Getting your back up!

[DaveB]

Bless you Chris.. a man with a sense of humour

No.. none of the above was aimed at you or anyone else in particular.. other than those that go too slow for the road when conditions dictate the maximum allowed is more than safe to proceed at ;-) Road conditions is, I think, almost another subject altogether and you point out good examples. What's the use of travelling at the maximum permissable speed when you can't see your hand in front of you so to do so is unsafe! This has to be taken as read and is by all road users with a modicum of grey matter between their ears. Of course, there are always exceptions and there always will be ;-)

I think it might be an idea to force all new drivers to have to ride 'restricted' mopeds first. Extreme.. yes but they'd certainly have a much better appreciation for driving and road craft.. something sadly lacking by an overwhelming proportion of 4-wheeler jockies who sit isolated in their little world, impervious to ice, rain, diesel, wind and cold.. hanging onto their mobile phones (yes.. they still do that).. stereo belting out.. heater/climate control on. ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Nigel H-J]

There is also a little thing called 'failing to proceed'.. eg, going significantly slower than the maximum permitted speed and for this, you can fail your driving test. While poodling along at 30mph in a 50mph zone without a care in the world.. all you do is create a long queue of antagonised drivers behind you

Have to agree with Dave on that point, even when the road is basically a narrow country lane and visibility good one can safely drive to the national speed limit and before anyone raises their hands up in horror this is exactly what I did whilst taking my Advanced Driving Test with a Police Traffic Officer whilst at the same time giving a continuous running commentary. It is called making progress and whilst you can be failed on the Ministry Test for driving too slow you will be failed for not making safe progress on the Advanced Test.

One of the biggest risks to safety is not speed but attitude of the motorist, impatience, tailgating which is another form of agressive driving to try to intimidate the other road user, dangerous overtaking, negotiating corners in the wrong gear at speed leading to understeer, I personally get fed up with all the signs on the roads stating 'SPEED KILLS' instead, road safety partnerships should be doing more to highlight the attitude of drivers instead. I feel that I have the qualifications to write without risk of critisism in that I have taken and passed 7 Ministry of Transport Driving Tests first time on various classes of vehicles and driven professionally on 38ton artics. Oh, and by the way, I always maintain the speed limits within built up areas and nationally as I have seen the results of people badly injured and decapitated through crashes and also I have been on the receiving end with serious leg injuries from a crash on a motor-bike (not my fault).

Regards and safe driving.

Nigel.

[nigelb]

I have to agree with Eric on US speed limits, although not so much in urban areas. Where I live the town police have a very strict enforcement policy - known as a good source of town revenue. To be fair, the speed limits are not unreasonably low given the amount of traffic congestion in this area.

The Interstates ( motorways) are another matter - except for a few states that allow higher limits (Montana is one I think) the speed limits in very remote areas are way too low. Sometimes there is hundreds of miles of straight road with littlle traffic and the posted speed limits is 55mph, 65mph or 70mph. Again this may be the revenue factor being involved, but no one follows those limits in remote areas. Now on the East Coast of the US the interstates are usually very congested and those limits are probably reasonable, although nearly everyone will drive 10mph over the limit.

Nigel²

[Erick_Cantu]

I'd heard the speed limits in the UK are more reasonable. I don't know. I get sick of bored suburbanite mothers ensuring that the speed limits are ridiculously low. I drive at the safest and/or most efficient speed for a given road under given conditions. This speed is often at odds with the ridiculously low speed limits. I think the root problem is the fact that it is way too easy to get a license out here. When I passed my road test, I was in a state of pneumonia induced dementia. I didn't know my arse from a hole in the ground. Yet I passed. That tells me the standards are too low and judging by the average American's driving skills, it would seem obvious. We need to get the idiots off the road, and stop legislating unfair limits on the rest of us.

[DispatchDragon]

Eric

If you think Minnesota is a problem - come spend a few days in Lost Wages - I think we must attract the worse drivers in the US plus the
NHP estimates that at ANY given time of the day or night 30% of the drivers on the road are over the DUI limit - and we seem to have
inherited the most agressive , obnoxious drivers from LA - I just arrived at work having witnessed a multiple vehicle accident on I215
why ? because two idiots were racing rice rockets!! it didnt just involve them but three other cars on the highway.

Leif :brick:

[Nigel H-J]

I'd heard the speed limits in the UK are more reasonable

This is true Eric but I still think that motorway speed limits here, when good weather prevails, should be increased to 80mph instead of the present 70mph.

Looking at it logistically dual carriageways have the same speed limits as motorways yet on a motorway there are no traffic islands, junctions where vehicles can cross over and traffic lights, yet the speed limits are the same!! Does not make much sense to me.

To increase the speed limit to 80mph on a motorway would mean to the green campaigners more pollution but the average speed of vehicles is already in that area anyway and equally, the police are less likely to stop some-one travelling at that speed as it would mean missing the next one driving 90+mph and being a greater risk to other road users.

Regards
Nigel.

[ChrisHunt]

Speed is a factor but usually only when combined with others such as weather, road conditions, road layout etc but an even bigger factor (at least around here) seems to be sheer laziness or thumb up bum and mind in neutral! I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen people drive right handers with at least some of the car on the wrong side of the road; sometimes with most of the car on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately the roads are quiet enough so that the most that happens is the odd near miss but not always. On the vast majority of these occaisions the offending car has been moving easily slow enough to make the bend perfectly safely, it's just that they can't be arsed. Personaly I just want to shoot the buggers (only joking Cheltenham!).

On the subject of cycling on the pavement - I've just come back from a week in Barcelona where cycling on the pavement is absolutely endemic - and it's great! Everyone does it and both pedestrians and cyclists somehow get along perfectly well with the arrangement. A bit scary at first but watching out for mad cyclists quickly becomes second nature (it has to!). Mind you the pavements over there are just a bit bigger than here. On the other side of the coin there are lots of marked cycle paths in the city and these also seem to be shared space and again with no-one appearing to mind either way.

Regards,
Chris

[TSR2]

My pet hate at the minute is this bl00dy GPS things. people who are spending more time looking at and listening to the bloody box struck to the windscreen than whats on the road in front of them. They should be banned. If folk can't plan there journey in advance, or stop and consult a map they should be shot off the road, allong with folk who tow caravans. If ever there was sound reasoning to fitting cars with surface to surface missiles, its caravans.

Sorry for the rant, been one of those days.

[emfrat]

Too right, Ben !
They won't believe a computer in any other context, but if a GPS says 'turn right' they will drive down a railway line.
So ban these idiots for good, then they won't be taking up space on the road when I want to use it

MikeW

[nigelb]

At least cell (mobile) phones are banned in the UK while driving. Only a few jurisdictions ban them here and Virginia is not one of them. You ought to see the idiots this side of the pond attempting to drive with one hand with a cell phone stuck to their ear. Every near miss I have had in the last few years has involved someone on a cell phone not paying full attention to their driving. I want to grab the F*****g phone from them and throw it as far as I can, but I imagine that wouldn't be socially acceptable. ;-)

Nigel²