Do you mean 40 or 50 MPH up your street? Is your street a 30 limit? If so, what makes you think the drivers who do 40 ad 50 up there are going to pay any more attention to a 20 limit than to a 30 limit?
20 MPH speed limits, legal or not?
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In other words, "the medicine's still not working, but let's double the dose again anyway"?
Now if you REALLY want to see whatever speed limits you fancy, enforced in the most ruthless way possible, why give it to local authorities? Why not go the whole hog and put it in the hands of the private sector? Their natural greed will ensure the most ruthless enforcement possible - after all, it works so well with private clamping firms!
And then, when you've criminalised the majority of the population, with no real improvement in safety to show for it, you can come back and tell us what a wonderful job you've done in encouraging "active transport" (well, for those able to indulge in it, at any rate), when in fact, all you have done is discouraged the use of motorised transport. I take it, in your brave new world, the bus driver in Harry Bloomfield's post would be the first up against the wall? That should do wonders to encourage the use of public transport...
Anyway, what are you doing driving round Northumberland? You should be engaging in "active transport"!
All the same, I do love it when I occasionally read in the paper about one of these self-appointed custodians of law and order ends up being caught by their own comrades...
No, it is a 20 limit. I don't think they do that, I know they do that. I am on the outside of a bend in the street, an accurate, straight 100 yards to another bend, then 100 yards the other way to the end. Which means I can watch and time them over the distance, from which I can calculate the speed.
Those drivers tend to be the exceptions, the younger drivers showing off for the little girls - more usually it is below 35. It is particularly busy at the moment, because an almost parallel main road is closed, because they are working on the single lane bridge over the railway. Yesterday, there were four cars trundling along at 20 behind a lead car, a behaving themselves, then an idiot in a black Audi came up behind them, just as the lead car came up behind a skip, close to the next bend. Idiot in Audi decided it was just fine to overtake the lot - luckily the lead driver looked in his mirror and was able to stop before hitting the skip. Audi on wrong side of the road, on the bend, then faced a bin lorry coming other way. The quick thinking bin lorry driver, went up on the footpath to avoid the Audi.
I see such incidents all the time. I don't spend my life watching, I only glance out if I hear an incident, or when in the front bedroom getting changed. I seen quite a few minor accidents over the years, when just glancing out, so I have likely missed many. I saw a young lad knocked of his bike by a car going one way and about to pass him, when a speeding car came tearing along the opposite way. I saw a weaving drunken driver late at night drive into a neighbours car on the wrong side of his road. The almost new neighbours car was written off, pushed over the footpath and into a gate post - the drunken driver managed to just reverse and drive off without stopping. The neighbours reaction, once I had knocked at their door to tell them, was to shrug and just say never mind it's insured.
I think a part of the problem is that we live within driving range of a large city. At one time our pubs would have later closing than in the city, so it gained a reputation as place to go, where there are few police and little policing. It's not so wild as it used to be on Friday and Saturday nights, but the 'little policing' does seem to have stuck.
The original police presence was a sergeant in a police house. Then they built a tiny police station with lots of parking and storage space. The station closed, but with the building of a new motorway 1.5 miles away, they turned it into a depot for traffic policing and firearms. It's an upmarket, very low crime area, so we rarely see any policing all, unless they get lost.
Our nearest manned police station is now the far side of the city, some 15 20 miles away.
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No I wasn't disputing the estimate of the speed, just whether the kind of people who would exceed the 30 limit would be any less likely to exceed a 20 limit, if it were campaigned-for, and introduced. I live in a rural area with lots of 60 limit single track roads. A few years ago, there was a furore because a young lad ended up losing control of his car, and killing his girlfriend in the process. Straight away, there were knee-jerk calls for a 40 limit on that stretch of road. The police reckoned he was doing about 80 when he came off. I struggled to get a straight answer from anyone clamouring for the 40 limit, as to why such a lad would have abided by a 40 limit when he clearly wasn't abiding by the 60 limit! All you do, is, bit-by-bit, erode the benefits that the motor car brings to society. Now that might well suit those with an anti-car agenda, of course, but I think it's important to be honest about these things and admit that's the motive, rather than safety.
I agree, speed limits will make absolutely no difference at any of those drivers, only policing and hitting them in the wallet will. I like using the loud pedal as much as any, but there are places where it is safe to do that and places where even doing the speed limit is not - only experience teaches you the difference. Something which is sadly absent in the young.
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Compliance isn't achieved through enforcement, most people consider themselves unlucky when they get a ticket.
community speed watchers cannot provide evidential speed indications. Its actually not the camera at all that provides the evidence of speeding with a hand held camera. The police officer (or approved person - which isn't mrs Nimby from community speed watch) has to form the opinion of speed and then use his speed camera to confirm that. People have in the past got off tickets when the camera operator zapped them from distances considered too far to form the opinion of speed. I cannot off the top of my head remember if this is in statute or the type approval. Its been a long time since I helped anyone with a dodgy speeding ticket.
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I think there is some small signs of progress, but the medicine won't kick in until enforcement arrives.
I would prefer to start with local authorities then not only would we get safer roads we would also see either more public services or a reduction in rates, revenues would be massive for a year or two.
Someone driving a Double Decker Bus at nearly double the speed limit ! vocational licence torn up and dropped into bin comes first to mind.
Where did I say I was driving round Northumberland (in this thread) Have been there twice this week and on both times under my own power - in fact here I was crossing the border 9 minutes after your earlier post
I do however often drive there too and will be driving over the Border tomorrow in the car - incidentally I love driving, always have done, and as an ex wagon driver I have done more than most. However we all need to recognise that things have to change, we can't go on with more and more cars that seem to grow in size every year, the roads are there for everyone and drivers are going to have to learn to share. And the bigger your SUV gives you no more entitlement.
On that, we can agree. We don't need lower limits, we need to train drivers to drive at a speed that is appropriate to the conditions. If anything, more, lower, and more tightly-enforced limits, are actually (I believe) counter-productive! I realise that's not "mainstream" thinking, but I am starting to form the opinion that the more the authorities push limits as the determinant of safe driving, the more the driving population switches -off and stops thinking for itself. Speed limits are an incredibly blunt instrument (and can never be otherwise), but because we have developed technology that makes automated enforcement both easy and lucrative, there seems to be FAR more focus on them than is warranted. I believe that this is behind the flatlining of the death and serious injury figures for over a decade now, and I think it is utterly shameful.
Well appropriate for conditions and appropriate for an area you are driving through, even if that is less than is appropriate for the conditions. Part of the aim of the 20mph is make life better for those living alongside those roads.
I think there is some small signs of progress, but the medicine won't kick in until enforcement arrives.
I would prefer to start with local authorities then not only would we get safer roads we would also see either more public services or a reduction in rates, revenues would be massive for a year or two.
Someone driving a Double Decker Bus at nearly double the speed limit ! vocational licence torn up and dropped into bin comes first to mind.
Where did I say I was driving round Northumberland (in this thread) Have been there twice this week and on both times under my own power - in fact here I was crossing the border 9 minutes after your earlier post
I do however often drive there too and will be driving over the Border tomorrow in the car - incidentally I love driving, always have done, and as an ex wagon driver I have done more than most. However we all need to recognise that things have to change, we can't go on with more and more cars that seem to grow in size every year, the roads are there for everyone and drivers are going to have to learn to share. And the bigger your SUV gives you no more entitlement.
"...the medicine won't kick in until enforcement arrives."...?! What?!! We already have one of the highest densities of bloody sspeed cameras around!
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By all means, string-up your bus driver. Don't even both asking how many accidents he (or she) was involved-in, or anything like that. Whoever it was, is obviously a witch and deserves to be burned. The problem with that sort of attitude, is where do you go when half the population is imprisoned or banned, your every move is recorded, Stasi-style, the economy has ground to a halt, and the death and serious injury figures are STILL relatively untouched?
You didn't say you were driving round Northumberland, but you commented on the difference between 30 and 20 MPH. If you normally cycle at 30 MPH, then kudos to you, and I'm sure you're glad of the respite when you get to a 20 limit!
You don't have to worry about "more and more" cars, because (unlike the road casualties), the number has been falling for the last few years.
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As for the size, yes, they're getting bigger, but until they get to twice the size, that doesn't really translate into appreciably more road space. It used to be one of the proud boasts of the cycling community that they took up so much less road space than a car, but now that the advice is to ride 0.5m from the kerb and to leave a 1.5m gap when passing them, they're effectively taking up about 2.5m or road with anyway (and that's in single file!) so that one's well and truly out of the window. Cars have grown in size far less than pushbikes have, in effect. That said, I'll bear your sage advice on SUVs in mind...
...if I ever get one...
As for your patronising "learn to share" dig, what did you have in mind? Complete rolling road closures around every cyclists whenever they fancy donning their Lycra and pointy hat, to go off in search of that elusive Personal Best on the Strava segment? Perhaps we could start with cyclists "learning" not to try and undertake artics turnig left?
The area you're driving through IS one of the "conditions". It's probably one of the most important conditions, in fact! However, pretty much everyone in the country lives alongside a road. If you can make the argument that 20 past your house is good for reasons other than safety (peace and quiet, etc), then you can make the argument that 10 is better still, and 5 is even better than that. So where does it stop? How much of the benefit of the motor car will we have to lose before it becomes socially acceptable? Ironically, walking and cycling in a rural area, I have precisely the OPPOSITE problem! Cars are now so quiet, I struggle to hear when one is approaching!
Very often, just like the person who shouts loudest about vehicle speeding through his village and then gets caught by the very community speedwatch group he campaigned for, we seem to be quite happy to operate a double standard, in which we want the rest of the world to do 20 past OUR house, whilst not being willing to do the same past everyone else's house when we get behind the wheel.
Just a reasonably compromise between speed, intimidation of those on foot and noise in the environment, versus those with a need to get somewhere.
I think most people could agree to that. The question is, what's a reasonable compromise?!
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It is something I notice more as a pedestrian, so nothing to do with cycling. 30 to 35mph just seems ludicrous when you get used to cars going past at 20 to 25
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