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Save our 60s

Kendon

Kendon

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Jan 27, 2010
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Glasgow/Dumfries
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C220 CDI
Anyone seen the article in Februarys 'Bike' about re classification of some of our favourite roads and how we can stop it? and has anyone written, draughted a letter to send to their local highways agency?

Very interesting article and useful graph titled the 85th percentile about why slower isn't always safer.

As applicable to drivers as is to bikers I would wager.
 
About a year ago against the advice of Thames Valley police sections of the A4 between Maidenhead & Reading had the speed limit dropped from 50 to 40 & in one case down to 30 mph after prolonged moaning from a few people who live along those sections. This road used to be 60 mph from Maidenhead to Reading.

It is not enforced by the police & this is generally know. I'd guess about 97% of people ignore the new limits & drive at what is the natural speed for this major A road, 50 - 60 mph. However, a few people stick to or even below the new limit resulting in kamikaze overtaking & a bumper to bumper queue of seething, frustrated motorists being held up by someone driving too slowly for the conditions & the road.

It makes the road more dangerous and is just stupidly aggravating.
 
Well if the police even advised against it what good will our letters of protest do? But at least it will become an official document and the local authority would have to vote, meaning revision to the limit change or scrapping the idea completely.

Thing is a lot of people are not made aware the changes are being made and have little chance to object.

Seems like blind leading the blind with the DfT.
 
Warwickshire appear to have adopted a blanket 50mph on rural roads regardless of whether it's needed or not. :dk:
 
I live in Warwickshire and can see no logic to what they have done. There was a token public consultation but it was always a decision for ideological reasons by the unelected staff. For the last 30 years there has been one short stretch of dual carriageway installed for overtaking between Gaydon (the Aston Martin and Land Rover HQs) and Warwick. The 50 limit starts there rather than 400 yards later after you could have legally overtaken a mimser!
 
Please don't blame the poor frustrated driver who is sticking to the speed limit.
If I was driving on that section of the A4, I would not know that there were no speed cameras sticking out from behind every lamp post, and I would be unaware that the police took a lenient view of speeding.
As a stranger, I would have little option but to stick to the speed limit.
Blame the dim-wits who impose this unwanted nonsense - Not the innocent driver obeying the limit
 
Oxfordshire County Council have previously expressed their aim that there will be no single carriageway road in the county with a speed limit above 50mph. This is clearly an ideology thing as it flies in the face of all sense from a road safety point of view.

"Consultation" is a joke to which they pay no more than lip service, and they routinely overrule objections raised by anyone, including Thames Valley Police. In the latest round of "Speed Limit Reviews" - which culminated in a rubber-stamping exercise on 10th Feb - they have agreed to impose lower limits on 49 stretches of 24 of the county’s A and B roads despite the fact that TVP objected to 27 of those reductions. Somewhat predictably, the same group refused the single increase in limit that the review process had suggested (raising a 30 limit to a 40).

TVP objected to many of the new lower limits on the grounds that the aspect and style of the roads in question would indicate to a safe driver that the limit should be NSL. This was overruled by the council on the grounds that the "guidance" from central government takes no account of this factor. TVP also indicated that, in the absence of enforcement - which they do not have the resources to carry out - they expected compliance with a lower limit to be very poor. The council's response? "If we set a limit, TVP are duty bound to enforce it".

These people are totally out of control, and drunk on their own power. Road Safety thinking in this country is now dominated by ill-informed "perceptions" rather than being informed by science. It will get much worse, I fear :mad:
 
st13phil said:
These people are totally out of control, and drunk on their own power. Road Safety thinking in this country is now dominated by ill-informed "perceptions" rather than being informed by science. It will get much worse, I fear :mad:
Click to expand...

Don't limit this argument to Road Safety - it goes for almost everything. Look at the fuss when it was pointed out that actually homeopathy is quackery and shouldn't be funded by taxpayers.

The Daily Mash - PARLIAMENT EMITTING ANGRY PURPLE AURA, SAY HOMEOPATHS
 
st13phil said:
These people are totally out of control, and drunk on their own power. Road Safety thinking in this country is now dominated by ill-informed "perceptions" rather than being informed by science. It will get much worse, I fear :mad:
Click to expand...

And because they know nothing about anything and more importantly have a sort of chip in the shoulder about anything to do with cars/motoring and villifies driving activities. You know the sort.
 
I can't recall when or where but a long time ago there was a report of a vociferous local residents' campaign for a reduced speed limit through their village. Eventually the campaigners won, and the police set up a speed trap soon after. Guess who was the first person they caught?

Yep, the leader of the residents' campaign.
 
Stratman said:
I can't recall when or where but a long time ago there was a report of a vociferous local residents' campaign for a reduced speed limit through their village. Eventually the campaigners won, and the police set up a speed trap soon after. Guess who was the first person they caught?

Yep, the leader of the residents' campaign.
Click to expand...

Just another one of Darwinians beings in action :doh:
 
I see SPECS have made the leap from "roadworks only guv" to "anywhere we damn well please" (Cat & Fiddle...)

Anyone who trusts any government on anything from ID cards to DNA databases needs to take heed.
 
Gridlock said:
I see SPECS have made the leap from "roadworks only guv" to "anywhere we damn well please" (Cat & Fiddle...)

Anyone who trusts any government on anything from ID cards to DNA databases needs to take heed.
Click to expand...
While I agree wholeheartedly with your second sentence, I'll make the observation that were it not for the regrettably sizeable minority of "power ranger" weekend-warrior types on their R1's, 'Blades and GSX-R's who repeatedly used the Cat & Fiddle road as their own personal race track and regularly exceeded their own abilities in the process, the motivation for the introduction of a SPECS system on that road would have been - roughly speaking - nil.
 
That might be true - but what is their first response? Slap on some SPECs... Not Gatsos, not increased Safety Camera Partnership ********, straight to locking the whole road down at massive cost.
 
While I'm no lover of SPECS systems (or other automated speed enforcement equipment for that matter), I return to my point that were it not for the actions of a sizeable minority who ride that particular road in a manner that endangers their own lives - and, arguably, the lives of others - then there would be no need for any action to be taken whatsoever.

Had that been the case, then those like myself who enjoy travelling briskly but safely, occasionally exceeding the posted limit but without taking the urine, would still be able to do so without risk of prosecution.
 
But isn't that almost always the case for these draconian measures? The majority always suffer at the hands of the actions of the stupid minority....
 
st13phil said:
While I'm no lover of SPECS systems (or other automated speed enforcement equipment for that matter), I return to my point that were it not for the actions of a sizeable minority who ride that particular road in a manner that endangers their own lives - and, arguably, the lives of others - then there would be no need for any action to be taken whatsoever.
Click to expand...
Sadly the numbers are often massaged. Famously the justification for a camera on one road was several "road deaths"; One of the deaths was a deer and the other was a pedestrian that committed suicide.
 
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