Speeding cars, lorries, trains, etc.

[jon0844]

b) other traffic calming measures were introduced in notorious problem areas!

But that was the whole idea. Rather than make money from someone speeding who could then have a nasty accident and kill people (but they, at least you could tell the victims that the driver got a speeding ticket), the idea was to spend money improving road design and getting rid of accident blackspots.

What makes more sense, fixing that notorious accident blackspot (where it isn't speed that kills but the errors made by bad drivers) or throw up a speed camera and lower the limit to something that will raise money but not solve anything.

THAT is why speed cameras don't work. Safety Camera Partnerships, which made a lot of people very rich, made us all believe speed is the only thing that matters. Inappropriate speed for the prevailing conditions, being drunk, drugged, not having a licence and all the other offences weren't detectable and somehow seen as being irrelevant.

Oh, and we have the known problem (but one that isn't talked about much) where the use of cameras instead of real police with their instinct saw loads of people cloning numberplates or not keeping their registration details up to date to avoid tickets by post.

SPECS does at least give a driver a bit of freedom and not have to stick rigidly to a limit. Any police officer you spoke to off duty would say that going over an arbitrary limit that caters for the lowest common denominator isn't the crime of the century - yet some people now think that if you drive everywhere at 30mph (which is 27mph in reality!) you're invincible and everyone around you is.

I do hope more places copy what Swindon did because where I live there are a number of places where the police close the road weekly due to the exact same type of accident. No speed camera will ever fix it; the road needs to be changed in design - but that costs money. Why spend money when you can MAKE money seems to be the totally incorrect view.
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Indeed they do and I won't dispute that. I will dispute the sterotype that all teenagers are boy/girl racers. Could not another explanation be simply that they have much less experience driving than the rest of the population? At most a teenager could have 2 years of experience of driving compared with the rest of the driving population who could have 5, 10, 15, 20 or more years behind the wheel. Therefore they are always going to be more likey to have an accident, they're less experienced.

Someone who has just passed their test can drive at 70mph quite legally, or go to Germany and do whatever they like. It's not the speed(ing) that makes them dangerous, but the fact that a young driver (as in length of time with a licence - not physical age) may not be able to judge risks around them.

That said, I never had to do a hazard perception test and if the testing process is made harder then you can possibly see a HUGE reduction in the types of accident - which I'd not expect to be solely down to speed. I am sure the accidents new drivers have are more to do with ill-judged overtaking, pulling out at the wrong time and not seeing other motorists doing something wrong and reacting in plenty of time.

I've read a lot of accidents about a young motorist having an accident with an elderly driver, and that would make sense. The old person that doesn't judge speed and pulls out in front of a young motorist that isn't prepared for a car to pull out is an accident waiting to happen. At this point, speed is merely going to determine the severity of the accident, not whether the accident happens.
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Either all you zealots are being hypocritical or you don't drive (or don't drive a lot). I drive 25,000 miles a year, I have never had an accident, in fact I have avoided being shunted in the back twice having seen what was likely to happen, and a lot of the driving I see on the roads is appalling. Driving slavishly to every limit (presumably requiring considerable concentration on the speedo rather than the road ahead) is not necessarily good driving.

I suspect you've read Roadcraft, with the paragraph at the front that says to forget everything you read in the Highway Code.

Actually it doesn't say that, obviously, but speak to any advanced motorist or police officer and they'd tell you that!

I passed my test in 1991 and have never had an accident, and I was at one point driving about 20,000+ miles per year. Keeping an eye on your speed is probably the least-safe part of driving. It's about driving to the conditions and keeping an eye on everything else happening around you. Look at how a pursuit-trained traffic officer drives. That's similar to how you want to be driving, without the commentary or the jumping of the red lights and so on!

I'd also say that more people probably speed now than before since the councils and camera partnerships managed to get limits lowered to ridiculous levels. Motorways with limits dropped to 50mph, with cameras, was silly. These roads were designed for far higher speeds (remember when motorways had no limits? Sadly I don't!). Nearly all roads are designed for much higher limits, so it's hard to try and argue that a 30mph limit that was once 40 or 50mph is right and everyone doing 40mph is evil. You are supposed to drive at an appropriate speed, so having a 40mph limit that has a few places where 30mph (or less) would be applicable shouldn't NEED a lower limit. By all means have warning road markings, signs to highlight a risk, to warn people who might not have noticed something - but dropping the limit everywhere just makes people ignore them all.

Variable speed limits should also be used more. The A13 is a great example of this, but so would places in town near schools. At the very least, you introduce fixed signs that have a lower limit at set times - and they wouldn't be as expensive as a complete digital system with real-time traffic monitoring. And I have seen such signs when I was young here in the UK, so I know they existed and are possible. Sadly, along came the GATSOmeter and suddenly all limits were lowered to increase the number of people turned into criminals.

 

[ChrisCooper]

One thing I find as a driver is that there are two types of roads when it comes to speed. Those I can drive on and hardly ever look at my speedo yet stick almost right in the limit (given ideal conditions) and those where I find that I'm constantly looking down and seeing that I've crept over the limit. I hate driving on the latter. New roads such as bypasses are often like that, wide and open, yet with limits well below 60mph. The smooth and quiet surface doesn't help either. Worse is when you get two roads that seem identical yet have different limits. Another annoying one when driving through towns and cities is that limits will often change after junctions or roundabouts so it's easy to miss the signs.

I think when it comes to speed, a bit part of it is overall attitude, particularly when catching up with other traffic that is travelling slower. The sensible option is to sit behind and either wait for them to get out of the way, or to wait for a safe opertunity to overtake. Sadly the option many people take is to get frustrated at having to slow down, sit right up behind the person infront and either hope to intimidate them into speeding up or letting you past or overtake as soon as possible, perhaps with some horn or hand jestures for good measure.