National speed limit to be cut to 50mph on "most roads" as early as 2010

Andy90 said:
I take it you are totally unaware of how ANPR works now? You talk about the future - unfortunately it has been here for some years.....
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I'm well aware of it, but they are talking about putting up permanent SPECS cameras. These will later be adapted to store the data for the long term since the adaptation is very cheap
 
Something similar happened in my home town recently. The NSL (70) bypass A road was reduced to a 60mph following some accidents whilst drivers were speeding in bad conditions at night. If that wasn't illogical enough, it's now intended to be a 50mph zone following a car v pedestrian RTA.

The local community were (mostly) in uproar, calling for the limit to be reduced to a 50mph because "poor such-a-body" had died. The facts they were blatantly ignoring included:

* The person was walking down the verge of a 60mph A road bypass late night/early morning (after midnight) in darkness.
* The person was confirmed as being incredibly drunk.
* The person walked straight out into the path of an oncoming vehicle which, the police confirmed, was under the 60mph limit.
* The person died due to their own sheer stupidity.

One knee-jerk newspaper furore later, there are now crash barriers along the roadside (fair enough) but the locals are calling for speed cameras and a 50mph limit for the entire A road. That's about 20 miles of A road, off the top of my head.

This government takes the mick, but people really are dumb. Whilst people continue to be this dumb, the government will continue to be able to take the mick.
 
Lum said:
I'm well aware of it, but they are talking about putting up permanent SPECS cameras. These will later be adapted to store the data for the long term since the adaptation is very cheap
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I don't think it's unrealistic to imagine a time where every detail of every journey is logged. The car will either upload all data (speed/vehicle condition/number of occupants/journey details etc), or it will be checked against a set of values and if anything is out of order the relevant authorities will be notified.
IMHO the only guesswork is related to when this time will occur.
 
Something interesting has been pointed out on another thread about this topic.

Since we're at the start of a massive recession, accidents are going to go down even if the government does nothing, people will be driving less and will be more cautious.

Of course the government will hail this success as down to the new cameras and limits and will use it as an excuse to roll the scheme out further.
 
There's already a stretch of dual carriageway near to where I live that's been setup for this & according to the local bureaucrats it only cut the journey time down by a few minutes (AFAIK its about a 6 mile stretch of road). Its been done basically to cut down on the rear enders/fatals that happen on this bit of road & to put off the boy racers that tear in & out of Southend most weekend nights.

I can Justify that but if this happens on most dual carriageways in Essex & Suffolk I'm going to ask for my vans limiter to be cut to 49MPH. :mad:
 
But the Southend lot, I'm told, don't actually drive that fast, the problem with them is that they arse around, drive too close to each other in convoys, have unsafe modifications and invalid insurance.

I got rear ended by a barried up Smart car on a cruise in Southend once, was stopped at a give way line when he ran into the back of me, his excuse was he was looking over his shoulder to see if his mates were still following.
 
What ever happened to assigning a speed to a road based upon the characteristics of the road? Leave the national limit as it is and assign those roads that are 'dangerous' a slower speed limit. What does it take to put up some signposts with a new speed sign on vs the cost of average cameras?
 
You been to Lakeside on a Saturday night lately? It's the new Southend for the speed crew. Some REALLY bad roads there, like the 70 limit used as a drag strip that goes straight on to a roundabout.
 
Lum said:
But the Southend lot, I'm told, don't actually drive that fast.
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I beg to differ.

One night a few years ago, I was driving down that bit of road (doing about 65 & there was a temp speed limit in of 50 during the day & not at night) someone shot past me & triggered the mobile speed camera that was there at the time. Thinking it was me that triggered the camera because I thought the limit was still 70 & not the temp limit of 50 I went round again & parked up by the camera & spoke to the copper who was in charge at the time. I asked him what the trigger limit was & he said it was 'over 80'. Whereupon 2 boy racers shot past & the machine registered 115+! :eek: & there were at least another 4 of them that were doing 100+ in the 10 minutes or so I spoke to him.

He said whoever were driving those cars that night would get a court summons at some point followed by a lengthy ban.

Now I'm all for speed limits but if this cut limits to a bare minimum goes on there'll be no cars left on the road & a major source of government income down the drain. Stick that in your pipe & smoke it Mr Brown. :mad::p
 
How about just teaching people to drive properly?

Rather than constantly dropping speed limits for no good reason, surely teaching people the 'rules of the road' would actually save more lives, especially correct lane usage and safe lane changing.

Rural Suffolk is going to be rubbish for driving if this goes ahead.
 
Correct lane use isn't going to be much help given that this measure affects only single carriageways (yes I know there are a few SCs that have more than one lane in each direction)

The reason they don't do what you are suggesting is because it would require effort, and the goal is not to improve road safety.
 
Squark said:
How about just teaching people to drive properly?

Rather than constantly dropping speed limits for no good reason, surely teaching people the 'rules of the road' would actually save more lives, especially correct lane usage and safe lane changing.

Rural Suffolk is going to be rubbish for driving if this goes ahead.
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Indeed but then I can't remember the last time I saw a speed camera or in fact just a police car on a Suffolk NSL back road :)

Until the satellite tracking comes along I think I'll be mostly unaffected :D
 
You see this is the smoke and mirrors part of the trick. You see we all know that unless the car is doing less than 30 Mph, when you hit a pedestrian with one, there is a large chance they will be killed.
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Though as I mentioned earlier, if the vehicle is a bus or lorry, maybe even a 4x4 and you go under the wheels, even at 15 MPH you are likely to be killed. I've seen it and it's not nice.

Further to my earlier comments and as I've mentioned before, why don't UK roads follow the US convention of 5MPH differentials between speeds. 25 MPH in towns then 50/55/60 as appropriate in the country.
 
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