Speeding

Started by bob lawrence, August 19, 2018, 08:36:36 AM

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Philip.

Quote from: Bealman on August 19, 2018, 12:15:40 PMHow come I drive your motorways there at max, yet huge trucks and cars fly past me on what is obviously illegal?

Because there are some people who drive, that
1. think they are above the law
2. Have zero regard for anyone else on the road
3. Arrogant
4. Just plain stupid

oscar


Quote from: Bealman on August 19, 2018, 12:15:40 PM
How come I drive your motorways there at max, yet huge trucks and cars fly past me on what is obviously illegal?

Lack of traffic cops? Or lack of cops in general, as I've not seen one in my town since time immemorial!

NeMo

Quote from: Bealman on August 19, 2018, 12:15:40 PM
How come I drive your motorways there at max, yet huge trucks and cars fly past me on what is obviously illegal?

Try changing your question to this:

How come I pay at the checkout, yet other people seem to shoplift stuff and get away with it?

People break the speed limit all the time. Some get caught, some don't. When they are caught for something like speeding, there's a penalty, and on top of that they're a hazard and demonstrably cause many serious accidents.

In fairness, a lot of speeding tickets are handed out days after the event, using things like license plate technology. So just because you see somebody doing 120 mph on the motorway doesn't mean those people aren't going to be caught and penalised some days later.

Cheers, NeMo
(Former NGS Journal Editor)

Yet_Another

Lack of political will.

Essentially, there are many laws enacted in this country that are unenforcable, because the democratic will of the people will reject anyone who tries to enforce them.

In this day and age, it would very very easy, and not very expensive, to put a speed camera atop every lamp post, the enforce an absolute zero tolerance approach to the limits.

But anyone who did that would lose power at the next possible opportunity, and never see it again.

The reason the police can't hide behind bushes, and speed cameras have to be painted yellow is because of a massive popular outcry at the income being generated by the fines.

Which opens another can of worms, and has included the P word, but there you go!
Tony

'...things are not done by those who sit down to count the cost of every thought and act.' - Sir Daniel Gooch of IKB

bob lawrence

What's the best way to stay within the speed limit?
I have just returned from visiting my daughter, only 5 miles away but because I started this topic I thought I would try to stay within the varying speed limits along the route, I might add I do try to keep within the limits anyway but on this occasion pay particular attention. My car has a speed limiter fitted so I thought I would use this but to set the speed I need to press a button so need to keep looking down to see and set the speed, one press increases the speed by 1 mph, a constant press and the speed increases rapidly. My thoughts now are the number of times I need to take my eyes off the road. My wife's car has no speed control so when I drive that I need to keep looking at the speedo.

Philip.

God forbid you ever get caught speeding in France, a work colleague of mine was "escorted" to the nearest ATM to pay an on the spot fine. They don't mess about.  ;)

Newportnobby

#21
Quote from: Bealman on August 19, 2018, 12:15:40 PM

However, as I guy who's seriously thinking about coming back and driving next year, nobody has addressed my query!

How come I drive your motorways there at max, yet huge trucks and cars fly past me on what is obviously illegal?

I can only think you're driving at about 50mph. My knowledge may be wrong but trucks/lorries used to be limited on their tacographs to 56mph and coaches to 70mph(?).
As I said previously, as far as cars go, if you're doing 80mph on a motorway you are just in the way and become a mobile chicane.

To set my cruise control I have to press 2 buttons but, to be honest, it takes less time than performing a rear view mirror check

nobby

if the police or government were really concerned about this then every car on the road would not be able to exceed 70 miles per hour , the fact this doesn't happen tells you all you need to know ,
1 its not really an issue, 
2 they can catch you speeding and fine you , its always about the money , nothing more nothing less.
had a relative once always going on about people speeding and how bad it was people should be ashamed they should be more considerate etc etc
then they got a speeding ticket never heard a another thing other than its not fair , i did laugh
around my way you never see the speed camera vans (sorry safety camera) outside schools or busy places , but you always find them out in the middle of nowhere just where the limit changes.
on the road out side my own house the highest recorded speed was 82mph in a 30 limit , so when the locals asked for some kind of measure to reduce the fast driving the council recorded the cars speed near a junction and said the speeds on average were too low for the investment and that there was not enough crashes which caused serous injury.  to be fair we did get a silly sign that shows happy face at 30 and and a unhappy face at 31 , certainty makes me sleep better a night.

daffy

Just my 3 pence worth.......

Speed does not necessarily kill, but speed differential can and does. That differential can be minor, say 2 or 3 mph faster or slower than the driver in front and behind, or major, say 70mph faster than that stationary vehicle or concrete wall in front of you.

As a youth ( I'm not sure exactly when my 'youth' ended) I rode and drove motorised vehicles with what can best be described as occasional reckless abandon. On one of those occasions I was the one travelling at 70mph faster than the (almost) stationary lorry that pulled out in front of me. As I was on a motorcycle on a wet road the inevitable collision left me seriously injured and without a clear head for many a month. But I was very young then and my mortality was not uppermost in my mind even after this close encounter with the after-life, so it was not long before reckless abandon held sway once again.

But as the years passed and life bought it's rewards, my attitude mellowed until the careful but, I hope, good driver of today began to appear.

And now I'm the perfect driver! Well, maybe not, eh? But I do try to stick to the law most of the time. I did get caught out a couple of years back, doing 34 in a 30 zone, and attended the proffered course of instruction. As @port perran has already commented, views on speeding varied amongst those supposedly qualified drivers attending, and many got a lot wrong. Few, for instance, could correctly identify the limits on the various stretches of dual carriageway they were shown.

Nowadays I do try to keep within the limits, not always successfully. Even that much appreciated 'cruise control' has its problems in that regard, as for instance when my little VW Golf reacts to gravity on that long stretch of M6 descending from Shap. And I know I can't fully rely on my speedometer to tell me the truth, as witnessed by those flashing speed signs that supposedly tell me how fast I'm travelling through such-and-such village. On one journey recently I passed five such signs in 30mph zones, and as I dutifully approached them all with exactly 30mph registering on my car's dashboard, I was flashingly advised I was doing 27mph, 34mph, 29mph, 26mph, and, unbelievably, 30mph!

And my SatNav is no help either. It is usually showing that I'm travelling between 3mph and 5mph slower than the speedometer reading on the dashboard.

So I drive with all this knowledge of what is and what isn't true, and try to leave a margin of error in my favour. Not that the driver behind me appreciates that fact as he attempts to drive into my back seat because, apparently,  his/her speedometer and/or SatNav is calibrated differently to mine (what other reason could there be for them getting so close? ::) )

And I try to remember what my Driving Instructor tried so hard to drum into me all those years ago: "It's a limit, not a target."

But I'm a human in an insulated well balanced smooth running vehicle, isolated from the elements and reality, and sometimes, just sometimes mind you :) , the concentration wavers, the music on the radio is at a faster tempo, or maybe I'm just tired, and the little needle drifts around the dial a little further than it should.

Most of the time though I concentrate on trying to stick within the limits because I don't want to be responsible for hurting myself or another human being, and because, as a pensioner, fines and higher insurance premiums generated by my own stupidity are things I try to avoid!

And after all, what's the rush?
Mike

Sufferin' succotash!

The Q

#24
One point,  if you are driving at an indicated 70mph, your speed,  may be,  just 60.215mph, as speedo's are allowed to show,  down to your speed -10 percent -2.485mph.
They are not allowed to show 70.00000000000000000001mph

Most people now have  navigators,  these show if locked on to several satellites, and doing a reasonably constant speed a much more accurate speed.  So those may passing you may be  under the limit.

Meantime I've not normally gone over the limit ever.  Although I did get an sp 30, 43 years ago,  going down a hill into a speed limit of 30mph that was just a couple of hundred yards long before a very steep hill.  Being in an ancient Anglia van I let it creep over the limit and a copper was hiding behind a big tree  with a speed gun.
I pointed this out in my response to the speeding notice,  and got a fine of £10..





Caz

Not only do we have hidden speed cameras here in Spain but also the police helicopters have them fitted as well so they can do you from the air.  The first thing you know is the letter in the post!   >:D 

And no, so far haven't been got from the air only once many years ago on a fixed speed camera on the way to see my brother who lives the other side of Malaga.  Most of the motorway is either 120 or 100 km/hr but there is a short stretch that goes down to 80 km/hr and I didn't notice it.   :doh:
Caz
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Buzzard

#26
Quote from: Newportnobby on August 19, 2018, 02:44:46 PMAs I said previously, as far as cars go, if you're doing 80mph on a motorway you are just in the way and become a mobile chicane.

TBH if I'm going along a motorway at or slightly above 70 and I'm in the way, even in the inside lane, then tough.

Unlike a lot of loonies on the road I try to allow enough time to get to my destination and therefore

a) I drive more economically and
b) I arrive in a less frazzled state than if I had to rush coz I knew I was running late

The other day, after being overtaken by another idiot, I was half thinking of having a sticker made up to put on the back of the car which reads

"I'm doing the speed limit to save you from getting a ticket"

but someone from officialdom would probably object.

Perhaps I'll get a caravan instead, drive everwhere at 10mph below the posted limit and consider it a public service!

PaulCheffus

Quote from: Yet_Another on August 19, 2018, 01:53:57 PM
The reason the police can't hide behind bushes, and speed cameras have to be painted yellow is because of a massive popular outcry at the income being generated by the fines.

Hi

There is a new speed camera on one of the approaches to Lincoln.

Heading into Lincoln it's quite obvious but if you are leaving then it is obscured by a large tree. No idea which direction it works in but as the old camera is still there I think it might be as you are leaving.

Cheers

Paul
Procrastination - The Thief of Time.

Workbench thread
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woodbury22uk

#28
One serious problem about car driving is that it can be an almost autonomous activity, so not much concentration needed, when things are running normally. When I started driving the Transport and Road Research laboratory carried out a detailed driver study. It categorised drivers as associated/dissociated and active/passive. Associated meant they were concentrating. The two most hazardous combinations were "dissociated/active" and "dissociated/passive". The latter was somebody driving almost as if asleep, and the former was somone making a lot of manoeuvres but not thinking about their actions.

In over 53 years of driving I have two SP30s to my name, both due to lack of concentration. I also have one accident - a head-on collision in a multi-storey car park while I was stationary. The other driver was driving fast and against the indicated traffic flow. I saw him but he did not see me or my dipped headlights.

If someone tailgates me on the motorway, and the lane to my left is occupied so I cannot move into it, I comfort myself with the knowledge that by doubling the distance from the car in front I can do the thinking and gentle braking bit for both of us. At 70mph a vehicle covers 100 feet in one second, so 30 feet of the typical tailgater gives her/him about one third of a second to react after he sees my brake lights.

I do not have a problem with people driving over the speed limit provided they are concentrating on driving the vehicle safely. If the law says otherwise that is risk they have accepted but they will know what the legal limit is.

Over the past few days I have been on a coach travelling in the UK, France and Belgium. It is limited to 100 kph on Motorways by the on board system. I have generally had a perfect view of the drivers' cab area and I have been impressed by the way they perform. They are concentrating on their driving, no mobile phone, no loud music, no chit-chat with the off-duty driver, and a line of sight navigation display. I wish that people driving 1 or 2 tonnes of car could do the same. Speed on its own does not kill, but in the wrong place at the wrong time it could be fatal.
Mike

Membre AFAN 0196

Jon898

Another thing that can throw off the speedo is the wheel/tyre combination as the rolling diameter can change the "measured" speed some.  I have that experience with a Mazda Miata that came with the (optional) larger wheels and lower profile tyres which have a rolling diameter a bit smaller than the standard setup.  As a result, the speedo over-registers quite significantly (indicated 29 mph is actually 25mph).

I used to live in Pennsylvania and commute to New Jersey which presented two different sets of challenges:

In PA, only the state police and the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh police were authorised to use radar for speeding (may have changed since then), so I used to see plenty of NJ cars being pulled over in PA and thoroughly confused as to why their radar detectors had not gone off.  One road in particular had some subtle measured distance lines marked  on the downhill section that was 3/4 mile from another crest where the local cop would sit in his cruiser in the shade of a large oak tree with a set of HUGE binoculars and a stopwatch.

In NJ, a speeding ticket would not be outrageous to pay (at the time it was something like USD63), but if you were insured in NJ your car insurance would go up by USD1,000 for the next 2 years.  As a result, the local NJ cops close to the border with PA would make it a point to only ticket out-of-state drivers as they knew they would not fight the ticket in court...if you were a NJ driver you'd get a warning unless you were doing something really dumb.  Of course, that only applied to the local cops and the state troopers would ticket everyone, which was particularly risky on one road close to the border as the state troopers used it as a training road...I once had a person pass me at an indicated 2 mph over the limit get pulled over by a state trooper in training  who was going in the opposite direction and hung a u-turn across the median to catch them (shades of Starsky and Hutch) throwing up a shower of mud and grass in the process.

Jon

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