The Oubliette Takes Nottingham?

[Wolfshade]

I would be up for it. But not then.

Also Notts is a 5 and a half hour drive for me....

If you doubled your speed you would half the time.

You're welcome.

[DrLove42]

If you doubled your speed you would half the time.

You're welcome.

As well as approximatly 40 speeding tickets.

There are so many speed cameras between here and there its a little crazy

[Wolfshade]

If you go fast enough then they don't catch you, plus the yellow boxes are very easy to spot so just slow down for them.
Or failing that if your number plate was obscured or wrong then it wouldn't be an issue.

Obviously the above comment is made as a joke and I would never advocate breaking the law, especially the arbitary speed laws.

[Mr Mystery]

But aren't all laws inherently arbitrary?

[Psychosplodge]

Yeah but speed limits are becoming something of a bad joke.

[Wolfshade]

All laws are inherently arbitary, however, a lot of road law is trial and error.

I mean the introduction of a speed limit of 70 was done on a temporary basis and before and during the trial vehciles were found to be travelling quicker with the limit than they had been before, yet still mostly below the limit. It was felt to be a good thing but was never revised with improved road layout and improved technology.

Like the "20 is plenty" campaign is a strange one given that no 20mph zones are enforced so any reductions in 20mph zones need to be greeted with caution.

My biggest issue with speed limits is that they are a lazy way to improve road safety.
Overwhelmingly, collisions occur at road intersections. Now, national guidance says that you should only reduce the speed limit on a section under two conditions i) The average speed is already low enough to warrant one, i.e. traffic natural slows down to navigate an section, and, ii) there is no other recourse. Now the big trouble is a lot of these intersection incidents occur because of poor road layout, unfortunately, these are expensive to improve (and some road designers really have no clue) and at a time of tightening of belts the cost effective solution is to slow everyone down so that there is more reaction time to avoid the incident, rather than dealing with the under lying issue.

It is true though that enforced speed limits cause a "platooning" effect, bunches of vehicles all drive together as a single unit at a single speed and these plattons are inherently very safe, it is when you have the vehicles acting as independent agents doing different speeds where collisions are much more likely. Also, with lower speeds there are less energies so if there are accidents they are less harmful (don't forget in terms of kinetic energy speed is squared, so dropping from 40 to 30 drops the engergy by 44%), then you also decrease the brakeing distance, and decrease the thinking distance, all of which make collisions less likely.

New road layouts are often hampered by lack of space to build the correct solution so a compromised half-way house is used which is not effective. Such schemes cost millions of pounds per junction to put in and can cause months of delays to road users. New signs can be errected in an evening without needing to close a road. Nor do they require the back office modelling of traffic behaviour

TL;DR

Lower speed limits make safer roads and are highly cost effective.

[Psychosplodge]

What really annoys me is the previously national speed limit roads dropped to 50mph with accompanying repeaters through countryside in an attempt to slow down the people already ignoring the previous 60mph limit, all it does is slow down the people already obeying it, and the actual targets are just doing the same speed they always have but now breaking the limit by an extra 10mph...

[Wolfshade]

So it isn't the law it is the lack of enforcement.

I know what you mean though.
There is one set of traffic lights I come to regularly. It is 4 lanes at the giveway point. Lane 1 is left turn and straight on, lanes 2 & 3 are straight on and lane 4 is a right turn controlled by filters.
So I am usually in lane 2 at this point, so you cross the lights and nearly all the cars around me are doing more than the speed limit, but you have to be in that lane as 600m further the road splits and lane 1 goes off elsewhere.

It is a mess, though if Birmingham City Council put up some enforcement cameras. They would make a bomb.

[Psychosplodge]

assuming they dont **** it up like York's busgates...

[Wolfshade]

You mean like this: [url]http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-city-council-cancel-18000-6779189[/url]