andrewducker

We should increase speed limits on urban trunk roads to 40, and reduce them on urban non-A-roads to 20. That will slow down traffic on most urban roads, while probably having little effect on journey times.

And we should enforce the law. It brings the law into disrepute to have laws on the books that are not enforced. If you don't think you should get a ticket when you are speeding, you should call for speed limits to be abolished, not for speed cameras to be abolished.

Definitely agree with the latter sentiment.

She former sounds sensible, but I'll need to think about it more. Certainly, the bendy backstreets should be 20-mph, but there are non-A-roads that are intermediate cases. Hmm.

I think the current limit of 30mph is slow enough from a survivability POV - what advantages does lowering it have other than increasing motorists' blood pressure?

Linky

The evidence of increased pedestrian safety at 20 mph is strong. The chance of a pedestrian being seriously injured or killed if struck by a car is 45% if the car is travelling at 30 mph but only 5% at 20 mph. Government research showed that 20 mph zones reduced the incidence of traffic accidents by 60% and cut child pedestrian and child cyclist accidents by 67%, while overall vehicle speeds fell by an average 9.3 mph (14.9 kph). There was no evidence that accidents increased on surrounding roads. Research by local councils produces similar results. For example, Havant Borough Council has imposed a 20 mph limit on 20 miles of road and has seen traffic accident casualties drop by a significant 40%.

How much of that was due to traffic finding alternative routes to avoid the stupidly low 20 mph?

Gosh, it's a good thing that traffic was just the good drivers who never have accidents, eh?

I will be the first to say that I personally feel that 20mph is too low to adopt it as the speed across cities - maybe around schools or in cul-de-sacs (there are roads in Leicester and Peterborough that are already 20mph because it's a better idea). However, the statistic you posted is food for thought, and is also proof that the Government's "if you hit me at 30, there's a 80% chance I'll live" advertisements are bollocks.

Actually, they both match up. 80% chance of survival = 20% chance of dying.
45% chance of dying or serious injury means just that; you are combining both stats.

i.e. 20% death, 25% serious injury, 55% non-serious injury or better.

Ah, whoops, misread that.

'Sokay :) I figured it was just momentary stats blindness.

Your comment, dripping in sarcasm is it is, is non-sensical. I made a perfectly valid point that drivers would rather drive on fast roads than slow ones and would therefore avoid the slower roads and you start talking crap.

Come back to me when you actually either have an answer to my question or a more reasonable response.

Us Northen types have 20mph limits around all our schools.

However one worrying knock on effect is that kids seem to have less road sense. Although I couldn't empirically prove that and it is just based on my opinion of just picking up my Dad from work. (kids everywhere)

These speed limits I have no problem with and are usually only operative during certain hours. However my point stands: If you generally drop road speeds to 20 mph from 30 or 40, traffic will just be diverted to other faster roads. Given the high usage of GPS these days, keying in "avoid 20mph roads" when the maps update, or just marking which roads to avoid manually on a journey to work and back would mean finding a faster alternative route is child's play.

Which would push people onto A roads, which are designed for more traffic, and have less pedestrians crossing willy-nilly.

This would presumably be a good thing.

Not in a big city though, unless you make ALL roads in the city 20mph, in which case you get more congestion at peak times, slower traffic throughput and a range of other problems. Basically it boils down to whether you think avoiding accidents is more important that havign a functioning road system and town.

I concur. I think 30mph is the ideal balance between preventing serious accidents and preventing complete lockup.

Big cities you have roads which are clearly there for higher speed travel (London Road, Leith Walk, Lothian Road), and ones that are purely urban (my street, for instance). I'd be fine with higher speed limits on the travel roads, and lower ones on the backstreets. 20MPH on my street would seem just fine to me. It'd be silly for Leith Walk (well, once the construction's finished)

Does it matter? If it worked, it worked.

Yes ofcourse it matters. If you are just pushing a problem from one raod to another you are just diverting traffic and accidents to surrounding roads.

What part of "There was no evidence that accidents increased on surrounding roads" is it that you don't like?

The part where...
a, you didn't say it and infact haven't commented yet so your utterly condescending nature is laughably out of place and...
b, I have intelligence and logic and know that AS A DRIVER I wouldn't drive in 20 mph roads given a choice.

Infact the "evidence that accidents increased on surrounding roads" isn't required, just give us the throughput of traffic on those roads that dropped their speed limits to 20 mph and if that traffic has dropped in line with the rate of accidents then the figures are manipulation of statistics.

Additionally, *I* asked the question. If you can't answer it, shut the fuck up and let someone more qualified than you speak. If you can, contribute the data rather than being a prick and trying to sound elitist when you have no basis in your asinine comments for being so.

Does that answer your question? Or would you like me to tear apart your flippant little comments further?

Edited 2008-09-12 00:42 (UTC)

a) Pointing out a bit of argument he believes you've overlooked or are deliberately avoiding is perfectly reasonable.
b) Swearing at someone and calling them names is most definitely not.

If you don't like his tone, then please tell him so politely, rather than descending into a slagging match.

I'll comment on here in whatever order I see fit it you don't mind. If you are insisting that your comments are all based on logic and intelligence and some superiority related to your having a driving licence and a pair of wheels that's fine. However, I don't, for example use a wheelchair, but it still pisses me royally off when I see pavements obstructed by anything: cars, roadworks, people even to make life that little bit harder for those without choices.

And that's the thing, a child lives where they're brought up. They don't commute tens of miles by car to get to work. They just want to cross the road, see their friends, whatever. And maybe it is sensible that we discourage drivers such as yourself from driving down their street and instead driving down a trunk road or a main street where there are lighted crossings and other safer ways to cross.

If all you want is data, then go and look it up, I'm not your google-bot and I'll respond as I see fit within the realms of polite-ish conversation. Apologies if my tone has made you go off on one, but this is the internet and strong opinions do go with the territory.

One question, would you shop by preference in a supermarket that had a 30mph speed limit in their car park rather than 10mph or 5mph or do you understand that in such a place the road has a higher utility for storing vehicles and balancing that need with the safety of pedestrians reaching them and passing them than enabling the cars to leave and enter quickly?

I'd really like to see dynamic speed-limits. We already have them variable by road, (and in some very few cases by time of day, I think?); there's easily the technology to have them variable by visibility, rain, traffic levels, pedestrian count, and so on. It'd mean that drivers would have to pay a bit more attention, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I was discussing this with someone recently - ways of doing it, reducing speed limits in fog/rain, raising it on good days - we worked out that in addition to the regularly stationed sensors they would also need to be networked with each other, since it's important that when it's foggy you're already at a lower speed, so the limit you see needs to be correct for the sensors in the road ahead, not where you are, and...

...well, and so on, and so forth. But I'd love to see it happen - while there are days and roads where 80mph or even more is perfectly reasonable there are also days when even the present 70 is suicidal.

On the camera note, what irritates me is not speed cameras, but speed traps - situations designed to catch people speeding rather than discourage them immediately from doing so - police waiting behind the rises of hills to catch folk etc. The idea of having targets is also abhorrent for the same reason - if you have to meet a quota, you need people to keep breaking the law; it's ridiculous.

The new "average speed" cameras are good I think - the best idea I can think of with the current tech on the roads is to have a beg, well-marked, shiny/blinky/huge lettered "START OF AVERAGE SPEED CAMERA ZONE"... and then hide the end of it, and not mark it at all, and the only way you know you've been out of the zone is when you see that the next one has started...

Edited 2008-09-11 12:36 (UTC)

There's a problem with average speed cameras on roads other than motorways, which is that to prove an offence was committed, you don't just have to prove that the vehicle passed point X at time A and point Y at time B, but also that the entire journey between X and Y happened on the public roads, and that the route on which you base the average speed is the shortest route between X and Y. These are difficult things to prove for most roads.

What about having a 'spy in your car' that is a GPS system that records your location. Rather than in the nightmare scenario where this info is wirelessly transmitted to MI5/6 all the time, it could only be required to be produced (needing to be done physically) at the time an offense was suspected of being committed?

how big is this unit?
where on my motorbike do I put it?
who pays for it?

I'm not sure how big it'd need to be, probably not very big at all. I'm not thinking big Tom Tom like device with a huge LCD screen, I'm talking a few chips (for the GPS / CPU / flash) and a built in aerial. We're talking watch size here, nothing bigger.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to introduce it as a phased in thing, where all new vehicles have to have such a device equipped. Or alternatively you bit the bullet and say that everyone has to have such a device installed by 20XX.

One way or another we pay for it. That's how all such things work.

I believe Norwich Union were trialling a GPS tracker to offer low-mileage drivers a lower insurance rate. I rememeber thinking that I'd never take that offer since it would mean my speed/movements could also be recorded.

Oh, I wouldn't propose them anywhere other than on long stretches of motorway. And an appeal system is already in place for just such misunderstandings if they happened even then.

That's what I was going to say.

I don't think there should be a set speed limit for motorways and each should be approached on a case-by-case basis, but that many roads would benefit from no upper limit if it's safe.

You could also increase penalties for causing accidents by dangerous driving, and include excessive speed in that even if there's no limit, no limit should be "use your judgement" not "go as fast as you like".

I concur though, people whinging about cameras really annoy me, get the speed limit changed you fool.

Of course, it'd also really help if we had a compulsory motorway driving skills element to the licence, and civility and getting out of the way were taught, driving in Germany on two-lane autobahns is normally easier than t3+ lane motorways over here.

They have a compulsory dual carriage way section now do they not?

the nice thing about learning to drive in edinburgh is that you go on the bypass in lessons and the test. it's officially dual carriageway A road, but effectively motorway, which makes motorways unscary post-test.

Whoever thought the motorway speed limits should be 60 has clearly never driven on a motorway.

Personally I dont think general road speed limits need to be raised, but I think the policy of changing roads from 60 to 40 or from 40 to 30 for no reason needs to be stopped and reversed. I also think that using road narrowing instead of speed bumps is utterly stupid - they CAUSE accidents. Speedbumps at least have the amusing side effect of breaking the front spoilers on chavs cars.

Road narrowing was one of the measures mentioned in a well publicised traffic psychology (or such) paper. No road markings was also something that was found to decrease traffic.

Unfortunatly one of the major reccomendations (or worries rather) of the report was that if this information was in the public domain. I.E. the public were aware they were being duped the traffic calming measures that worked previously would cease to be as effective.

Well done the Dept. of transport for publicising the reports findings then. (although I can't remember what its called I remember being quite amused at the time)

That's all kinds of great :)

However, as I have tried to drill into people above on my previous comment, it wouldn't decrease traffic, it would decrease traffic FLOW on those particular roads. The traffic still has to go somewhere and people are clever buggers. If you put a few roads as 20mph or stick in a load of speed bumps, they will find alternatic routes. If this is the plan, great - success. If the plan is however to reduce ALL accidents, you have just moved the problem from one area to another.

Well if you move it to less accident prone areas or stretchs of roads then jobs a good 'un no?

Roads in built up residential areas with young families, schools etc are likely to have a higher probability of accidents occuring (not involving just veichles that is) then back roads through industrial estates...

Or as someone else has pointed out on major urban trunk roads.

Would work in small towns where you put it on residential areas or the main high street, but in larger towns it isn't practical without bringing traffic to a near standstill. Oh and speedometers are also notoriously bad at being accurate at lower speeds (don't know which way they are bad, be it reading too fast or too slow - been a while since I read the stats and article on them).

The traffic still has to go somewhere

Do you think that's entirely true? Do you not that think that there would gradually be a shift in the way people think about what's feasible to drive and in their behaviour - for example, planning trips to the shops more carefully if "just popping to the shop" now takes twice as long; adjusting their ideas of how far they'd plausibly commute to work, whatever...

I love your icon.

Thankyou :)

I object to speed cameras that are put in place purely to raise revenue, quite often they're in the middle of nowhere on a straight bit of road that could possibly be the only safe place to overtake on that road for miles. People end up fustrated stuck behind slower moving traffic, and hence are more likely to take risks when overtaking.

Raising speed limits should be taken with a pinch of salt - not all conditions/roads warrant travelling at maximum permitted speed - example on skye where there are derestricted areas of road, but due to bends and blind crests of hills, you'd be insane to do more than about 40.

Motorways, again, take into account traffic conditions - I've driven up the m74 numerous times and been the only car for miles, having an increased speed limit in cases like that makes sense. In france we noticed that the motorways over there have two max speed limits, one for good weather (130kph) and a lesser one (110kph i think) for adverse conditions, again, makes sense.

What I'd also like to see are minimum speed limits - doing 40mph on a motorway is tantamount to suicide, it's almost as dangerous as driving in excess of the speed limit. And trucks, when they decide to overtake each other going up a hill on a dual carriageway...

I agree on all points. Nicely put.

Yup very much on the dawdlers and the overtaking trucks (AAARGG).

OTOH unlike Canada and the US we do little to help trucks. I've seen a million US roads that say if lead vehicle has a tail of 3 vehicles it's to drop out to crawler lane. WE could do with that.

The problem is one deeper than just speeding, it's an inherent problem of law. Law is a binary function over an anlogue system. The actual safe driving speed for any piece of road varies wildly with the specific context of time, weather conditions, traffic, time of day, driver condition, car condition and so on. A sober driver, at 3am, on a clear dry night, on a motorway, driving a modern car at 120mph, with a couple of training courses under their belt is likely to be safer than a driver just under the drink drive limit, in heavy traffic, on a rainy day, driving at 50mph, just after passing their test.

The difference between the two situations has to be the judgement of whoever it is enforcing the laws (either the police who decide whether or not to arrest you, the prosecutor deciding whether or not to take the case to court or the judge deciding whether or not you're guilty). This is the reason I object to traffic cameras. They have no opinions and neither do the people that process the photos and send out the fines. It's also why I object to the police having quotas for tickets. It wholly removes the reason for the laws in the first place: to make the roads safer.

The problem is that there's no way to tell the difference between the two drivers from a distance, which means that you have to pull them both over and check whether it's the idiotic 17-year-old doing 120 or the skilled experienced driver.

And the number of people safe at higher speeds isn't just low - it's even lower if they're around the idiots.

Plus, of course, most bad drivers think they're better than they are...

I agree that most people who think they're great drivers who can drive fast with impunity are wrong. I think there are plenty of reasonably cautious drivers that can drive quite safely at 80pmh or 90mph. I don't want the police to have their ability to stop people they think are driving uncautiously and over the speed limit removed. I just want the police to be able to judge the situation themselves on its merit and not some camera drone that has no judgement at all.

As to telling who is behind the wheel, judge it completely by behaviour. Stop people if they're driving faster than their driving methods suggest are safe. If someone is doing 100mph, but indicating ahead of time, pulling slowly from lane to lane ahead of any problems, slowing down when 100mph isn't safe and being a generally cautious driver, fine. If they're doing 80mph, undertaking, switching lanes without indicating and being a potential problem, give them a speeding ticket.

I think it's a lot more difficult to arrest people for dangerous driving or driving without due care and attention unless they've had a crash. You can still hit them with a speeding ticket if they're driving stupidly _and_ fast.

The thing is that driving fast when you're not competent will be something you get away with 99% of the time. But that 100th time will kill you, and other people around you.

Also, I would imagine roads where some people are driving at 70mph and others are doing 100mph are inherently less safe. Setting a top limit at a level which is suitable for 95% fo drivers seems like a reasonable compromise.

I have only once had an issue with mis-judging someone's speed. When I was driving on a single carriageway, old roman road (one lane in either direction), checked my rear view mirror to see someone a quarter mile behind, indicated about 10 seconds later to pull around a slow moving car and nearly pulled out in front of a car doing about 120mph.

It's not that I think people should be able to drive at any speed they like (some speeds are intrinsically dangerous in various conditions), more that I neither want the police not to be able to give out tickets at their discretion for speed limit X, nor do I want speed limit X to be a speed where people are automatically fined no matter what the context.

The M25 works very well as a place where, despite having speed cameras everywhere, you can drive up to 90mph in most conditions without anything happening. People don't wildly pull out expecting everyone to be sticking to 70mph, but the people driving over the speed limit generally do it in a sensible manner. I can't tell if it's inherently less safe or not (I imagine it is to _some_ extent), but there is no absolute safety unless we all stop our cars...and not even then.

If we upped the top speed to 90mph because that's the point at which the cameras actually go off, then the police would have less powers to slap down the people who drive at 90mph in a dangerous manner. If we make the cameras go off at 70mph then a lot of perfectly safe driving would be punished.

Andy, AFAIK, you don't drive (and never have?). Not an ad hominem attack, just saying your viewpoint might be different to a driver's.

Of course not. It's _much_ more likely to be objective.

From my sister, who was (until recently) a risk analyst in commercial vehicles at Norwich union, the safest speed to be travelling at is....

... the same one as everyone else.

I agree - there is no allowance for skill level. there should be, somehow, except, as stated, the worse folks are at something the less likely they are to know it.

hmmm put everyone on motorbikes (solo) - then if you do cock up from over-confidence you are likely only to take out yourself.

Woah Polls with stats...

Salivates...

Pavlov interfered with my natural response to anything number based when I was a young un...

I'm a boring driver. I like not dying horrible fiery vehicular death.

You have no 'no limits' option for the motorway question.

That's because it won't let you get stats back from an option that's not autogenerated.

I have realised since last night and looking at poll that we do in fact have a near perfect solution - everyone under stands that the law in reality allows you to go c 10% over 70 mph which gives you pretty much what most people voted for - 80 mph, give or take a bit for conditions.

Now you might say it's better to have a law enforced as is. But that social norm is so embedded if you put the limit up to 80, people would assume that mean 90, give or take. So let sleeping dogs lie,huh?

The bit about how most people don't ask for higher limits is psychologically fascinating. It implies either that we think the law is right for "them" - but, "we" expert drivers that we are, should be allowed to bend the rule that needs to exist for others :-) - or that we know in our hearts we're wrong to think it's safe to drive over 70 but we wish no one would notice. The former shows an internal understanding of the fact that laws need to be universalised, which is an key bit of legal theory..

I'd go for dynamic limits myself - I drive on motorways at as off peak as I can manage when 90 is a sane limit - but I'd stick to 70 or even 60 at peak. But I do wonder how well again, the "orher drivers who aren;t as smart as me" would deal with this..

rd traffic law is a nightmare.

ps can you show me again how you did that setting up polls with stats thing?

pps I am shattered! tell me I have to come to badminton!

Edited 2008-09-11 16:39 (UTC)

I don't think we need to change speed limits up anywhere, and there is a compelling case for extending 20mph zones much further, especially where people live. I fundamentally don't believe that we should design or change our cities around cars. Cities are for people.

There's a lot of hot air talked now especially from the roads lobby that it's wrong to believe in a hierarchy of transport options which places any one form as being less important (the phasing of traffic lights against private cars in London being an example). I somewhat agree, rather liking equality myself, and wish that the cretins who've been digging up the (pretty awful) cycle facility I use to cross the North Circular and get to work every day thought perhaps maybe even for one second that they had to give equal warnings, consideration and as an outcome safety to cyclists, pedestrians and car drivers. Instead of which I get pedestrians diverted onto my cycle path and no warning. You would never close a road without warning, yet for a cycle facility which forms a crucial north/south link this is no problem.

There's some merit in increasing speed limits on certain types of trunk road but only if there is no need to share these roads with buses, cyclists and mopeds. This is the case only on a very limited set of roads and it should be remembered that congestion is far more an economic effect than of any link to the speed limit.

On the topic of enforcing the law, we really need to enforce the mobile phones and driving laws properly. Just because lots of people do it doesn't make it any more safe. It is morally reprehensible that we tolerate death as an every day occurrence due to the selfish nature of a majority.

Hmm, transport doesn't half get my goat.

Edited 2008-09-11 19:00 (UTC)

(deleted comment)

Ok - what's going on in these last two comments? The one you're replying to wasn't calling for the banning of vans, cars, etc., just saying that purely living areas ought to have slower speeds in them and you're leaping in and attacking them in a frankly obnoxious manner.

If you want to argue, that's fine, but these last couple of comments have crossed the line of what I'm willing to have in my journal.

I have this weird idea that speed limits should depend on the safety of the roads. Highways with four lanes per direction and slow, easy curves should have no speed limits (but carefully policed safety laws like tailgating and using the passing lane only for passing). Speed limits should drop when there are good reasons for it -- construction, junctions where people need to be able to get up to speed safely when they first come on a road, neighborhoods, etc.

Right now, in America, speed limits are usually arbitrary, encouraging people to ignore them -- even when there are really good, non-obvious reasons to slow.

I think laws should be sensible, followed, and strictly enforced when broken.

Is it a religious objection you have to using checkboxes in polls? Or did you just construct a poll providing the exact same options as checkboxes to see if anyone would comment on it?

Different results to checkboxes.

If someone ticks neither box, how do I know that they consciously didn't tick them, rather than having not seen that post at all?

Surely they'll vote if they're consciously leaving them unticked, and hence be added to totals you can see...?

How do I tell if they voted in the polls at all?

As it is, I can instantly tell that 53.8% of people voted "neither" in the last question - how long would it take to work that out if that was check-boxes?

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