Safe Speed Forums

My bold:

I don't know the road well enough to comment, but 70 to 40 seems a tad much.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

They do say the speed limits will be on the approaches and exits to roundabouts, so it's not too bad.
However, do they really think that people would fly into roundabouts at 70mph without a speed limit sign telling them not to?
I would think a decent sign warning of a roundabout ahead should be sufficient.

I've seen a lot of that sort of thing in my neck of the woods - signs on dual carriageways about 50 yards from the roundabouts. People do tend to slow down to 30, but I suspect this has more to do with approaching a roundabout than any sign. However, a lot of them then appear to not notice the at the roundabout exits

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Do they really think that drivers cannot work out forthemselves that they need to slow down for a roundabout? What was the cause of the accidents that they sight? My bet would be either caused by poor visability due to obstructions on the approaches, or rear end shunts where drivers are having to look over the right shoulder to see what traffic is on the roundabout and the person in front has stopped. Further, concertration should be on the hazards being approached and not worrying about some arbitary speed limit.

While on that subject I can never understand why we have to have a curve to the left when entering a roundabout. It is far better to brake in a straight line, vision is better when you can just look to the side and it also slows the speed of vehicles on the roundabout, due to their slower entry speed, making it easier to merge.

In this part of the world the nsl on the exit is also about 50 yards from the roundabout so you have 50 yards of totally unneeded 30 limit.
Is it possible to have different speed limits for each direction?

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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

On this subject, look at the ludicrous alignment of the A36 going North West into this roundabout. It could have been built straght - but it wasn't!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... 5&t=h&z=17

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

I'm under the impression (not necessarily correctly so) that this is not possible.
I'm even less sure about roads with proper central reservations.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

The A34 near the junction with the M3 has a 60mph limit on the North carriageway and 50mph on the South carriageway.

This is a classic example of how not to build a roundabout. Brake on the approach in the wet when diesel has been spilt, which is quite often due to the severity of the bend and you can guess what happens.

It's against the speed limit setting guidelines to have speed limits set just for a particular hazard. They also suggest a minimum length of 600M for any limit. Clowns here have done this with roundabouts which are 30s for all of 200M or even less!

The real issue is probably that those off the less used routes can't pull out quickly enough to get into the stream of traffic.

Yes, even the new guidelines say that you shouldn't set speed limits just for isolated hazards.


The odds are that the new limits will start way before the roundabouts, like the one on the A56 at Haslingden (which admittedly is a 50, not a 40).

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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

Continuing the poorly designed roundabouts theme. Keep an eye on this link to see the new roundabout being added to the A329M.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=jennetts+park&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=14.693358,39.506836&ie=UTF8&hq=jennetts+park&hnear=&ll=51.408977,-0.785437&spn=0.007562,0.01929&t=h&z=16

As you are travelling south and where the A329M curves, the outside lane is to be the exit onto the roundabout with the inside lane continuing south. The exit from the roundabout travelling south to join the A329M will be made by slow traffic joining the outside lane of the dual carriageway. I honestly think that this change is poorly designed and can virtually guarantee that the speed limit will be reduced to at least fairly soon after the work is finished following several severe accidents.

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Prepare to be Judged

Yes the recommended speed for the actual roundabout is the same speed as the slowest approach road, which makes sense if you think about it, however LAs don't seem to use CS in their equations anymore.

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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.

On that stupid non roundabout on the A127 they have lowered the speed limit to 40. My car ain't fast, but it is possible to slow down to 40 for the camera, speed back up to 50, then brake enough to take the roundabout, in the wet. I'd like to know how fast it would be possible to take it in an Evo X in the dry...

One option would be to engineer the road properly