I have proof! The UK IS run by complete idiots!

[homeforsummer]

Do you know how I know? Because they've decided to cut the national speed limit on single-carriageway roads by 10mph - to 50 down from 60. This will be enforced by average speed cameras, apparently...

THE government is to cut the national speed limit from 60mph to 50mph on most of Britain’s roads, enforced by a new generation of average speed cameras.

The reduction, to be imposed as early as next year, will affect two thirds of the country’s road network. Drivers will still be able to reach 70mph on motorways and dual carriageways and 60mph on the safest A roads.

Jim Fitzpatrick, the roads minister, defended the plan, which will be the most dramatic cut since 1978, when the national speed limit was reduced from 70mph to 60mph.

“There will be some in the driving lobby who think this is a further attack and a restriction on people’s freedom,” he said. “But when you compare that to the fact we are killing 3,000 people a year on our roads, it would be irresponsible not to do something about it. I’m sure that the vast majority of motorists would support the proposals.”

New research by the Department for Transport has found that reducing the speed limit could save 200-250 lives a year and also reduce carbon emissions.

Britain’s roads were the safest in the world until 2001, relative to its population, but have since fallen into sixth place behind countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. Some challenge that statistic because of the disparity of the countries’ sizes.

The new 50mph limit is intended to reduce the high death toll on rural roads, where, in 2007, 69% of car crash fatalities took place. It will apply to single carriage A, B and C roads. Local authorities will have the power to raise the limit to 60mph on the safest roads, but will have to justify it.

Ministers plan to use average speed cameras, which monitor speeds over distances of up to six miles, to help enforce the new limit. The cameras have already been installed at 43 locations. The Home Office is expected to approve their wider use later this year.

Speed Check Services, the company behind the cameras, claims the number of deaths or serious injuries at its sites has fallen on average by 60%.

Fitzpatrick said: “If you look at the figures on rural roads, there are disproportionately more people dying there than on any other roads. The nature of some rural roads, with dips and bends and difficult conditions, means that the 60mph limit is not enough.”

The 50mph proposal will be laid out in a consultation document to be published in the early summer.

Edmund King, president of the AA, warned that the move could alienate some motorists. Last year the AA asked 17,481 motorists if the limit on single carriageway roads should be cut to 50mph. Nearly half backed the move but 38% opposed it.

He said: “There are quitea few single carriageway rural roads that are straight and adequately wide, where 60mph – in the right conditions, driving sensibly — is not a problem.

“The danger of the blanket approach is: are you going to then reduce speed limits just for the sake of it where you don’t need to? That’s where you lose the respect or the support of the motorist.

“We all know some rural roads where the 60mph limit is ridiculous, although there are equally others where it suits. So it is a case of getting that balance.”

Source: The Times Online

I'd like to make it clear that I'm all for cutting speed limits... down streets where kids play, or next to schools. But on rural roads or even main A-roads that happen to be twisty? I'm sorry, but if 200-250 people die every year on these sorts of roads it's because they were doing something stupid, not because they were doing 60mph. They were probably doing 90mph, or doing 50mph around a corner that can't be taken at more than 20.

Now I'm sure that death toll might well include some innocent lives, and for them I'm sorry. But a 10mph difference is unlikely to be the sort of thing that stops more being killed in the same way. If some chav in a Corsa with six of his mates in the car and another two in the boot goes upside-down into a field and kills the lot of them, is that a 60mph road's fault, or is it the knob behind the wheel?

"The nature of some rural roads, with dips and bends and difficult conditions, means that the 60mph limit is not enough" says the man who thinks he knows it all. Oh really? If people are incapable of driving on these roads then they need to make their own decision to slow down, not have it made by some suit in an office with a bunch of statistics in front of him.

Seriously, I'm going to leave this bloody country one day

 

[GT4 genius]

We've had a similar situation here since we changed to the metric kilometres speed. I think most people were confused by the conversion and never even noticed most of the limits went down.
However we did gain 2mph extra on some roads because 60mph changed to 100kph. If only people would actually travel those speeds I might get to work on time occasionally!

But they thing I dont understand is that as cars are becoming safer and safer they still want to reduce the speed limits?? Yes of course there are or were a lot of roads marked 60mph which was far too high for them, but people dont just drive around thinking "the government tell me its safe to do 60, so thats what I'll do" or at least not the ones that deserved a licence. (Which is were the real problem is I believe) How can you say I can drive safely at 60 mph through the countryside after seeing me trundle around town for a half an hour??

 

[MarinaDiamandis]

I'd like to see them put this in place before getting voted out. Fat chance!

The new tyre regs annoy me much more, but that's another story...

 

[Perfect Balance]

This fails for you guises.

 

[homeforsummer]

But they thing I dont understand is that as cars are becoming safer and safer they still want to reduce the speed limits?? Yes of course there are or were a lot of roads marked 60mph which was far too high for them, but people dont just drive around thinking "the government tell me its safe to do 60, so thats what I'll do" or at least not the ones that deserved a licence. (Which is were the real problem is I believe) How can you say I can drive safely at 60 mph through the countryside after seeing me trundle around town for a half an hour??

I agree. That's why I'm saying, the 60mph limit isn't responsible for people dying, it's not too quick. It says, very clearly in the Highway Code:

The speed limit is a limit, not a target.

If people are treating it as a target then they'd doing Darwin a favour and contributing to natural selection. I wouldn't mind a 50mph limit in some places as there really are some roads twisty enough that you can't really reach 50mph anyway. But the UK government don't think like that - they'd rather apply a blanket limit whether the road goes in a straight line for ten miles or whether it has twists, hairpins, hills and villages.

I would mind a 50mph limit even less if they didn't want to measure everything with bloody speed cameras. Occasionally I do like to travel quicker than perhaps the limit of the road allows, and I'd be very surprised if anyone on this forum didn't do similar occasionally. It's part of the fun of driving, being able to accelerate onto a straight and then brake for the next corner, changing up and down through the gearbox.

I don't want to go for a drive for a bit of fun, accelerate out of a corner and find that I'm already doing 50 so sit there and trundle along, not even needing to brake for the next corner. If I want to do that I may as well make my next car an automatic.

 

[Famine]

The Daily Mash managed to sum this legislation up in just 9 words...

Rural drivers to break speed limit by 30mph instead

 

[Sureboss]

Ah, so that's what that was referring to!

If they actually wanted to save more lies (note: already one of the safest set of roads in the world) they should improve the driving test, is it 14 minor faults you can have before being DQ'd? The matter of fact is that most people are killed on the roads due to careless driving, the speed isn't what kills them, if someone is going to be an idiot at 60, you think they'll be a good drive at 50? People are going to die on roads, it's been coming down for ages, something like 10% in 10 years.

Am I the only one who thinks in the future we should make ceramic/carbon brakes compulsory? They are so much more efficient than "normal" brakes.

 

[Famine]

Absolute buggers when cold though...

 

[Sureboss]

Meh, Scotland isn't that important

 

[Sniffs]

you shoulda heard the Yarping over here when they imposed the Double Nickle speed limit years ago. you can still read about it even now. we got ours raised, of course, because of loud protests (65 e of the Mississippi, 75 west). is yours pollution controll?

 

[Famine]

No, it's stupidity, pushed through on a wave of "saving lives" (yeah, right) and "cutting carbon dioxide emissions" (again, yeah right) thanks to the "Oh won't someone please think of the children!?" brigade.


People die more on rural NSL roads because they're the most fun type of roads - and they lack the ability to have fun safely. A 50mph limit will not change their behaviour. Or their speed. Or their emissions of precious, precious carbon.

 

[Jay]

Sounds like our government, Someone gets caught or crashes at very high speeds and the magic solution is lower the speedlimit..... they where more than double the speedlimit in the first place, lowering it will do nothing positive at all.

 

[homeforsummer]

I think the thing that annoys me most is that they want to erect speed-f'ing-cameras on these roads.

1) What a waste of money. And not theirs - mine and everybody elses that we pay in dozens of different taxes.
2) If they simply lowered the limit to 50mph, I'd be more than prepared to accept it... and then ignore it wherever I felt fit. Let's face it, they don't police the roads any more so I'd be able to choose what speed I want to travel and where. But nooooo, they have to bugger it up with average speed cameras, so even if it's perfectly safe to travel 60mph (or more), you won't be able to do so.

 

[Jondot]

Well, I can sort of see their thinking. I've been on quite a few roads with a national limit where I'm only happy going at about 50. But that's the thing - I'm only happy going at 50, so I only go at 50. I'm not a mindless drone, and neither are most of the British public (or so I would hope) - it's a case of 'if it told you to jump off a bridge, would you?'.

It's an awful way to approach it, though. Surely it would be far more sensible to alter speed limits on a case-by-case basis rather than this blanket 50 limit with 'special cases', presumably applying to only the roads so straight and flat that Helix could use them as a basic pattern for their rulers.

I can think of at least two roads near me that they'll try to bubble-wrap like this, neither of which are actually any more dangerous than most 40 limit roads. In fact I've driven/been driven along one of them pretty much every day for the last 7 years, and I've never seen a single accident. But it's got a couple of bends and 1 junction, so naturally it'll be 50-ized.

And again, as it's been said, it still won't stop chavvy chavverson in his stolen Vauxhall from bombing along there and killing himself. It'll just stop everyone with a degree of sense from being able to travel at the speed they find appropriate.

I'm also rather concerned about how they're going to do this. Will they replace all the signs on affected roads with 50 ones, or quietly announce that the familiar sign that means '60' to all of us now means '50'? The former would require a hell of a lot of money, and the latter would cause about 75% of the population to find a speeding ticket in their post one morning; purely because they forgot the new limit and went at a frankly horrifying 59mph instead. Nicht gut.

 

[Jay]

The UK doesn't have recommended safe corner speed signs?

 

[ExigeEvan]

So when is the goverment going to start enforcing weather dependant speed limits? Sometime before or after they sort out the phantom "Danger Ahead 50mph"?

The other thing is, the more cameras they put in rural locations the more that are going to get vandalised.

“But when you compare that to the fact we are killing 3,000 people a year on our roads,

This is the most emotively twisted statement I have ever seen.

 

[ExigeEvan]

So when is the goverment going to start enforcing weather dependant speed limits? Sometime before or after they sort out the phantom "Danger Ahead 50mph"?

The other thing is, the more cameras they put in rural locations the more that are going to get vandalised.


This is the most emotively twisted statement I have ever seen.

[EDIT]

The UK doesn't have recommended safe corner speed signs?

Yes, but very, very rarely.

 

[Jim Prower]

Sounds like...

"The economy is bad, and we're running out of money, so we'll catch anyone we can speeding and ticket the hell out of them. Oh, and lower the speed limit to increase profits...uh, we mean, retribution...."

some small towns in the states run off of speed trap tickets, after all...

If only the Big Four hadn't been Nationalized, then the Trains might provide a viable alternative...

 

[Keef]

I've noticed that most people tend to drive whatever speed feels safe on a particular. Usually it's not wildly different than the speed limit and quite reasonable. But sometimes these 25 mph residential speed limits annoy me--especially when the road is twice as wide as normal, perfectly straight, and has no cars parked along the curb. My town uses that particular road as a speed trap for people who live here, but when there aren't any cops around I feel perfectly safe going 35, so I do.

I think our roads would actually work much better if people were left to their own devices, making their own decisions about what is safe and what isn't. And only those whos thoughts on the subject are obviously flawed--endangering the safety of others--should get in trouble.

Ah, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, requiring a complete traffic law overhaul. As long as they don't start posting up speed cameras I'll be alright. It seems most of this country is strongly opposed to them.

 

[Famine]

Yeah, but that's not a very Socialist way of thinking. You're not protecting people from themselves... Roll. Eyes.

The reason UK road deaths haven't gone down any in the last few years - 3,500 static now - is because we've done all we can do to protect people from other people. Accidents. Still. Happen. No-one's perfect, and those likely to make stupid decisions and choices will still make them, regardless of what a circle of metal says.

 

[Keef]

If guns were outlawed, everyone knows that criminals would still have them--they don't acquire them by any legal means. They break the law, no matter how strict the law is. Do people not think that will happen with something as simple as a speed limit sign?

And you're right about accidents, they'll always happen. That's one reason we have insurance companies. Just in case.

 

[Famine]

Guns were outlawed. Criminals still have them - only now you're also a criminal if you have one...

 

[Keef]

A little off-topic: How the heck are you people supposed to defend yourselves if your government reaches a little too far into your personal space?

 

[Famine]

We don't have any personal space. Simples.

 

[ExigeEvan]

A little off-topic: How the heck are you people supposed to defend yourselves if your government reaches a little too far into your personal space?

We form an orderly queue and fill in some forms, in triplicate.

 

[homeforsummer]

A little off-topic: How the heck are you people supposed to defend yourselves if your government reaches a little too far into your personal space?

I won't bother defending myself. I'll just move elsewhere and another country can have my taxes - one that isn't going to shaft me.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

The trouble is that the UK Government refuses to accept the real truth, which is that the drivers' education system is rubbish. The driving test is completely ineffectual, but it's in some way discriminatory to make the process harder, as that will disadvantage some people. It's interesting that everyone stands up for driving as a "basic right", and yet the Government charges its luxury goods tax on everything even closely related to driving.

 

[Sureboss]

Only because they know the transport network could not cope with an extra x hundreds of thousands of people using the buses/trains.

 

[Ardius]

A little off-topic: How the heck are you people supposed to defend yourselves if your government reaches a little too far into your personal space?

The idea is we don't, mostly because guns are apparently hard to get hold of.

 

[Sureboss]

Have our governments ever "gone too far into our personal space"?