Safe Speed Forums

The A9 story is a typical example of why limiting the speed on any type of vehicle by means which cannot be over ridden is dangerous. This would happen frequently, if cars were to have limiters that set your maximum speed to the zone that you are in.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

All vehicles, even Squirrel's, are limited in speed by the nature of their design. Being aware of that limitation and allowing for it is part of the driving skill set.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

yes, but having ridiculously low set speeds which mean that you cannot safely overtake is the dangerous thing.
Just imagine squirell being limited to 63MPH..... ....not really funny or safe, I know that I would never buy a car with such low power and top speed that every overtake manouvere was too risky to even contemplate.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Any driver who trys to continue an overtake for 30 seconds after he runs out of road is an idiot and would be an idiot wether he were driving a limited or unlimited security van.

My concern is a "justice system" that has made huge assumptions of guilt over an accident.
I do not see that guilt can exist without pre-meditated intent or negligence. He may be guilty of driving whilst tired but there is no proof.

Also he may have been the start of the accident but the end of the accident was beyond his control or actions.

If you go to work on monday lunchtime and are expected to deliver all those boxes you drive responsibly and then make a momentary human error and you are heading for jail with one of the mums calling for a life sentence! Is that proportional?

Did the rail track bosses get put in jail for the decisions that caused broken rails , broken points?
What about the ford worker who drowned in a paint vat with dodgey handrails? Were his bosses jailed?

Could you end up heading to jail tommorrow? or the mother of your children.

It all seams wrong to me.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Yes he's an idiot for continuing to try and overtake, but if he hadn't been limited to 63MPH and been able to accelerate to say 70 MPH he would have passed before the road "ran out".

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I do agree that you should have at least 10mph in reserve. And remember with hate riding my 125cc motorbike in 50 limits. But this guy would just find another target doing 69mph at the next duel lane section. I also used to drive an underpowered commer van. It had all the same issues 70mph down hill 55 up hill. It took planning to overtake and slot back in. Occasionally you had to indicate back in.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Most modern vans will probably do a ton on the flat,, so by reducing them to 63 max is pointless, the more speed you have in reserve the quicker you can complete what is, lets face it, one of the most dangerous manouveres in driving. Limiting people to being stuck behind someone doing 55 because you know that you haven't got the speed differential to overtake, unless you have a really long clear straight, does nothing at all for road safety...it's either done for economy or in the misbelief of road safety..,

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Should the towing vehicle that was being overtaken have backed off to enable the van driver to complete the manoevre? Did the vehicle being overtaken accelerate to match the speed of the overtaking vehicle? The latter scenario does not excuse prolonging the overtake by the margin described in the newspaper reports that were quoted.

This raises a couple of other questions.
Why is it that if you go to overtake some little sh$tbox of a worn out shopping trolley they accelerate to match your speed right up to the prosecution threshold? (In this case it was a shed dragger at the same speed as the limited van). We have to contend with mobile radar ie the in-car radar is used to catch people while the police car is moving towards you. This makes a quick overtake blast a licence threatening event.

At the end of overtaking lanes (and dual carriageways) the left lane merges into the overtaking lane whereas you do the opposite. Having dealt with both systems I prefer ours as it makes the person being overtaken give way as continuing to match the overtaking vehicle's speed results in an excursion into the dirt ie the driver being naughty loses out. It is too easy in your system for a vindictive b$%tard to deliberately hang the overtaking vehicle out to dry as may have been the case in this example. The downside to this system is that sometimes slower drivers merge right far too soon (as much as 500 metres!) but as it is legal to undertake when the lanes are marked this is easily dealt with!

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

I had not considered this point before. It does seem to make sense to give priority to the faster lane.

Any comments on this?

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

Yep it does make a lot of sense to me and it also makes me wonder, how much the caravan tower actually contributed to the accident in his stubbornness not to let the van overtake, lets face it we've probably all had it happen to us.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

The subsequent off-topic posts of this thread has been split off into here.

On the rare occasions that I see this approaching roadworks, the merge seems to go more smoothly, as the L2 residents tend to be less passive-aggressive about merging.

This may be in the eye of the beholder, as people who habitually travel in L1 may say the opposite. Truck drivers' comments?

there are a couple of stretches on M6 where there are crawler lanes. The first one (heading south, south of Brum) lane 4 has to merge back into lane 3, but the second one lane 4 stays intact and lane 1 merges with lane 2, which is much easier, well I find it better anyway.