Soldato
People should obey speed limits or pay the consequences.
Spate of destroying speed cameras in villages
- Thread starter FoxEye
- Start date
Soldato
Yeah so here in my bit of North Wales at least the 20mph limit is ignored by 90% of drivers, everyone just carries on at 30 as before.
Even family members who are very law abiding that started doing 20 when it came in have crept back up to just doing 30 again.
As for the cameras, it depends where they are i think, on a well sighted NSL road i think they're a bit of a scam and wouldn't cry about it being chopped down but near a school i say fair enough they're probably doing a useful job.
Exactly. Many are placed where they are most likely to catch people, not in places where a deterrent is needed. Especially rural ones.
I find it a bit ironic how people have put up fake speed cameras and been ordered to take them down because it's a distraction, but somehow council installed ones aren't?
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Soldato
If you're going round a "blind bend" at a speed which requires you to brake dangerously to avoid getting caught by the camera, then the problem is not the position of the camera, it's your driving. Consider the possibility of that camera instead being a pedestrian/cyclist/horse/tractor/broken down vehicle, and learn to drive according to the conditions, not just the speed limit.
I bet the people up in arms about speed limits/cameras would be very quick to complain about you pulling out of a side road in front of them, cutting them up, going through a red light and force them to take evasive action etc. why is it OK for them to break one road rule, but not you to break another
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Where they bullied into doing it as it seems then that either you follow the limit and sometimes subject oneself to tailgating/headlight flashing which is more dangerous to me than any 30mph limit as there's been many times I've found a safe place to pull over which is a pain in the ass as people tailgate and just let these people past. Or one just follows the crowd so to speak and just do 30.
Soldato
Bit of a mixed bag in West Wales. In some places, people stick to the limit quite religiously, others 20mph is mostly ignored. Somewhat frustratingly, outside my house is 20mph and regularly drivers are passed 35-40. There are no 20mpg signs coming off the roudabout at the bottom of the road so drivers just seem to keep accelerating.
Although in Pembrokeshire, there are no fixed cameras. Just the vans and they seem to ge out a lot less than the used to be.
Sounds about right - lots of gin soaked mummies in the local FB group moaning about the speeds people do through residential roads, but who is it sat up on my bumper through the 30s most of the time......?
Soldato
I think it's mostly it just feeling like it's taking a thousand years to get anywhere, the novelty of obeying it wore off pretty quickly when you need to actually need to do things in life.
And yeah people don't have much patience for people doing 15-20, like i say people need to get on with life and don't have the time to sit dawdling along at 20 for 2 miles so they just overtake if they can't make them speed up by tailgating.
Definitely idiots. Whether you agree with the speed limits or not, it's unacceptable to be destroying the cameras.
If nothing else, they'll have to increase the speeding fines (or more likely, taxes) to pay for all the camera repairs
So it's then the general public that foots the bill, rather than the criminals.
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Because most of these 20 limits are in residential zones, I have to ask...
So what do we do with the people who (and this will of course happen) hit a child crossing the road, whilst doing 30 in a newly-made 20 zone?
Esp if there is a chance that the collision might not have happened at 20?
Do we effectively concede that the real limit is 30 and let the driver off, or throw the book at them, because the number on the sign says 20?
It’s not about patience.
It’s self entitlement. “Yeah I’m entitled to do WTF I want…”.
Just where does it stop, when someone sends the boys around to empty your house?
Just look at the mess out roads are in with the example set by the “entitled”. I don’t believe that they make up that many of the poor drivers. My belief is that the majority are lemmings, and just go with the flow, based on the example set by the “entitled”.
The problem is that now we have:
- can’t be bothered to stick to the speed limit
- can’t be bothered to walk 10m, so I’ll park my Range Rover in the disabled bay
- can’t be bothered to let anyone out, don’t care if that results in 15 other cars being held up
- can’t be bothered to drive on their side of the road as that might mean turning the steering wheel a bit more
- can’t be bothered to avoid stopping the wrong side of the white line at a crossing or where it prevents others pulling out from side roads
It’s just an attitude of stuff everyone.
Don’t expect any sympathy if someone returns the compliment
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Soldato
I dunno, depends what we're saying residential zones are? Inside a housing estate sure, but the main arterial route between villages and towns with a fairly wide open road with good view?
This for example, a bypass type road which has an industrial estate set back on the left and houses 100 yards more or more to the right
I think most people will follow rules that 'make sense' to them, not parking on double yellow lines, not stealing from a shop or whatever. But when something blatantly doesn't make sense to them they're far more likely to ignore it.
But with such a blanket approach to it i think they've really lost the good will of most motorists with this as it's just frustrating everyone and making journeys take far longer than they need to.
I know it's meant to save 3 or 4 lives a year across Wales and i don't know how or where you draw the line? why not 15 or 10? surely they'll be even less accidents then?
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I generally try and stick to speed limits, but the 20mph blanket limit is ridiculous.
2 examples:
Driving through Cardiff suburbs to a friends house, doing 22mph at a 20mph road. SUV behind me is so close to me, I can't even see their headlights through the rear view mirror which they start flashing (slightly visible from the side view mirror) then waving their arms in a 'wtf are you doing' type movement. This carried on for about 500m, after which they turned off.
I get it, it's slow, but I didn't set the rules. If someone is obeying rules set by government/police/etc, why have a go at them?
Driving around Newport suburbs, single carriageway, no houses for about 1mile, very wide roads and they've put a 20mph limit on there. I usually do 30mph on that road and everytime I see the 20mph sign I think 'really?'.
Similarly to above, most all other drivers are exceeding the 20mph anyway, usually doing 40-50mph (again, this is a single wide carriageway road, without any houses/shops etc, and an overhead pedestrian bridge halfway through for people to cross).
I get the reason why, emissions/health, sustainability and safety but what they've done is resulting in even more traffic, frustrated drivers and they haven't even improved on any of the public transport! I've stopped visiting Cardiff purely because it's a nightmare to get there via car on Fridays/Saturdays and Sundays, and getting the train is also not great, especially when they almost always cancel/delay the last 3 trains out of Cardiff, resulting in one train full of drunks singing and dancing waiting on the platform for about an hour during which your best bet is holding your breath and hoping nobody pukes on you on what will be a 1.5hour journey (inc. the time waiting in the train, because you boarded the earlier one, but it's been cancelled) instead of 15-20mins.
Bus? Good luck, even during peak times you'd be lucky to get one every half hour (this is in a central city location), and if you want to go further you need to pay for another ticket cause it's a different company doing that route. To get to my work which is 4.5miles from my house I need to:
*take a bus to central bus station with Company A, and
*take a bus out of the city with Company B, and
*walk for 10minutes
Due to the bus timetables, I effectively need to spend 30minutes longer travelling vs. using my car, wake up 40 minutes earlier to make sure I get there on time, and spend nearly quadrable amount of money to get there vs driving, and possibly get wet and muddy cause I also need to walk.
And it's always the same excuses/reasons:
Council: People don't use public transport so we can't have more routes/times cause it doesn't make sense
People: Public transport is utter **** so we can't reliably use it, so we'll drive instead
Also council/government: We are implementing legislation to make it harder to drive anywhere and cost you more, and in the meantime we'll stop maintaining the roads as well.
Only place I've been happy with public transport has been London (and other major capital cities, in Europe). Anywhere else, just an afterthought/tick box exercise.
2 examples:
Driving through Cardiff suburbs to a friends house, doing 22mph at a 20mph road. SUV behind me is so close to me, I can't even see their headlights through the rear view mirror which they start flashing (slightly visible from the side view mirror) then waving their arms in a 'wtf are you doing' type movement. This carried on for about 500m, after which they turned off.
I get it, it's slow, but I didn't set the rules. If someone is obeying rules set by government/police/etc, why have a go at them?
Driving around Newport suburbs, single carriageway, no houses for about 1mile, very wide roads and they've put a 20mph limit on there. I usually do 30mph on that road and everytime I see the 20mph sign I think 'really?'.
Similarly to above, most all other drivers are exceeding the 20mph anyway, usually doing 40-50mph (again, this is a single wide carriageway road, without any houses/shops etc, and an overhead pedestrian bridge halfway through for people to cross).
I get the reason why, emissions/health, sustainability and safety but what they've done is resulting in even more traffic, frustrated drivers and they haven't even improved on any of the public transport! I've stopped visiting Cardiff purely because it's a nightmare to get there via car on Fridays/Saturdays and Sundays, and getting the train is also not great, especially when they almost always cancel/delay the last 3 trains out of Cardiff, resulting in one train full of drunks singing and dancing waiting on the platform for about an hour during which your best bet is holding your breath and hoping nobody pukes on you on what will be a 1.5hour journey (inc. the time waiting in the train, because you boarded the earlier one, but it's been cancelled) instead of 15-20mins.
Bus? Good luck, even during peak times you'd be lucky to get one every half hour (this is in a central city location), and if you want to go further you need to pay for another ticket cause it's a different company doing that route. To get to my work which is 4.5miles from my house I need to:
*take a bus to central bus station with Company A, and
*take a bus out of the city with Company B, and
*walk for 10minutes
Due to the bus timetables, I effectively need to spend 30minutes longer travelling vs. using my car, wake up 40 minutes earlier to make sure I get there on time, and spend nearly quadrable amount of money to get there vs driving, and possibly get wet and muddy cause I also need to walk.
And it's always the same excuses/reasons:
Council: People don't use public transport so we can't have more routes/times cause it doesn't make sense
People: Public transport is utter **** so we can't reliably use it, so we'll drive instead
Also council/government: We are implementing legislation to make it harder to drive anywhere and cost you more, and in the meantime we'll stop maintaining the roads as well.
Only place I've been happy with public transport has been London (and other major capital cities, in Europe). Anywhere else, just an afterthought/tick box exercise.
Living in a village where we have extremely narrow pavements and an A road that people like to zoom down, accelerating between the two speed cameras to save 4 seconds, I do appreciate the ones that we have. One more between the two we've got would be handy.
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I just don't think that factors into many people's thinking. (How nice or otherwise it is to be a pedestrian).
They've already said that one goal is to make people feel better about walking and cycling, but I don't think most motorists care, in all honesty. It's all about how good it is to drive.
The driving experience literally trumps every other concern when you talk to most Brits.
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Even as someone that likes fast cars/bikes and has owned a few, I support speed cameras in the right places. Totally. I wish there were more actually near me. Instead we have stupid, stupid speed bumps that ruin your car. Even my completely stock Renault Clio scrapes the undertray over the ones that are humps in the middle of the road, unless I go partially up on 2 wheels over it. But then you get big SUVs/Range Rovers going over them at full speed. Speed bumps also cause more noise and pollution with the slowing and speeding up, and they wear the road out more.
There are many roads I can think of that should have speed cameras to protect pedestrians, and I don't even mind 20mph there. In fact I often find myself going about 20 through my local high street despite it being 30 because it just feels right. Some people just don't have the forward planning, nor care, about what would happen if a kid ran out from behind a parked car.
However, speed cameras on motorways/dual carriageways and open roads away from urban areas which are designed with money in mind, I am strongly against.
I personally also do not support ULEZ.
There are many roads I can think of that should have speed cameras to protect pedestrians, and I don't even mind 20mph there. In fact I often find myself going about 20 through my local high street despite it being 30 because it just feels right. Some people just don't have the forward planning, nor care, about what would happen if a kid ran out from behind a parked car.
However, speed cameras on motorways/dual carriageways and open roads away from urban areas which are designed with money in mind, I am strongly against.
I personally also do not support ULEZ.
No, it doesn't. If there are massive puddles and / or a procession of kids walking home from the local primary school it doesn't slow everyone down.
For a lot of people it's just a gap between two cities, and the only objective is to get through as quickly as possible.
Soldato
Speed cameras are money generators and they are sold as such by the companies making them.
Improve driver education rather than put cameras up IMO.
Improve driver education rather than put cameras up IMO.
Had another ridiculous speeder past my house last night. He was already on the brakes when it came into view of my CCTV, 120m from the end of the road. Wasn't even a SUV this time. Would love to work out a way to put my Garmin varia radar outside my house and get a half decent speed reading from these cars.