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look under the Gatso link, then vandalised gatso's.
Always cheers me up,
Why do motorists whinge that the speed cameras are dangerous, that they "cause motorists to brake sharply and then speed up" or that a stretch of 60mph limit road is "easily good for 70mph". The limit is there for a reason, and that reason isn't to spoil motorists' fun. Yes, they are making lots of money for the authorities, but sometimes the only way to get people to take any notice of laws is to hit them in their pocket. 50 years of road safety advice and pictures of mangled cars/passengers/pedestrians don't seem to have done the trick.
If you don't want to pay the fine, don't speed. Simple as that. Speeding is against the law, and the law is there to protect motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians. People who claim that the limits shouldn't apply to them because they are good drivers are deluding themselves that they could cope with any situation thrown at them, and make me mad. For every good experienced driver there are many more bad drivers who think they are good. Raise the limit for the good ones, and the bad ones cause more shit on our roads.
Nessie (with personal experience of the consequences of excessive drivers) steps off soap box.
Part of me feels are that after 20-odd years of driving and at my advanced age, I'm a lot safer in it than I was in my first car at 17, because that car was a rusty wreck, with brakes that pulled sideways, dodgy roadholding, and limited acceleration and top speed - yet I drove it everywhere flat out and went outside the car's and my own safety margin on a regular basis.
I'd like to say that I now have significantly greater judgement, but laying aside pride and arrogance, I'm certain I still have a far greater faith in my abilities than I really merit, so I agree that the same rules of the road should apply to me as to anyone else.
- having a fancy car/bike/whatever : so what ?
- age and experience : these won't help if I'm a psychopath
- paper or practical qualifications based on a few hours or even few days tuition prove nowt : two friends with Institute of Advanced Motorists qualification learn to drive 'properly', passed the IAM test, and then went back to driving like nutters, whilst track-based race- or high-performance courses teach you to be a racing driver.
We must ALL learn - and keep learning, every day - to be sensible and safe drivers/riders/cyclists/pedestrians/horse-riders/whatever, and never get complacent because 'I'm a good driver'.
Unfortunatley, some won't learn and so it must be enforced, and because compulsory re-tests every 6 months or so is too expsensive to be workable, I can't see how we can get away from speed limits - with all their limitations : 100+ on an empty motorway at 3a.m. may seem safer, but is just as illegal as doing 45 in a 30-zone at rush hour. Ironically, doing 30mph in a 30-zone past a busy school at drop-off time in a morning may be legal but is extremely stupid.
My only reassurance is that once someone is caught, the copper on the spot, or the magistrate or court, can apply some sort of judgement of the severity of the offence before imposing a penalty or sentence.
And of course, insurance companies do this too, pricing multiply-convicted or accident-prone people off the roads. But my worry with that is that the total psychos drive whilst disqualified and without insurance...custodial sentencing is required for them.
Nessie, is there room for one more on your soap box?
Andy - you sound neither pompous or show-offy - I just wish more of your fellow Impreza drivers showed a fraction of your sense. Not like the one who overtook me in a 30mph zone, passing a primary school...... FIZZZZZ
I don't believe that they are there for "our protection", they are revenue raisers for the authorities, pure and simple. Despite being told that they are now visible, they are still hidden behind walls, trees, and road signs, and always in areas of under-posted variable speed limits. Such as that bit of dual carrigeway where you assume you can do 60, but actually there was a tiny 40mph sign about 3 miles back.
Anyone driving like a fool should be stopped and fined, however dishing out fines by the millions to people doing a few mph over the limit is nothing more than robbery.
Perhaps this encourages some of the reckless motorcycle driving that we see.
is the way to get safer drivers to numb them into a mindset of follwoing speed limits ? on many occasions the speed limit is too high.
teaching drivers about appropriate speed, observation, visibility, road conditions would be money well spent surely!
i'm playing devils advocate here but its a good debate.
check out http://www.safespeed.org.uk/ for the anti speed limit lobby :-)
C'mon up Tulips.
I'm off to do a survey.
- if it's not 30mph or national speed limit there should in theory be speed limit reminders at regular intervals.
- not knowing the speed limit is just an admission of poor observation, although they do have a habit of putting changes in speed limits just after junctions when your attention is already on other things, although as my advanced driving instructor pointed out.... if you can't absorb all the information you need to, you're going too fast.
Nessie, no doubt the Impreza which passed you was the saloon model, which comes with a great big wing on the back, and in that loud electric blue which shouts 'race me !' half a mile away.
It will have been driven by a grimacing Billy Idol lookalike, and made the ground shake with its stereo (Billy Idol would correct me that it's properly termed 'I.C.E.', but it's a stereo...)
He has friends with similarly noise-equipped elderly Fiestas, Corsas & Saxos, all with greater value of go-faster accessories added than the original car cost.
They whizz around country lanes oblivious to the fact that around the next blind bend is a group of runners or cyclists, or a 12-yr old girl on a skittish horse.
All being 17-20 year-old men, they're more full of testosterone than common sense, and think that their quick reflexes will enable them to 'handle it'.
I purposely bought the estate version, in a restrained dark blue, so hopefully I'm not instantly stereotyped in this group.
But, I reckon that just as dangerous are those executive-y types (men & women) in BMW's, Audi's, SAAB's, etc who routinely do 85-90 on busy motorways, only to carve off at exit junctions straight from the outside lane. They think their age and experience, plus their fast car (which of course they deserve as they have high-stress jobs) allows them to 'handle it'.
And just as dangerous again is the small hatchback-driving dawdler who whilst not going fast, doesn't look where they're going or have any appreciation of why they shouldn't do 55 steadily in the middle lane.
A roadside traffic cop can apply judgement and decide whether an instant fine & points is appropriate when he/she catches any one of these people, or a court appearance, or just a 10-minute boll***ing. In the dawdler's case, he'll despair at having to educate them.
A camera is a robot and can't do this. Unfortunately they are a lot cheaper to run than highly-trainned coppers in big Volvos, so we get lots of them. So long as they remain set at eg 34 in a 30 limit, or 45 on a 40, etc. then if anyone's caught they can't complain.
Anyone know a good joiner, it's getting cramped up here.
Speed limits on the motorway for example were set in the 1950's, when cars were years behind in safety. There is no speed limit in Germany on the autobahns, with no significant increase in accidents.
For me the argument about cameras runs a lot deeper than 70mph OK, 71mph wrong. I don't want my kids growing up in a world where their every move and action is recorded and observed. indeed perhaps you think people who get caught on CCTV dropping chewing gum or swearing in public should be prosecuted? And of course if you take that argument to its logical conclusion then we should all have cameras in our houses, because if you've nothing to hide then who cares right?
We should be using technology to enhance our lives, not to entrap and enslave ourselves.
Personally i want to see a return to a human face in policing, the bobby on the beat, (rememeber him?), not a faceless big brother attitude to law enforcement.
A speed limit is a compromise - on the same road, at different times, different levels of traffic, different weather, etc. it can be well inside a safe limit or be far too fast.
If the local authority sets it slow enough to cope with the heavy traffic/bad weather/etc, it's too slow a limit and everyone ignores it. If it's set high enough to be sensible for better conditions, lemming-like people will assume it's a license to go that fast.
Andy T, I'm alarmed about what you say about your bike instructor telling you to go from 30->60 on leaving a town and getting 'national speed limit' signs.
I went along for a IAM demo-drive 6 or 7 years ago and they suggested that too - hard accelleration to new limit when it increased, hard braking to new limit when it decreased. If you didn't do this you were either breaking the law for going too fast or getting in someone's way bt going too slow....
They also suggested dawdling-up to a green traffic light, on the assumption that it would change to red and you could stop, but once you get to point-of-no-return and can't stop you accellerate across just in case it does change.
Ignoring the fuel consumption and wear on brakes, etc, this sort of stop-start driving semed dangerous, not advanced...
I hope your children survive to grow up in any kind of world. My sister didn't.
Appreciating safety and accepting the rights-and-wrongs of a law aren't necessarily the same thing.
No idea whether it's meant to be 40 or 60 so I go a max of 50.
although changes in speed limit are usually indicated with larger signs on both sides of the road.
I don't agree with anyone breaking the speeding laws, because they think they know better, or have better skills, faster car, more experience, whatever.
I speed, I'll bet 95% of us do - not 75 in a 30 limit, but we all creep over the limit several time on every car jouney.
Gross violation is more serious, but still a crime. No excuses if caught. It's 'white collar' crime, not mugging or burglary, but still a crime - as is litter louting.
On your side though, I think that in time, speed cameras will go. Instead we'll have GPS chips (champion-chips !) in our cars and all our speeding will instantly be visible and punished, just like the London congestion tax, err I mean charge.
Studies have shown that a radar speed detection system linked up to a large sign that tells you your speed and if ur too fast, it says "Slow Down" are very effective, especially compared to less visible systems such as cameras