Ok I think this is completly crap.



Round here we have a few very nice 60mph roads to drive, you know the sort left hand bends, right hand bends, up and down, fun to drive, when you don't have a tractor in front of you.

However they (and by they I am of course talking about the idiots in charge) have had this bright idea that the majority of single lane 60MPH roads a too dangerous and should be 40 MPH.

IMHO people should learn how to drive properly, that would take away the majority of accidents, the problem is modern cars are too comfy, after all you can sink into you lux fake leather seat, that ever so gently massages you, and warms you, and you've got Vivaldi playing so nicely through your 200 speaker ICE. So people are not aware of what the conditions are, and with horrors like traction control, when things go wrong they do so at a speed where they fly of the road and into the nearest tree/bush/field/house/hospital.

Rant over.

In fact I'm thinking the best way to stop accidents, is make everyone use cross ply tires for a couple of years, all the idiots will kill themselves in the first couple of months, and the drivers that are left will be the good ones that know how to drive to the conditions, and have good awarness, and control. Maybe I'm just too liberal

I pray it doesnt happen. There are a lot of commuter single country roads near me, rarely are there accidents and not heard of a death. May as well sell the car if they do it

I think it was Billy Connolly that said 'Do away with airbags & fit a 6 inch spike in the middle of the steering wheel instead' that'd make people think a little more about how they were driving

I've always found speed limits a bit dangerous. the last time I looked at a highway code (many moons ago) a speed limit indicated the maximum speed WHERE SAFE TO DO SO.

We've got some great coutry roads in warwickshire that were national limits and are now 50 limits.

People used to tank along the wide open bits and slow down for blind bends and turnings. Now folk take blind bends at 50 and more accidents happen at turnings.

I think it would be a safer if we just had 30 limits and nationals.

The modus operandi round here seems to be - take a stretch of road with a perfectly safe, accident free 40mph limit and reduce it to 30mph.

Surprise surprise, a couple of weeks later the camera van starts to make regular appearances, extracting cash apparently from drivers doing as little as 35mph as my bro-in-law (aka Captain slow....!) will testify.

All in the name of safety of course....

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Originally posted by Andybarbet
I think it was Billy Connolly that said 'Do away with airbags & fit a 6 inch spike in the middle of the steering wheel instead' that'd make people think a little more about how they were driving

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I have heard that the reason for dropping the speed limit is because the road surface does not have to be as good and litigation can be avoided which makes it cheaper for councils not to repair the road surface or payout compensation for damage/injury caused by the abysmal roads that we have to drive over.
If the road tax we pay was used just for road repairs/road building then we could have some nice roads but every government dept seems to be able to dip into the fund. That's why we also have the revenue cameras at accident black spots, often sited on straight roads, so every government minister can generate more income from motorists for their madcap schemes.
We just have to accept that we the, tax payers and motorist of this country have to pay for all the things that we don't need or want and cannot afford even if we wanted to.

It's clearly about making money whilst appearing to care for the population. We know that last part isn't true.

[Edited on 14/7/12 by RK]

I don't really care what the nanny state decide to do, I'll continue to drive as fast or slow as the road conditions dictate.

I don't know about you guys but one of the times when I feel at greatest risk of an accident is when I'm sitting in a 50MPH average speed zone (the A77 here in central Scotland for those who know it) where everyone is floating very slowly in an out of each others' blind spots trying to go as fast as possible (around 57MPH) without getting a ticket with eyes glued to the speedometer instead of the road. You then get some people "hiding" behind lorries and buses and sometimes even trying to hide behind another car by driving inches away from it and other people who change lanes at every set of cameras because there was once a story that the cameras couldn't handle it if a car changed lanes between detection zones. There is also something hypnotic about cars all driving at the same speed and I'm certain that it reduces alertness and reduces response times when something unexpected happens.

The time I feel least likely to have an accident is when I'm making swift progress through traffic with my eyes and attention focussed 100% ahead.

I agree that driving standards in the UK have dropped dramatically. Very few road users know the first thing about what keeps a car on the road (mechanical awareness or in terms of laws of physics) and are far to cosy in their increasingly large and heavy tin boxes where they think they are safe. Cars are certainly safer than they once were but you can still get hurt if you decelerate rapidly enough...

In my view the motoring organisations, insurers and government should get together and introduce regular assessments for drivers either on a mandator basis or as part of incentives to reduce insurance premiums for those who progress to more advanced certifications. I've never done the IAD course but have always wanted to (and will some day) but if I could get 10% off my insurance then I'd do it next week.

Cheers,
Craig.

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Originally posted by fullpint

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Originally posted by Andybarbet
I think it was Billy Connolly that said 'Do away with airbags & fit a 6 inch spike in the middle of the steering wheel instead' that'd make people think a little more about how they were driving

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Love it

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We have some country lanes round here which are reduced to single track with passing places in some instances and they are still national limit and would obviously be dangerous to drive at 60mph with pedestrians, cyclists, horses and tractors cropping up and sometimes even complete herds of cattle being brought in for milking. Some idiot will obviously try to do 60 though and land in a field or in the back of a hedge cutting machine at some point during the year. It does have some merits in the right context.

As said the biggest problem we have is there are too many people who have no idea how fast they should be going for the given conditions and it's very rare anyone does anything about it. There are some national limit roads round here though where It just seems insane that you should be doing more than 30 on, like single track lanes where you can't see very far due to hedges and most of time to beable to stop in the distance you can see you should be doing 20 or less.

The problem is as said you'll get people ignoring it any way, the main road from here to Canterbury frequently swiches between 60, 50, 40 and 30 in places and I always seem to get stuck behind someone who maintains the same speed the entire way, holding me up in the 60 limit and then shooting off in to the distance when the limit drops to 40 but noone ever does anything about these people who either have absolutly no regard for the law or are driving without due care and attention.

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It was LJK Setright in Autocar Magazine

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Originally posted by Peteff
We have some country lanes round here which are reduced to single track with passing places in some instances and they are still national limit and would obviously be dangerous to drive at 60mph with pedestrians, cyclists, horses and tractors cropping up and sometimes even complete herds of cattle being brought in for milking. Some idiot will obviously try to do 60 though and land in a field or in the back of a hedge cutting machine at some point during the year. It does have some merits in the right context.

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Nothing to be lost by signing the petition against this http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/36145

Only takes a minute or two.

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Originally posted by Steve126
Nothing to be lost by signing the petition against this http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/36145

Only takes a minute or two.

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This is all of no purpose, 40 limit is neither enforceable on rural roads, nor going to slow down the vast majority of 18 year olds, who think speed and skill at driving come from Gran Turismo/Forza...


At a horrible junction near me, 60 limit - dip in the road, junction from garden centre full of Toyota driving pensioners, there is probably 2 fatals a year on this junction.


Motorcycle going to fast for the road conditions (lack of skill) mixed with someone with older senses & reactions. These cocktails of drivers & riders ensure deaths will continue on the road.


But lowering a 60 to a 40 on so many roads is virtually impossible to enforce, education & training with a dabble of old fashioned road Policing is the key. There is money for neither.


The swap to a 40 limit is pointless, as most will ignore it anyway.

It's the lack of common sense that annoys me. There isn't a problem with accidents on the vast majority of rural roads, so no point making changes to the vast majority of rural roads. They should focus on the roads that do have a problem with accidents, work out what is causing the accidents looking at each road individually and then come up with a solution that will solve the problem at each sight. Inevitably this will require different solutions in different locations.

Reducing the speed limit will do nothing but inconvenience the masses if we stick to the new limit, or criminilise the masses if we don't.

Well I've just signed the petition and I was number 46!

Still feel like ranting as to why this law change is so wrong in so many ways...think I'm going to go and sulk now :-(

At the risk of being burned at the stake, I actually agree with it in principle, and though I can't find any of the literature, I think this was in the manifesto for the Tories, and possibly the Libdems aswell.

I don't think all the roads should be 40, but I don't think the default should be 60.

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Originally posted by craig1410I agree that driving standards in the UK have dropped dramatically..

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That petition is doomed to fail from the start. No wording as to why you want what you want, no evidence presented, no explanation of what you want instead - it'll get thrown back in your face without a second glance. These things require time and effort to prepare.

What really annoys me is 'They' always seem to forget that the whole of the UK is not the same as the south of England when they come up with these schemes

there are hundreds and hundreds of miles of country A roads up here and further north with no alternative routes, there are only a handful of motorways in the lowlands and beyond that even fewer dual carriageways...
and not all these A roads are so bad that they need a 40mph speed limit

[Edited on 23/7/2012 by mcerd1]

Much of the increase in road accidents on country lanes has come about due to Sat Nav. A quiet country road I've regularly used to go to work on for years now seems to be swamped with trucks and 'Fat Audis' using it as a rat run, 'til Sat Nav few people knew the road existed now most mornings it's choked. More accidents have been recorded on this road and the Dept for Transport solution to all road accidents whatever the cause is to lower the speed limit. I believe part of it is the hope that people using such roads as rat runs will get fed up with the slower speed and go back to the major routes so I can see the twisted logic but it is pants for those of us who get really bad headaches if we don't do a lot of fast driving

[Edited on 23/7/12 by chillis]

most of the dual carrageways in aberdeen are 40mph

saying that no cars can withstand a 60mph head on crash (5th gear etc showed that) so why exactly is it safe then?

Is that Ace Ventura parking a land rover in your avatar, Whippy? "You might wanna think about getting this baby detailed"

I went to cornwall about a month back, driving on the roads there was like walking around a large Ikea store on a saturday. One step forward, 2 back, shuffle, stop etc. Around here are some great tiny roads with large grass verges that give great visibility, but relabeling every road on a case by case basis would cost rather a lot of money.

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Much of the increase in road accidents on country lanes has come about due to Sat Nav. A quiet country road I've regularly used to go to work on for years now seems to be swamped with trucks and 'Fat Audis' using it as a rat run

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