Unless things have changd in the past couple of years, the design limit for motorways was 120mph. There are however a few motorways I know of where even 70 would be too fast given the sight lines. So if the national speed limit were raised then there would need to be some areas with a local speed limit.
Obviously time and place matter. I don't do a lot of motorway driving but I happened to do Manchester-Stirling and back recently. I trundled along at my usual 77 mph (83 on the speedo), and I estimate that far less than 5% of the traffic overtook me.
Speaking purely for myself, if there was no speed limit on motorways I would drive at 80-85 given free-flowing traffic. What ought to be picked up and punished on motorways is following too close, overtaking and then cutting in sharply, and cutting across several lanes to the slip road exit at the last minute. The emphasis on speed cameras leaves these behaviours (dangerous at any speed) unchecked.
You missed at least one: Driving in lane 2 when lane 1 is clear.
if the limit was 85, I would slow down from my habitual (good conditions) 90 odd to save the effort of looking for talivans on bridges. If it was 85 + 10% +2 = 97.5 I imagine everybody would drive within it!
last weekend on the 4 lane M25 numerous vehicles drove in L3, leaving two empty lanes :-(
And with half of them on the phone, that would be scary. Most people can't concentrate on one thing, let alone two
i dont believe phoning and driving should be legal.
The message from "dennis@home" contains these words:
I am fairly confident that a bigger proportion of the electorate regularly break at least some speed limits than actually voted Labour in the last election. That is a very large constituency to really piss-off which is why the Police in person are a good deal more circumspect in their attitude to speeding than their speed camera arm (not least when behind the wheel themselves).
The really bad drivers are the slow ones. They tend to survive the accidents they cause far more often than those who drive too fast for the conditions.
The Stalinist approach to policing that may well rebound on those that advocate it. As a motorist I already look on the Police as the enemy. The more restrictions there are, the less likely I am to offer offer them any assistance.
You might think that but nothing I have written above says any such thing.
The message from "dennis@home" contains these words:
Only where it is congested.
Where traffic is flowing feely I find that the majority of cars and vaans on motorways are doing between 70 and 90. I don't think raising the speed limit on motorways will do much other than make a higher proportion of motorists at least temporarily lawful.
most people have enough sense to know that driving at 85 on a motorway isnt a problem.
permanently I think, the current situation is that 70 is slow in a modern car on a clear motorway so people speed, give them a sensible limit and they will comply.
However, I think we should stop building ever faster cars that don't suit reasonable speeds and think more about efficiency.
The motorway network was designed with 100mph speeds in mind.
If that happened, first of all comerce would grind to a halt.
secondly if every driver who ever exceeded a speed limit was banned, there would either be no drivers left, or the roads would be one perpetual traffic jam.
I have never ever known a single driver who kept within all speed limits at all times.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, a glance across at the speedo reveals that they are just the same as anyone else, apart from their capacity for self delusion.
I suspect that if such a law were introduced, you would be one of the first to be banned. with HUGE protestation of course.
No, itr would not,.
Most of te bad drivers commit their grosser errors well under the speed limit.
Nightmare. It would be like commercial traffic, a nose to tail 70mph queue of cars up and down the motorways, with no free road at all, and highly dangerous. Even the police admit that.
Well if a 0,.001mph over the limit makes you a criminal yes, it would I suppose.
However its as easy to get rid of those criminals by removing the speed limits innit?
Norway is 90 apart from a very few places. OTOH the roads often don't allow for anything more.
Then there are more draconian penalties such as confiscation of car.....
Well I followed a police car at 38mph in a 30 zone, and watched him make two turns without indicating. I don't think he spotted me though - too busy chatting to his mate. Not sure he used his rear view mirror at all.
I followed an unmarked car full of uniformed copper across country at speeds of up to 130mph once..I couldn't keep up.
Anyway there are three sorts of drivers. Those that break speed limits and admit it. Those that break speed limits and claim they don't. Those that break speed limits and delude themselves that they don't.
Roger at home falls into the latter category I suspect.
Precisely. They are appalling bigots for the most part. And traffic duty is the lowest of the low, apart from the beat plod.
Indeed. I tried once, as an experiment, to do Bristol to Cambridge on the cruise control. Set to whatever the speed limit was. After nearly being forced off the road a dozen times on the M4 and nearly having 3 accidents on the M25, I gave in and decided that I would rather be alive, than street legal.
I drive by the conditions and what the traffic around me is doing, not by the book. Tough shit if that makes me a criminal, so be it. I'd rather be a live criminal than a dead law abiding citizen. Or worse, alive and knowing I'd caused an accident by slavishly following speed limits.
Not really. There is a body of people who regularly do 100mph plus.
And if I was in a really tearing hurry, I'd be one of them if I still had the car for it.
Not on the planet I live on.
There are three basic bands..the 56mph artics and the like, the sub
70mph 'legals - usually doing 65mph who cause enormous tailbacks when the overtake the 56mph lot at 59mph..and the 'sod this for a lark' third who do whatever speed the conditions allow, or they feel like.I vary between all three myself according to mood and urgency.
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