I do agree, the system should not be that way as people are breaking the law and getting away with it. Though usually a gd telling off is enough for most people?
Depends what type of person they are. A decent 'telling off' will almost always deter your typical everyday, law abiding public. Giving a gypsy a telling off for going a tad over the limit isn't going to get you anywhere.
Im not against the upping of the speed limit to 80. But it makes me laugh how the voting public often don't see this for the bollocks it is. Its basically the tories saying "yep drive at 80, that'll solve your congestion problems. We don't need any increase in motorway lanes, hauledge only parrallel motorways or bypass m'ways by major cities nooooooo... its 80 thats good enough jobs a goodun"
Its expensive to widen existing motorways which causes congestion for months due to construction, theres not many places you can put new motoroway's in, by-passes will always be needed for towns as they grow. Improvements do need to be made but public transport will play the biggest role in reducing traffic congestion off the roads, any goverment will struggle with this problem 66+ million people on our small island.
This. I voted against, because I presume it'll be enforced the same way the current one is (a clean limit is not possible due to inherent inaccuracies in speedos, if I remember rightly). I've known of speedos ranging as much as -20% to +20% inaccuracy, so all this change would do is move the average up, and we'd have a lot of people doing ~90mph, often through no fault of their own (they think they're doing ~80). Also, since speedo inaccuracy is a percentile, the higher the average speed, the greater the spread of speeds driven at on the road. The range between the fastest and slowest cars on the motorway would increase, and that larger difference would (I imagine) increase the rate and severity of accidents.
I voted yes. I've read most of this thread and there were a lot of replies stating that the people that currently drive 85-90mph now would do 95-100mph if the limit was raised to 80mph. I'm one of those drivers, sometimes. When conditions allow it I will speed up, when they dictate more caution I will slow down to a speed that is safe for the conditions. I do not blindly plow on at 90mph, I do not speed in urban areas etc. If the speed limit was raised to 80mph, I do not think that my driving would be greatly effected. I believe we should have variable, strictly enforced limits, with the upper limit being somewhere near to 100mph. I also believe that the speed limits themselves are a small part of the picture - our driving school/tests need to be completely overhauled to include a course in motorway driving, skid training, towing etc.. and regular retesting to ensure that those that cannot meet the required standard are removed from the roads. EDIT: I forgot to add that while I know that more energy is needed to sustain higher speeds, my car appears to be slightly more economical at 85 than at 70. It seems to have a sweet spot just after the peak of the torque curve around 2-2.5k rpm.
I think the issue with rigorous testing and retesting is that it's a very expensive solution to a problem that doesn't actually cost us that much as a society. A few hundred people die on the roads each year, tops: that's actually not that bad in a country of millions of drivers. Increasing testing requirements would shave off a few casualties, but it would cost the country huge amounts - more time and money taken away from people and, ultimately, from national economic growth, which now more than ever is a big concern. But even if we weren't in a recession, it'd still be a very cost-ineffective solution to not much of a problem. I know it's callous, but bad drivers kill themselves more often than other people, as I understand it. A vast majority of accidents don't involve a second vehicle, so let them roll off the road if they're too stupid to take a corner at the right speed, I say. There are the other casualties, of course - the people injured or killed by other peoples' bad driving - but I suspect (though have no evidence to back this up) that most of those are caused by drunk driving, speeding in low speed areas, dangerous manoeuvres and the like - in short, by drivers with bad atttiudes, not by those who lack ability. The best response to those is increased breathalyzing, more speed cameras, and increased public awareness raising respectively, and harsher penalties with all three. Stricter and repeated testing wouldn't weed out these arrogant, reckless drivers - they know how to behave well on the day. My concern about the speed limit is that increasing it might send the wrong message to those reckless drivers - I think it'd add to their recklessness and overconfidence. It would also reduce the net mpg of traffic in the country, increasing our overall fuel consumptions, since vehicles do best around 50-60mph and their mileage tails off dramatically above that (edit - with the exception of Xen0phobiak's car, it seems ) - again, costing the country more money and fuel when we should be trying to conserve both. I can't think what the benefit of increasing the speed limit would be, either. That's the real stumbling block for me: what good would it do? The police don't actually stop and ticket people for doing 80 if everyone on the road is doing 80, I've seen them cruising at that speed themselves. And even if they did ticket people for it (which as far as I know is rare), the remedy is a change in their policing guidelines (something to the tune of, "if every dude on the road is doing it, don't be a douche and pull over one poor dude").
Mickey-taking aside, you'll probably find that most 2L+ Diesel saloons will cruise economically at 80+ in 6th
Yes, but if you're driving a 2L diesel saloon you're not even eligible to enter the discussion about fuel economy
Not sure where you got that fact, but the actual figures are closer to 200,000 people that die on UK roads a year! It's hard enough to get a slot for your initial driving test, let alone re-tests every x-years. I agree that it would do more harm than good. I think some sort of test for older drivers would be a good idea, even if it's just an abridged version of the full test - just the eye test would take a lot of drivers off the road. Bad drivers are likely to cause accidents as well as be in them. Going into a ditch is a very minor thing compared to the drivers that change lanes inappropriately or pull out without looking both of which are more damagin to other drivers than the 'bad' driver. It wouldn't help congestion which is more of a problem on UK Roads than a "low" speed limit (try driving in Denmark, a large amount of their motorways have a 50mph limit!). The only thing I can see it doing is cause more spending on Fuel!
The figure is really closer to 2000 source: http://www2.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/reported-road-casualties-gb-main-results-2010.html The speed limit here is already 80 mph and it works quite well, the main problem being the difference in speed between trucks and cars (people often drive a lot faster than 80mph here). You can't however really compare statistics between road deaths (there were 32 here in 2010), as the number of deaths per head of the population is double of the UK, around 50-70% of the traffic isn't from Luxembourg.
For road deaths I was just extrapolating from those "road deaths this month [present year] [previous year]" signposts, which usually display double figures around 50, give or take. So I assumed the year must produce a few hundred. I'd be interested to see more statistics on road casualties, evidence is lacking here. The issues of stricter testing and retesting, lower/higher speed limits and stricter policing hinge on how many casualties and accidents result from bad, i.e. unskilled driving and how many result from dangerous, i.e. reckless driving. If the latter are a majority, and if speeding is often a contributing factor in accidents, logic dictates that increasing the speed limit would increase accidents. But frankly I don't know whether that's the case.
