You just don't know the right people. Why do you think an accident is inevitable?
Or maybe its because I haven't or at least not for a very long time. My only claim to fame was sliding for about 100 yards on ice and failing to get below 5mph and then hitting someone else sliding across I don't think anyone was actually to blame as it was to damn slippy to stand and there were several other cars involved.
I think they only obvious thing is the attitude you appear to have.. you think accidents are inevitable and judge your driving by how many you have.. I judge it by not having accidents.
IMO your driving record as you have stated is very bad.
Well if you are going too count vermin you have ruined my accident free period. I had a pigeon fly into my front nearside wheel while I was doing 70 on the M6 about 15 years ago. There was a huge cloud of feathers behind me and an imprint of a pigeon on my tyre sidewall.
No. What you mean there is a restriction on certain *types of vehicle* that can't, due to their construction, go faster than 25mph, such as (most) tractors. That is *not* the same as a minimum speed limit. If a vehicle is allowed on the motorway show me the requirement for it to travel no slower than 25mph.
Admittedly if you did do such a thing plod would take a dim view but you would be done under "due care and attention" or possibly "dangerous driving" not breaking any minimum speed limit.
I shall ignore the personal abuse. A flashing light draws attention to hazard at a mile or three. A car is a car, you can't tell its speed at a mile. It's not until you are getting fairly close that you can gauge how fast you are actually closing.
So how close is it before you can judge the speed difference? What if its a stationary car at the end of a queue? You should be driving so that you can stop if its a stationary object ahead not just a car doing 25mph.
I would imagine that it is close to the 130km/h limit common in the rest of Europe and that it is de facto the limit observed by most drivers in the UK.
The message from "dennis@home" contains these words:
close - 1.47
Not quite so close - 1.42 using the Highway Code figures as a guide.
No idea but I doubt it. By that age drivers should be considering very carefully whether they should continue driving at all.
The calculations above of course contain v^2 and kinetic energy in particular is a vital consideration in the seriousness of an accident. Surprising therefore that the maximum speed of heavy commercial vehicles is only marginally more restricted than that of cars. A 40 ton lorry at
56 mph has the same kinetic energy as a 2 ton car at 250 mph. If kinetic energy was the major determining factor 40 ton lorries would have to be restricted to a maximum speed of 16 mph to match the 2 ton car at 70.
So by that argument, if the speed limit was raised to 85 mph, "most drivers" would then do 100 mph, then there'd be campaigning for the limit to be 100....
ISTR that it used to be the case before the Nanny State got serious that the Authorities wouldn't countenance a speed restriction unless 85% of the traffic was already going that slow. A courageous Government could reverse this criterion and go for raising limits where more than 15% of traffic habitually exceeded the limit outside camera zones. As far as motorways are concerned I am not at all sure that 85 mph is actually high enough to bring 85% within the law. 90 mph might.
Construction of a good proportion of our motorway network was actually started before the blanket limit came into force and and I doubt if the basic design concepts have changed since that temporary limit was introduced so all motorways should be good for derestricted motoring. Unfortunately by now we have 2 generations of motorists who are habituated to restrictive limits and might go wild if the limits were removed completely rather than gradually increased.
I did make a suggestion (not entirely tongue in cheek) a few years back that in an effort to make drivers more responsible the Minister of the day should enter into a pact with the car driving population that for every year the accident rate on the various classes of rural roads (single carriageways, dual carriageways and motorways) decreased the rural limits should be raised by 5 mph as a reward for good behaviour. Obviously accidents involving the criminal classes (joyriders and the like) and police cars would have to be excluded as neither are going to take any notice of speed limits whatever they are set at. Slow speed accidents (the majority) have no bearing on speed limits either but the idea was to provide an incentive to improve driving standards at all speeds, not just the higher range.
A really corageous government would enforce the law better and get that 15% off the roads. This would get rid of most of the really bad drivers that ignore all the rules and make life much easier for the rest of us. More average speed cameras is what is need to do that. Or in car monitoring.
See even you think 100% enforcement of the speed limits would be good as it gets rid of the criminals.
The only time I come across an artic doing more than 60 is down hill and then most will also be braking to control the speed. Only the very rare one will thunder on at 60+. Bear in mind that on a motorway I have almost invariably got the cruise set to 62mph (handy mark at 100kmh) as that is the sort of speed my motor is happy to bowl along at. So I have a pretty good idea at how fast the heavies are going...
Buses and coaches on the other hand seem to disregard any rules or speed limits.
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