Speed Limits

[Phil xxkr]

28 minutes ago, wharfhouse said:

Yes more good examples. I've just come back from a few days in Devon and it's a place that we have been seriously thinking of moving to in some 5 years time. I'll have to have a read of the Vision Zero now and see what that is all about... 

Ditto, but if by then you aren't driving, near a good bus service and totally beholding to the State financially speaking I should imagine it will be a pleasure to retire there. 😎

[wharfhouse]

19 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

Ditto, but if by then you aren't driving, near a good bus service and totally beholding to the State financially speaking I should imagine it will be a pleasure to retire there. 😎

Haha - maybe but hope to have a few more years before having to rely on a bus - in fact is there even a good bus service in rural Devon 🤔

[Phil xxkr]

Just now, wharfhouse said:

Haha - maybe but hope to have a few more years before having to rely on a bus - in fact is there even a good bus service in rural Devon 🤔

Oddly enough Phil we were using a great bus service in Jersey last week highly recommended although my bus pass didn't count 😕. Locally where I live they are like hen's teeth and enjoying an active modern lifestyle would be impossible without independent transport 

[wharfhouse]

7 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

Oddly enough Phil we were using a great bus service in Jersey last week highly recommended although my bus pass didn't count 😕. Locally where I live they are like hen's teeth and enjoying an active modern lifestyle would be impossible without independent transport 

I've often found islands have better bus services than the mainland - Jersey and the Channel Islands are somewhere we plan on visiting soon. May be a bit out of our retirement price band though... 

[Phil xxkr]

1 minute ago, wharfhouse said:

I've often found islands have better bus services than the mainland - Jersey and the Channel Isles is somewhere we plan on visiting soon. May be a bit out of our retirement price band though... 

Do hope you can Phil, it's a wonderful place, a delight for us older folk and families but I also agree it can be reassuringly expensive if you aren't selective enough about accommodation/nights out etc. Flights are affordable and very quick, 45 mins, duty free is back😜 and beaches as good as anywhere 👍

[wharfhouse]

47 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

Do hope you can Phil, it's a wonderful place, a delight for us older folk and families but I also agree it can be reassuringly expensive if you aren't selective enough about accommodation/nights out etc. Flights are affordable and very quick, 45 mins, duty free is back😜 and beaches as good as anywhere 👍

Yes will definitely have a holiday there - but don't think we would be able to move there to live when we finally retire and sell up here. 

[Linas.P]

On 7/20/2021 at 11:40 AM, Phil xxkr said:

Read an interesting article today stating over one third of Councils already had 20 mph speed limits and there is a aggressive campaign to make them country wide and if that wasn't bad enough some Mways are going down to 60 to lower nitrous oxide emissions 😱 Don't know about you but I find 30/70 mph hard enough most days. Maybe it's time to use an old tractor 😎

Thanks for opening can of worms! 

Speed limits are absolutely ridiculous as they are. 30MPH I understand in town and it is reasonably sensible, but 20MPH are clearly unjustified. They say that apparently it is 60% more likely for person to survive after being hit at 20MPH, however I think they looking at it from wrong perspective! The "person" should not be on the road in the first place, if they are not on the road then it is 100% they will survive being hit, because they won't be hit! Simple! Not only that, but in practice lower speed limits encourage pedestrians to cross the road in stupid places and they are less careful as well. Meaning - you may reduce death rate from collision by 60%, but you may increase number of collision 3 times (that means 20% more deaths, not less). Not only that, but death even at 30MPH are rare, so reducing them by 60% isn't even relevant, however injuries from any collision in car are common all the way to walking pace (3-4MPH). So 20MPH zones are absolute non-sense. It is not fault of driver that pedestrians are careless and jay walk into the road without looking. The correct measure would be to educate pedestrians, penalise them if needed.

The next step-up... there are many roads limited to 50MPH despite being 3-4 lanes wide, with middle partition and overall built at the quality of motorway... again absolute madness. If the road infrastructure allows higher speed, then higher speed should be applied.

Even 70MPH... and especially reason behind it are retarded. It was set-up as temporary limit in 60's and it is still there, the cars have long changes and even our skills and perception to speed have changed. Not only that we have national limits (60MPH) on narrow single lane roads where no sane person could safely drive at that speed. yet we allow only 10MPH more on 4 lanes super-wide and super-straight motorway. This is just stupid. Most normal countries have 80-90MPH and even that is on the slow side. 

Where is the problem? The problem is that driving in UK despite being considered "privilege" is very inclusive and that is bad thing. Our training, the rules etc. tries to make as many people eligible to be on the roads as possible, but it is achieved by lowering the standards for everyone. So instead of having fewer, better trained and generally better drivers (making it more exclusive), we have every retard and it's cousin on the road and then we have to fall back on reducing speeds and retarding all infrastructure, because realistically we have people on the road who can't even leave their driveway safely never mind driving on the road with other drivers. This clearly becomes and issue when we consider that drivers should not drive at the speed limit, but at the "safe speed" for the circumstances - how can one expect retard to know what safe speed is, when they can't leave their parking without hitting the rubbish bins?!

Sadly there is no solution, in this country we hate drivers anyway, so any argument made by motorist (not matter how valid) will always be dismissed. 

 

[Mincey]

In theory, a 20mph limit in built up areas makes sense. As long as it is enforced. Round here there's a road which has had a car crash into a house, one which has taken a wall out, two which have overturned and one which ended up in the middle of a roundabout. It's a 30mph limit and there are two schools and a row of shops in the vicinity. Without wishing to cast aspersions, it's young men and young to middle aged women who are the culprits (apart from a middle-aged tosspot in a Nissan GT-R. You know who you are if you're reading this, which you probably won't be). As I'm sure many of you will be aware, I'm currently sitting out a 3 year "Be a Good Boy" order after taking a speed awareness course, so I'm sticking religiously to an indicated 30. I regularly have someone glued to my back bumper in this area and see plenty of the types mentioned earlier doing in excess of 40mph. This is despite the road having parked cars either side in places. The Police have been asked to intervene, and I'm sure that a camera van on site for half a day would raise a fortune, but they're not interested even though they know there's an issue with cars crashing into brickwork and overturning. It's madness. Absolute madness. I'm just waiting for one of these idiot scooter boys to get smashed to pieces as they ride along the middle of the road with their enormous pair of ear-covering headphones on. Permission to end my rant?

[Linas.P]

1 minute ago, Mincey said:

Round here there's a road which has had a car crash into a house, one which has taken a wall out, two which have overturned and one which ended up in the middle of a roundabout.

'm currently sitting out a 3 year "Be a Good Boy" order

Surely, that was not caused by them traveling at 30MPH?! 😄 And here is the thing - people who end-up upside down in the middle of the road after taking out walls of the houses and light-poles don't care if speed limit is 20, 30 or 100MPH, nor if it is enforced. There are no brains in their skulls so this speed limit won't affect them, however it will affect all normal people who drive at "safe speed" and by feel and who may lose their license, their job and their life because they did 25MPH in stupid 20MPH zone in the middle of the night. 

P.S. As far as I can remember it is 2 years, not 3. Unless that has changed. I did my course for 2MPH over in 50MPH roadworks section on motorway... as always, it was empty road at night and no ***** road worker to be found anywhere. 

 

[Mincey]

8 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

P.S. As far as I can remember it is 2 years, not 3. Unless that has changed. I did my course for 2MPH over in 50MPH roadworks section on motorway... as always, it was empty road at night and no ***** road worker to be found anywhere. 

 

I'm not sure now - I thought it was three years. If it's two then I don't have much longer to go!

Edit: I know it's The Sun, but 

 

How long does the course stay on record?

Your details are kept on a database held by the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme.

If you're caught speeding again within three years of taking a speed awareness course, you're quite likely to receive a fine and penalty points straightaway.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/5343032/speed-awareness-courses-cost-how-long-on-record/

[Linas.P]

No... you are right, it is now 3 years:

https://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/faqs/how-do-i-know-if-i’m-eligible-speed-awareness-course

I am sure it was 2 years when it took it... sorry it sounds like you will have to stick to speed limits for another year. Other thing, make sure you don't speed in areas of MET (London, Birmingham and Manchester ... maybe few more) - they do not offer SAC, you get points straight away.

[wharfhouse]

40 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

Surely, that was not caused by them traveling at 30MPH?! 😄 And here is the thing - people who end-up upside down in the middle of the road after taking out walls of the houses and light-poles don't care if speed limit is 20, 30 or 100MPH, nor if it is enforced. There are no brains in their skulls so this speed limit won't affect them, however it will affect all normal people who drive at "safe speed" and by feel and who may lose their license, their job and their life because they did 25MPH in stupid 20MPH zone in the middle of the night. 

P.S. As far as I can remember it is 2 years, not 3. Unless that has changed. I did my course for 2MPH over in 50MPH roadworks section on motorway... as always, it was empty road at night and no ***** road worker to be found anywhere. 

 

Unfortunately that is the truth - lowering speed limits is just a race to the bottom. I have seen this only too clearly. We moved to a new house on a small development 26 years ago with access from our road onto an A road - initially it was a national speed limit on the main road. There were always some ******* driving at stupid speeds. So they changed it to 40mph past our road - that did make some sense as people had to get in and out of the development. But there continued to be some ******* driving at stupid speeds. Then they changed the rest of the road after the 40mph ended to the next village to 50mph. There continued to be some ******* driving at stupid speeds. Finally they changed the speed limit from 40mph to 30mph next to us. And guess what there continued to be some ******* driving at stupid speeds. As the speed limits were lowered the ******* that continued to drive at stupid speeds decided that they had to overtake the other drivers that were trying to a) be sensible around what was obviously a hazard area regardless of speed limit and b) obey the ever reducing speed limit (occasionally they put a camera van on the road, though usually when it's busy so not so easy for the ****** to speed!). So now the ******* were in even more of a rush as others around were driving slower and so went even faster to try and pull off an overtake - I've had two of then overtake me whilst I was slowing down and indicating to turn across the main road into the development! A pedestrian crossing was erected in the 30mph limit to try and make it safer to cross the road (there was some mumblings about how it might also slow drivers down). The ******* ignored that and continued to speed through. Calls for cameras were made after speed monitoring was done - it showed the ridiculous speeds some ****** were doing but a camera was rebuked saying that until there was a fatal accident they wouldn't consider it - go figure on that! Finally, just recently there was a head on crash (I don't know the details but I am guessing one overtake too many) with both drivers ending up in hospital. I suppose we might end up with 20mph soon. Will it change anything. No, the ****** will still do what they have done regardless - probably in many cases untaxed and uninsured so will never be caught. The camera van will probably make his quota of fines from those largely driving sensibly. The anti-car people will be happy that they have managed another small victory in lowering the speed limit further. The camera van will be happy to be justifying their existence ticketing more drivers. And the ****** will continue to take no notice and carry on as they have for the past 25 years!

[Rabbers]

On 7/20/2021 at 1:26 PM, dutchie01 said:

Note the staggered wheels.  Must be an F-Sport model …

[Linas.P]

 

12 minutes ago, wharfhouse said:

Unfortunately that is the truth - lowering speed limits is just a race to the bottom. <... >And the ****** will continue to take no notice and carry on as they have for the past 25 years!

Exactly - the speed limit reduction only affects those who are already sensible. And to add to the argument ... some driver may have been perfectly happy to drive at 50MPH, but now they becoming criminals by overtaking at even 40MPH. Has it improved situation? No I would argue it made it worse. As well thanks for sharing your experience, because that is exactly what I have seen everywhere.

I would as well link it to lack of actual policing - police now simply puts the camera and send the fine via post... not so much use when somebody flies past on drugs and in stolen car. This was well illustrated by this epic sketch, yes I know it is a joke, but it has so much accuracy in it... that it almost not even funny:

 

[Phil xxkr]

3 hours ago, wharfhouse said:

In my business life we often set goals and objectives and one major consideration is that they had to be realistic and achievable. None of these vision zero goals meet either of those criteria so are all worthless. Yes, work to reduce the number of fatalities but be realistic - it will never be zero unless we all never go near a road! In two of my other interests - sailing and hill walking - I accept there is some risk that I might die due to some unforseen accident. I wouldn't stop doing either though and do my best to mitigate the risk but accept that there is a real risk in both. 

SMART? 

[Phil xxkr]

2 hours ago, wharfhouse said:

Yes will definitely have a holiday there - but don't think we would be able to move there to live when we finally retire and sell up here. 

Unless Berkshire is a pseudonym for Monaco 🤣

[Linas.P]

5 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

SMART? 

I would call that common sense... which... as we all know is not common at all and even then sometimes isn't even sensible. 

Going to @wharfhouse examples... and if we compare his hobbies to what the goverment is currently doing on roads - they are trying to put fences around mountains because once in a while there is avalanche and on top of that they enforcing the ropes not to be longer than 2 metres and banning climbers from climbing any ledge higher than 3 metres, "safety... you know"...

You just can't save everyone and even then only focusing on speed limits doesn't even address core issues. 

[Mincey]

10 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

SMART? 

5Y, 5S and all that too? Aaargh!

[wharfhouse]

9 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

 

Exactly - the speed limit reduction only affects those who are already sensible. And to add to the argument ... some driver may have been perfectly happy to drive at 50MPH, but now they becoming criminals by overtaking at even 40MPH. Has it improved situation? No I would argue it made it worse. As well thanks for sharing your experience, because that is exactly what I have seen everywhere.

I would as well link it to lack of actual policing - police now simply puts the camera and send the fine via post... not so much use when somebody flies past on drugs and in stolen car. This was well illustrated by this epic sketch, yes I know it is a joke, but it has so much accuracy in it... that it almost not even funny:

 

I remember it well from the first time around and seeing it again now it is just as true today, if not more so. When I was younger and there were no speed cameras I was stopped a couple of times by actual police cars, a couple of times for speeding (not by a huge margin and both on a motorway) and once for undertaking in the inside lane too early for what would become a left lane off the motorway. I didn't get a ticket but did get a ticking off. Probably made me a lot better driver (being educated face to face) than an anonymous letter in the post from a camera. 

[wharfhouse]

12 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

SMART? 

Yep

[Linas.P]

Yes, despite all the technology the actual policing is still the best way, simply because there is human element to it. Just speed itself does not mean much, because there is huge difference between say person speeding by 30MPH (so doing 100MPH) on completely empty motorway in the middle of the night and somebody driving like maniac, jumping from lane to lane, undertaking, cutting people-off in the traffic at 60MPH when the rest of the traffic is moving at 50MPH. In one case it could be argued it isn't even dangerous and nobody was affected, but huge fine will be issued, in other case it is clearly idiotic, but speed cameras won't catch it.

As such actual police officer observing the situation could make decision to simply warn the person and let them learn (or sometimes don't even bother stopping them), or to issue a fine because circumstance warranted it.

Finally, multiple studies have concluded that the severity of the fine does not corelate with effectiveness of the policy, however the likelihood of the fine does. So for example having £1000 + 12 points fine will not work if likelihood of being caught is low, but having even £1 fine every time you exceed the limit would work if it would be guaranteed one get's it. That is why average speed cameras works better than spot cameras and that is the same reason why we see this behaviour, where people drive like maniacs from camera to cameras... that is because they know where cameras are and they know there is no point to follow the rules anywhere expect in front of the camera. 

 

[Phil xxkr]

4 hours ago, dutchie01 said:

https://www.volvogroup.com/en/about-us/traffic-safety/safety-vision.html

VOLVO has a vision zero as well.

 

Yes Bernard and look what it states ;

As long as there are accidents Volvo is committed to always strive towards zero accidents through high quality and innovative products that reduce the frequency of accidents and their consequences.

Zero Accidents Is Our Vision - 

What utter Corporate balderdash 🤯, so Volvo accept there will be accidents, ie a non predictable non foreseeable event or series of events yet they will be striving to do something about the unknown. With such magnificent insights can they share with me this week's Lotto numbers? 

[Linas.P]

When Volvo announced it, I straight away crossed that brand out of my interests. They still going by same misguided opinion that peed kills and they will do whatever it takes even when it means taking away freedoms of owners and utility away from their possessions. 

[Phil xxkr]

32 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

When Volvo announced it, I straight away crossed that brand out of my interests. They still going by same misguided opinion that peed kills and they will do whatever it takes even when it means taking away freedoms of owners and utility away from their possessions. 

Isn't it interesting Linas how Volvo are pursuing these philanthropic values centred on empathy with people, the environment and well being of the world in general. All very laudable aims until you find out they are owned by a country opening a coal-fired power station a week, control their people with social credits, and eshew democratic principles 😱

[Linas.P]

14 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

Isn't it interesting Linas how Volvo are pursuing these philanthropic values centred on empathy with people, the environment and well being of the world in general. All very laudable aims until you find out they are owned by a country opening a coal-fired power station a week, control their people with social credits, and eshew democratic principles 😱

Should not forget - the government which is quite openly committing genocide... yes it is very good point, being owned by Geely, which is basically subsidiary of PLA is certainly one more reason to avoid the brand.

To make it more visual - this guy (de-facto Volvo owner) certainly does not look like supporter of democratic values: