Motorists face 'zero tolerance' approach to speeding on the motorways

[DodgyAgent]

The highway code is clear. Never break the law to let through a blue light. If someone dies as a result - not your problem.

As a society we are slowly learning to obey rules and laws PCSOs who 'stood by' as boy drowned named - Telegraph

[shaunbhoy]

So it's pretty clear that if you want to improve road safety motorways should be the last thing to be targeting.

Yes, and it is also pretty clear that this suggestion has little or nothing to do with safety and everything to do with simply raising revenue.

[woohoo]

I did the speed awareness course recently, and one thing they did was show a video demonstrating the non-linear way speed decreases when you brake hard. They had Tiff Needel doing an emergency stop from 30mph and just stopping short of hitting a cardboard cut out of a woman. With the same distance with him doing only 35mph it meant he hit her at 18mph. Ouch.

The other one was demonstrating motorway speed. If braking from 70mph you just stopped before hitting the stopped traffic in front, from 100mph you'd hit the same traffic still doing 70mph. A bit more than ouch.

This made everybody sit up and take notice.

One other thing was estimating the number of serious injuries and deaths on different types of roads. I had the right idea, but underestimated the numbers. Motorways have very few serious injuries or deaths, and the most common accident is rear ending the car in front at low speed. Urban roads come next, but you're generally going slower, and rural roads are the worst because you have high speed junctions, head on collisions, trees, and there's always the possibility that you end up upside down in a ditch and nobody discovers your car for three days.

Stats here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report..._Great_Britain

Motorway: 6% deaths, 3% serious injuries
Urban: 42% deaths, 65% serious injuries
Rural: 52% deaths, 32% serious injuries

But of course motorways have far more traffic than rural roads.

So it's pretty clear that if you want to improve road safety motorways should be the last thing to be targeting.

Pretty interesting, especially coming from you. Would be interesting to know how the make/model of car affects the breaking distance on a motorway but guess even if you drive a performance car, it's the tulipty vectra behind you that you need to worry about.

[Chuck]

Pretty interesting, especially coming from you. Would be interesting to know how the make/model of car affects the breaking distance on a motorway but guess even if you drive a performance car, it's the tulipty vectra behind you that you need to worry about.

I've been watching the time it takes me to get home to Devon each week under different road conditions and circumstances.

Overall, the difference in journey time between me following the speed limit all the way, or moderately exceeding the speed limit where reasonable, is negligible.

There are so many obstacles on the journey, roundabouts, single-carriageway bottlenecks, traffic lights etc, that there is absolutely no point whatsoever in speeding and risking the points.

I suspect most journeys over any significant distance would be the same.

[d000hg]

Here is a bit more novel idea - allow drivers who got cars and skills to drive safely at 100 mph to do so for some extra tax, obviously if weather/traffic conditions allow for such safe speed.

That's a stupid idea:

a)The people who think they're great drivers generally aren't
b)When accidents are caused by bad drivers, good drivers get caught up in them


On the original story... I guess if we have a speed limit then enforcing it is fine as long as it's done openly rather than trying to catch you out.
Bring on automatic cars, car-trains, etc.

If you want to have fun driving, go to Scotland and try to drive at the speed limit on the winding roads!

[NickFitz]

Had me worried for a minute, as I bomb up and down the M4 and M5 at an average of 90 MPH twice a week.

But that stretch of the M1 round Northampton has had always-on speed cameras for twenty years.

So in short, nothing to see here, move along ...

P.S. God the Telegraph is shyte these days, rehashing that non-story.

Northampton isn't in Bedfordshire, the motorway past Northampton doesn't have any speed cameras, and the Bedfordshire cameras are south from Bedford, in the opposite direction to Northamptonshire.

[woohoo]

I've been watching the time it takes me to get home to Devon each week under different road conditions and circumstances.

Overall, the difference in journey time between me following the speed limit all the way, or moderately exceeding the speed limit where reasonable, is negligible.

There are so many obstacles on the journey, roundabouts, single-carriageway bottlenecks, traffic lights etc, that there is absolutely no point whatsoever in speeding and risking the points.

I suspect most journeys over any significant distance would be the same.

mmm not sure how true that is. I've been on journeys where my sat nav has estimated the time based on 70mph and I've knocked a fair bit off it by doing 80mph.

Also, there are times when the outside lane is moving much faster than the middle or left but to stay in the outside lane you really have to be doing 80 or you cause a queue behind you.

[d000hg]

Best case doing 80 rather than 70 is you reduce your journey time by 12.5% and that assumes your whole journey is spent cruising at motorway speeds. So in an hour you save 7 minutes.

But every time you slow down for a car in front you lose some of that. And clearly all the time you're not cruising - junctions, minor roads, etc, doesn't count.

On a 6 hour slog down a motorway which is empty enough you could cut off half an hour.

[WTFH]

Zero tolerance would work if car speedos were also zero tolerant, which they aren't.


It would also work if drivers were required to be retested, and the test included motorway driving.


[rant ] And it would help if you didn't have middle class DF reading people trying to find every way to park on single yellow or double yellow lines then appeal to get off, never caring about the problems they cause for others with their actions. Or park in shop car parks to go shopping elsewhere then complain when they get an invoice for £75. When you park there, you take up a space from someone who might actually spend money in the shop that has paid for the car park. You might just keep them in business. But no, screw them, find the way to get out of being reasonable, because we've lost all respect and sense of responsibility in this country.




[/ rant]

[Chuck]

Zero tolerance would work if car speedos were also zero tolerant, which they aren't.


It would also work if drivers were required to be retested, and the test included motorway driving.


[rant ] And it would help if you didn't have middle class DF reading people trying to find every way to park on single yellow or double yellow lines then appeal to get off, never caring about the problems they cause for others with their actions. Or park in shop car parks to go shopping elsewhere then complain when they get an invoice for £75. When you park there, you take up a space from someone who might actually spend money in the shop that has paid for the car park. You might just keep them in business. But no, screw them, find the way to get out of being reasonable, because we've lost all respect and sense of responsibility in this country.

[/ rant]

How enlightening. I'd never realised that anti-social parking was a class-based thing.