (be it due to being slightly more tired than optimum, the male equivalent of PMS or whatever, I tend to go down 1 (ie safety irrespective of posted speed limit) - and that does NOT mean I gratuitously break the limit, just that adherence per se disappears from the importance table to ensure other factors are not missed), rather than risk 2. Heven forbid 2. becomes even a tiny chink in my brain, I'll give up driving and be chauffered rather than that .

Is this the underlying reason for all the "anti-speed" rhetoric? Is there any evidence that loads of people really are exceeding the limit or are you really concerned about the weight of traffic coming past your house? Is the limit set inappropriately low? Was it set for political reasons rather than at the 85th percentile?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Yeah. I was talking about journalism imperatives. You're quite correct talking about driving imperatives.

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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

Or maybe they're driving at 25mph in gear 1?

Oh, I reckon we're all doing it already to greater or lesser extents. I quite often look at the speedo and find myself (say, for example) doing 50mph on A road. Then the little voice says 'we could be / should be doing 60 here'.

Such is the conflict between conscious legal compliance and subconscious risk assessment. The trouble is that we (drivers in general) have little in the way of a rational basis for allowing the subconscious to overrule the conscious. That's one reason that the whole speed limit thing is so subtle and insidious.

Then there's the 'mode switch' problem. Having been driving in lovely clear conditions, where the speed limit has set the speed, sooner or later we need to slow down due to conditions. There must be an overhead in the mode switch process, and very likely some substantial amount of hysteresis. The consequence surely must be that we slow down later than we would have if we had been continuously adjusting speed to conditions.

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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

What speed measuring device are you using to obtain this data? It's not an Lti 20:20 is it? Human Eyeball Mk1: great at judging distance, crap at judging speed.



Are you, in this instance, driving in a lane that is not the leftmost practicable?

I usually find the speedo in my own car helps. If I'm driving at 30 along the roads around where I live and someone catches me up quite rapidly, then I make an educated guess that their speed is +10 or so greater than mine.

This seems like a simple case of poor reporting by the BBC.

The message that came across to me from watching that is "people have become complacent and do not realise how dangerous cars can be" (which is true, to an extent), but the constant focus on speeding alone dilutes this message and ultimately devalues the report.

I feel sorry for poor Abigail's family, but it was a hit & run - driver proably drunk, drugged, banned, uninsured, on the phone or any combination of the above - all the speed enforcement in the world wouldn't have saved her.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken