Safe Speed Forums

Having just been zapped by a police mobile speed camera van, I am still smarting from the experience. Please read my thread.

I was out today with my camera to take pictures of the scene - they may or may not help my case, but I want to have them ready. While I was out, I thought I'd take a few pics of other areas where the speed limit has been reduced to an absurdly low level. So I went to Sonning Cutting on the A4 in Berkshire. As the sign suggests, the speed limit has only recently changed. It used to be 40.



Looking to the right (east) I see this.



And to the west -



As you can see for yourselves, there are very few access points to the A4, apart from where I was standing. Much of the stretch is bordered by fencing, behind which there are houses. Pedestrians do not have access to the road through the fence, but there are very few pedestrians to be seen normally. I sometimes see school pupils walking up to Sonning from the Piggott School at Wargrave, but I almost never see anyone attempting to cross the road.

So why the reduced speed limit? (There's no speed camera - yet)

All the pictures in this post were taken this morning (Saturday 19th August) at around 10am.

Like here in Cheshire, these new limits are being imposed to make the road unattractive to motorists.

The new mantra with our 'Lords & Masters' is that speed limits are there to enforce their will, it is nothing at all to do with road safety any more. If one looks at the voting figures, neither Central or Local Government has any democratic legitimacy any more, but this is how they like it as they can do what they want without any come-back.

_________________
Good manners maketh a good motorist

That's appalling. But no surprises really and it looks like this sort of thing will continue with this brain-dead government with their whole rural speed limit reducing plan til 2011.

Looks like that road may have even been NSL before. But nevertheless, another speed limit reduction which helps to make all other speed limit that little bit more useless

...and yet, in Heckfield, Hants today, I saw this anomaly - a small road, not much wider than a cart track.



Click on the link above for a local area map. I was standing on the B3349 road which runs North-South through the middle of the map - a much more significant road than the one shown above, although it has a 50mph limit!

Wondered if this was the entry to Laundry Lane

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2& ... ne=4316309

I think it may well be.

That limit, as far as the photo suggests, is absolutley ridculous.

There needs to be an urgent review of all limits imposed in the last 10 years before road safety principles are damaged any further.

And the problem is that Mr. & Mrs. Sensible in their Rover 100 would a) agree with the 40 limit and b) not have the fainest idea what a white circle with a black diagonal cross means.

Some words spring to mind.............

denominator / pandering / the / lowest / to / driver / of..............

_________________
Simon

I suspect that the cart track in the above picture doesn't go anywhere useful, wheras the road the photographer is standing on is a commonly used route.

There's tons of these around Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, they lower all the busy single carriageways to 50. Presumably the process is that someone in an office somewhere decides that this road should be lowered, and the job filters down through the various departments. One of these departments will realise that all the 60mph roads that branck off from this road will now need NSL signs, so that task gets added to the job and another department then goes out and puts up all the new signs.

Since nothing is happening on these little roads and nobodys children are being traumatised by all these high speed cars, there is no public pressure to do anything about them, so they get left alone.

Don't complain too much, some of them are great driving roads with good visability and are great for a challenging yet safe night time blat with no residents to annoy and very little chance of encountering another vehicle.

On my 40 mile drive into the office this morning, much of it on 'B' and unclassified rural roads,it occurred to me that if the limit on these roads is lowered to 40 or even 30 almost no-one will take any notice and the limits would be completely unenforceable. I was in a small convoy this morning, in the wet, cruising at c.60 mph most of the time. The talivans will never be used to enforce on such roads as they will stick to the A1 at Sandy or the wide fast Shefford by-pass in order to maximise the revenue collection and to put one on the sort of rural roads I use would not generate cash at the same rate. If they do put the camera vans on such roads their revfenues wil drop and that would't be acceptable to their lords and masters.
If speed limits become completely unenforceable, disregarded and ignored this will dilute all of them entirely. The Police have already said that they oppose this blanket lowering, that they can't enforce it and the Scamera Pratnerships are very unlikely to, especially at night, as they would catch so few. So we'll just drive around the countryside at the same speeds as we do now and ignore this nonsense.
It will, of course, stop my sport of road-rallying stone dead, but that's another issue.

Well, obviously, that's why we will need ISA.

The rural speed limit review is driven by ISA dreams.

We need to fight the madness now. If anyone was in any doubt about the need for the Safe Speed campaign, this evidence alone is the proof.

Please support Safe Speed. We have a very big job to do and limited time to do it.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

That van on the A1 at Sandy must be racking it in.
I sit in the queue on the opposite side of the road most mornings and must see at least a driver a minute pulling out to overtake slow moving lorries and getting zapped for going over the 50 limit (or stamping on the brakes).
Can't flash because your stuck in nose to tail traffic, and hand gestures are likely to lead to points for me if spotted by the van operator.

Just past there on the Upper Caldecote road this morning I nearly got wiped out by 2 idiots in a Rover 100 coming to opposite way at an easy 70 - maybe 1mph faster and they would have lost it on the bend and oversteered straight into me (their car was almost on 2 wheels as it was). If by some miracle they had missed me then they would have hit the little shrine at the side of the road that commemorates the last poor sod to take that corner too fast. Never seen a speed camera there.

Hey, Blackadder, what do you know of the apparent problems with the long-term road works cameras near the 'Black Cat'/Tempsford?
I saw the headline in a St. Neots paper whilst buying petrol in St. Neots Tesco a couple of days ago and it said something about thousands of drivers being entitled to a refund as the cash-cameras were incorrectly positioned or set-up.
Another cock-up from the scammers?

in my case all these new lower limits will do is make me late for work! no way will i get up any earlier, why should I?

I can sympathise with the frustration felt when encountering a low speed limit on what seems to be a nice, decent free-running road, like the ones shown above.
However, please dont slag off us rural people for making requests for lower speed limits. Narrow twisting village roads OUGHT to be capable of encouraging drivers to keep their speed down....but sadly it does not. We see prats driving at 60mph through our village every day, where the limit is 30mph and even down to 20mph. Pedestrians are knocked off pavements and there are accidents every week. Thousands of other rural places have the same problem.

If they are doubling the 30mph limit what's the good of calling for a lower limit?

This sort of inadequate thinking is far too widespread.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

those pics definately say NSL to me

_________________
Welcome to the UK, the Land of "Selective Freedoms"

Seems to me that you need a policeman pulling up the obvious nutters, and enforcing decent driving standards.
I live in a rural area, and both the speed limits, AND the standard of driving in many cases are appalling!

Limiting speed by any means addresses only one problem - ensuring better driving standards solves a whole lot more. Our local council is trying to reduce a 40 limit to a 30 in a village where there is a major secondary school for the area, yet most drivers already drive at around 30 - 33 at school times and villagers have a PELICAN crossing to ensure thay can cross in safety at other times of the day (and week) when nearer 40 is acceptable.
I have spoken with some of them, and they fail to realise the consequences which will result. A fatality early this year was caused by a drunk driver, and unfortunate circumstance of the resulting collision, yet this is being held up as evidence of a need for a limit!

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

"This sort of inadequate thinking is far too widespread."

Are you referring to me or the local council?

When our residents complained about speeding traffic, the only method that councils offered to use, to control drivers, was to set lower speed limits. That's not my fault, there isn't really any alternative.
Many villages are physically difficult to drive fast through...narrow parts, sharp bends, etc.... but drivers just treat them all the same and go too fast anyway. They know there's a speed limit but just ignore it, because "it doesnt apply to me, I'm in a hurry" etc etc. Accidents happen every week because there are over 12,000 vehicles daily going through; the road gets blocked, gateways are blocked, local cattle being moved get injured, residents get steaming mad.

We would need a policeman sat by the roadside 24/7 in order to catch all the speeding culprits. Villages are just seen as racetracks.

Its all very well to talk about enforcing better driving habits, but how on earth are you going to actually DO it? People don't listen to instructions any more. They think they know it all. They think they're the expert driver.
They're all freaked out on acceleration and can't get enough. Its a mental problem.

Veeger (I assume this is a Star Trek reference. )

If "lots" of people "speed" through your village the it must look safe to the vast majority of drivers who are responsible and drive at a safe speed for the conditions. Ignore the few lunatics - you won't stop them anyway.

What do you think gives everyone the impression that a higher speed than you would like is safe? Maybe it is actually safe and you just want lower limits because you consider it would be "nicer" and nothing to do with safety.

If accidents really do happen "every week" then you have more of a problem than speed. Look to see what this might be. You already have quite low limits so speed cannot be the problem.

I also live in a village with a narrow A class road through it. Almost nobody goes faster than the 30mph limit. Why? It looks dangerous and is self policing.

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