Safe Speed Forums

Happened to mention the 90 in a 60 offence to a friend of the wife who is a mag. I wanted to know if Meredydd’s forthcoming appearance might come under her bench. Apparently not – she covers a different area.

She commented that she felt that it was very difficult for her when large numbers of people appeared before her having done 35 in a 30. She felt that continually watching the speedo was surely more dangerous and many of the long streches with recently lowered limits on many main roads simply added to the risk.

But what concerned me most was that she mentioned home visits to the victims of crime were routinely organised. One such was to the family of a young man who had been killed in a crash at a traffic lights on a straight length of road. The family were understandably terribly distraught by their loss. The car which had collided with him had reported as doing 100 mile/h when the driver ‘lost control’ . She stated her view ( which sounds to me like she was repeating PC propaganda) that by travelling at 100 mile/h this constituted dangerous driving in itself. And that anyone no matter how skilled or experienced could have an accident because “ at that speed the unexpected could happen ”.

I invited here to consider the situation with our friend Meredydd who was allegedly doing 90. She felt that since that was less than 100 it was not dangerous driving.

This person is not a particularly confident or experienced driver herself. She has had some collisions and ironically an NIP for exceeding a 30 limit.

It seems the authorities here in Wales ( and in Scotland ) are changing the interpretation of existing law by encouraging the mags to accept a concept that 100 mile/h is an intrinsically dangerous speed.

IMO its dangerous propaganda.

Does anyone else have similar knowledge ?

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Richard Ceen
We live in a time where emotions and feelings count far more than the truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science (James Lovelock 2005)

i recall several discussions about max safe speed on a public road.....

there was a certain level of agreement (i'm sure i'll be proved wrong now!) that much above 100 to be safe requires very good conditions, road, traffic & visibility etc.
and even then, a public road not being a controlled environment (like say a race track) an unpredictable event (tyre failure? wildlife etc) could still occur and put you i na dangerous situation.

of course we'd all like to discourage the obsession with numerical speed, and for mag, trafpol etc to have the freedom to judge speed based on the prevailing conditions..... but my personal opinion is that much over 100 requires exceptional circumstances on UK roads.

(unlike my recent experience of setting the cruise control to max (190kph) and sitting on an autobahn for an hour).

I wouldn't say that exceptional circumstances are required for speeds of 100+ mph to be safe and satisfactory, even on a single carriageway road, but situations where that speed can be maintained for more than a brief period are less easily found.

Quite often it's a matter of nipping up to a high speed just briefly, and then you're back down to something much slower, and so it goes on. It's all about constantly adjusting speed (and early enough too) so that you don't exceed a safe rate of progress.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

How well do the autobahns cope with this? Presumably they are full of HGV's limited to 56 mph like our motorways are, so how can such a speed differential be driven safely?

This is why having a very fast car is (incredibly) still pleasurable in this country. A quick blast where it is safe followed by cruising in the traffic still gives you the kick of accelleration and adrenaline. People seem to think that driving "very fast for long periods" is what petrolheads want but, In reality, it's more the short overtaking opportunity that pleases.

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

Exactly. I couldn't drive for extended periods at high speeds even if I wanted to - the extra concentration required, coupled with a visible drop in the petrol gauge with every couple of miles that go by, would be enough to see me easing off no matter how much I might want to press on. And I wouldn't want to. For me, driving at a fairly steady speed, regardless of what the speed actually is, for lengthy periods is utterly dull, uninspiring, unmotivating and unrewarding. In any typical extended motorway cruise you'll most likely find my speeds varying from highs that might just about get away with a NIP to lows that see me keeping pace with the heavies in L1 - after a bit of a high speed run to clean out the pipes, it's nice to slow right down and be mellow for a few miles, before the next burst of speed. It's the mix and match of driving styles during the journey that keeps me interested in the drive, rather than it just being a necessary chore in order to get to wherever it is I'm going.

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Chris

Quote:

This is why having a very fast car is (incredibly) still pleasurable in this country. A quick blast where it is safe followed by cruising in the traffic still gives you the kick of accelleration and adrenaline. People seem to think that driving "very fast for long periods" is what petrolheads want but, In reality, it's more the short overtaking opportunity that pleases.

Very true!

Back in the early 80's I was privalaged to own a XJ12C!

By modern standards she was not a particularly refined machine, Quite brutal actually! But, Oh Boy! What fun!

At the same time She was the easiest *car* I have ever had to maintain 30 MPH in! (I tend to stick to 4X4's these days, which are also easyer for relaxed motoring than most currently available *cars*)

60 in first! 100 in second!! (as I have said before) the shift, under kickdown, from first to second is somewhat like the bit in "Apollo 13" depicting the experience of SI burnout and SII fireing.

One moment you are pressed back in your seat under maximum acceleration! all of a sudden you are in a sort of "Freefall" and float forwards in the seat, then second gear engages and you are slammed back in the seat. Absolutly brutal ! I am sure there are performance cars out there that would leave my old V12 for dust, but they are way too refined to be fun!

Though the engine was actually pretty oil tight, under really hard driving she would smoke a little. The positions of the tailpipes relative to the rear wings would produce beautiful "Contrails" visible in the RVM (and, no doubt, to everyone else! )

Oh, and another thing, I am sure that under "Hard" driving conditions you could actually see the fuel guage move! (this is not so silly actually)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

I think that simply there is an idea that two digit numbers are OK while 3 digit ones are really bad !!!!

17 years ago I drove back to the UK with a colleague from Bremerhaven in Germany doing 125-130 on rural roads in a Ford RS turbo. An Alsatian ran out from a farmyard 30-40 yds ahead of me from a farm. I braked and swerved around the dog and continued. My colleague who was not a motoring enthusiast simply remarked that I had been lucky to have missed the dog. I agreed and felt fortunate to have missed the dog as well as retaining control of the car. The car belonged to my brother. I didn't want to damage either his car or the farmers dog. It would have been the same had a child ran out.

Nowadays in the UK it would have been a major thging both for my friend and the authorities. 100 mile/h is simply IMO 'no big deal' so long as the driver is competent and road conditions permit. Nothing for me has really changed in those 17 years.

My concern is that there is a drift towards some simplistic number that "must never be exceeded as everyone "knows" exceeding it is dangerous".

If this rot is not checked we will find that that number is 60, 50 or even less same time soon.

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Richard Ceen
We live in a time where emotions and feelings count far more than the truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science (James Lovelock 2005)

Ah! Have you been to Holland recently old chap?.......(60 mph motorways!) Thank the Lord for the Germans!...........Oh! ......and the Italians (90 mph)................ I visit them every year!

Going by the roads where I live and the people who fill them up I thought we already had a maximum safe speed. 40mph. It is the speed to be driven everywhere, regardless of conditions or hazards. Drive slower and you will be taken out and stoned, overtake and you are satan's representative on earth - probably also an onanator - and a danger to everyone.

I do both and have to put up with being tailgated by some middle-aged (usually) berk in town, glaring at me in my mirrors and drooling manically in their frustration or when NSL arrives again they start shaking fists and literally shaking their vehicle with fury as you pull away again. I love it.

The drivers who I really don't get, are the members of the 35mph club. These are an advanced version of the 40mph club and tend to appear at night. 35mph in an NSL without street lighting, complete with heavy braking for corners and on-coming cars followed by 40mph in a 30mph limit where there's street lighting and they feel safer. Never mind the pedestrians trying to use that crossing dear, you just sail right on through.

By the way, I live in Cornwall. No motorways, only two trunk roads and the rest, proper rural roads populated with idiots.

Agreed

Trucks do come up at quite an alarming rate, but you quickly adjust your anticipation & moving out to L2 to allow for this.

On the outward journey during the day, traffic was very quiet so it wasn't a problem, on the way back things were busier and it was evening so this speed could not be maintained safely for long.

Truck behaviour also seems much more regimented, content to sit in convoy, very little elephant racing... and when they do pull out they expect fast traffic and tend to give way / wait for a good gap to pull into. (often not the case over here).

easy to prove 100 does not always result in instant death and destruction

Imagine this *hypothetical* situation yesterday night just after the A24 heading east.

Simple situation, M25 closed for about 10 minutes while stranded vehicle is recovered form lane 4 to the shoulder. 3 bikes filter to the front, the traffic officer peels out the way and the bikes have 8 miles of clear motorway, to the next junction, they cover in around 4 minutes.

QED

sounds hypothetically exceptional to me...

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to have noticed these morons. They are quite possibly the most infurating type of driver on the road, as they are either holding me up in an NSL or up my backside in a 30.
One of them in a 4x4 had the cheek to flash her lights and lean on the horn as I overtook in a NSL. If it's a problem, why don't they just do the posted limit?

We should start using the binary system

1100100 = 100mph
1000110 = 70mph

That doesn't look so bad now

Well, as someone who has driven and riden at speeds over 100 mph for long periods, I don't feel it's much different than 70mph. I don't imagine it follows an exponential law where, let's say, 100mph is twice as bad as 70.

Speaking as someone who has come off a motorbike at 70 mph and eventually skidding to a halt, the only difference I can imagine coming off at 100mph would have made is more skin or leather loss (assuming I don't hit anything of course).

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

The physics does say it's 'twice as bad'; double the braking distance; double the crash energy.

But the real world says that higher speeds are only chosen by the vast majority of drivers in places where the chances of a crash are less.

There are considerably fewer injuries and deaths on faster roads (per mile driven), but the proportion of higher severity crashes does rise somewhat.

The proportion of deaths rise about linearly with speed limit (i.e. double the speed; double the proportion) but the science warns us to expect risk of death rising with the fourth power of speed (i.e. double the speed; 16 times the proportions of deaths.) What the sience suggests should happen isn't happening.

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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

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well. I know the kinetic energy rises and it's this which would be dissipated if I hit something. But in terms of just coming off my motorbike and not hitting anything, not an impact crash as such, it would simply take longer for me to slow down. Just like at bike races where they usually just get up and walk off. So by 'bad' I mean damage to me.

It's unlikely that I would hit something at those speeds because where I do it has always been in a straight line, more or less, and with a huge gap between me and any other road user with no junctions etc. In other words, I use a safe speed for the conditions.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Which tells me, at least, that drivers are managing risks better at higher speeds.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I think: 'we don't go faster unless hazards are fewer' is probably more the essence of it.

But we're always planning to meet danger at zero mph too. When braking times are longer there is more uncertainty and since we build in worst case uncertainties, the margins for error are on average greater where we choose higher speeds.

Edit: Oh yes, and I almost forgot... If we make braking plans at, say, half max braking effort - which we do - then the additional saving (i.e. margin) of using max braking effort in an emergency increases with speed.

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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