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Driving most definitely SHOULD be about being safe.
Speed limits and cameras: the most dangerous roads are the slowest ones, the safest are the fastest ones. That is a fact.
Speed is ONLY a factor in safety when speed is inappropriate. You go on a speed awareness course and this point is hammered all day.
you do 40 in a 30mph zone, and if you hit a child, they will likely die: hit them at 30, or 25, they will likely walk away. That is the sort of twattish behaviour that needs the heaviest penalties IMO: the arsehole caning it in a residential area. Often some toe rag in a company car, thinking he's Lewis Hamilton.
Doing 85mph on a motorway, keeping your distance, with your wits about you, you aren't putting anyone in much danger at all. Certainly you are inflicting less danger than driving past a school at 25 mph. Far less chance of anything happening.
Yet, the berk sitting in the middle lane, doing 70, not pulling in, when they ought to, is creating more of a hazard. AS is the div tailgating at 60, or the shitehawk on their phone.
So, go talk to any driving organisation about speed, they will say the same thing: its about appropriate use of speed.
As the current laws on motorway speed stand, I can on the M1, at 11pm at night, empty road, doing 100mph, not a car in sight, and I can get done, severely. Why? To what end?
It's not good practice to drive on the assumption that you won't encounter anything dangerous. A safe speed is a speed at which you can deal with any reasonably expected hazards, such as a stationary car in your lane.
Yeah, I know, the driver has the accident not the car - but not everyone has fast enough cars. What if the limit was 100mph in the fast lane but the BMW driving fuckbucket who's tailgating you wants to go 110mph? Our roads are already over populated with vehicles. And frankly, most people are not good enough drivers, even if they think they are.
If you drove, solidly, at 100mph in a 30 mile journey you'd take 20 minutes. If you drove at 70mph for 30 miles it would take just under 26 minutes.
Wanna beat traffic? You can either drive at 100mph ("oh I'm less dangerous than someone on their phone) or... Leave 10 minutes earlier and go 70mph and beat the guy who leaves later going 100mph. Probably use less petrol, and avoid more traffic - win win.
I also agree we could raise the speed limits on motorways, but truth be told I don't often have big problems on motorways (other than tailgating - and no, I won't decelerate from 70mph to 56mph to merge in the traffic in the left lane to move out of your way). It's usually porsche cayennes and hot hatches in national limit rural roads overtaking when I'm already doing 60mph.
I've also had a road near me reduced from a 50mph limit to a 40 because yet another hot hatch went into the river running alongside it. It's perfectly safe at 50, and if it's wet you drive slower because you're not a fucking imbecile - these numpties ruin it for everyone.
Most road deaths happen on country roads, a) Because it takes ages for somebody to notice you've had an accident and the national speed limit (50) is actaully two quick for most B roads (yes they are fun to drive at that speed but you have no idea what is around the next corner (horse, tractor).
If you can drive at 80 mph you should be allowed to, as long as its safe, same goes for 90, 100, whatever. If you are looking properly and paying attention, you can stop in plenty of time for hazards. If you are going fast, you just need to be more aware of things further in the distance. If you can't be aware, slow down. Its what I do. That's about being able to drive properly isn't it?
Limiting it at 70 is daft.
Motorways are a special case, and I do think the limit should be increased. Rural roads I'd have dropped to 50 everywhere, too many bends, hazards, dickheads, to be faster than that. The Snake Pass here is horrendous for arseholia - always some tosser sales rep in an Audi thinking he can overtake on a blind bend. Sends me apoplectic with rage. What these divs don't think about is that they are endangering everyone with their antics.
Same scenario at 100mph. Your reaction time is the same but you will travel alot further in that time period, by which time you could hit the load.
The plod aren't going to ban Snap because of the dipped beam distance, they do it because he'd be an easy target. Speed is low hanging fruit, the bigger baddies would require actual policing. I see some bloody awful driving every day outside my house, it's a 30 limit yet almost all of the really bad driving takes place under 20mph under the watchful eye of our reflective yellow GATSO. 50 yards away.
It's a bit of a sore point with me because I've just been done for speeding - on Hanger Lane, by a camera that is apparently notorious, I think it sits just after the limit goes down from 40 to 30. It was late at night - 11:55pm. I remember the exact journey - I was driving back home from my girlfriend's house, about a month ago. Both the road and pavement alongside it were utterly peaceful, there was very little traffic, and I was paying full attention to the road. I got done at 36mph. Rather irritating - I know that I did not pose a danger to ANYONE on that occasion. Just a little revenue raising exercise by our esteemed leaders.
A twelve year-old 1.6-litre Honda Civic with scratches all down the side will do it.
The question, I would suggest, then becomes do you want to keep motorways as safe as they are now, or do you want to sacrifice a bit of that safety in order for some people to drive a little bit faster?
Also the noise at high speed in a lot of more affordable (and those fitted with cheaper tyres)/lower powered (especially diesel) cars isn't good for your ears by the time you've cranked your stereo up to hear it over the top. So even if you're safe driving at that speed you're more likely to damage your hearing over time. Different story if you're in a high end luxury car with a big engine. Most people won't care about this but musicians should at least be careful with their hearing.
My car is a Honda with a (small) VTEC engine, so you need to absolutely thrash the nuts off it to get anywhere. At motorway speeds it sits at around 4000 rpm, which is extremely tiresome so yes, up goes the stereo. The one thing I would change about it is giving it a 6th gear.
I know the majority don't thrash it to that extent, but it only takes one eejit who thinks they're a racing driver and one other eejit who doesn't look before pulling out and you potentially have a multi-car pile-up. Just as you do now, only the racing driver thinks they're OK at an even higher speed.
I know that probably sounds a bit hand-wringy, but I honestly don't see the point in increasing the limit. We have lovely safe motorways, and in a relatively small country we don't have anything like the distances Germany has so adding another 10mph really doesn't make a lot of difference to journey times.
You could apply that very rare scenario to every single speed limit. The safest speed is zero. After that its just a question of scenarios and probabilities.
Really, I agree with you, but I do think there is a good case to increase the speed limit on motorways.Tbh I don't think many people would be travelling much quicker than they do now, but it would reduce the worry of getting done when doing 80 mph, which IMO is a perfectly reasonable speed to be travelling at, conditions permitting.
I'd have more 30mph limits though, more 20mph lmits too, but would up the motorway, and reduce national speed limit on single carriageways to 50. Focus on the unsafe roads.
You could also set the motorway limit at 120kph which is 75mph which would be a bit better than what we currently have but it wouldn't have the Greens screaming end of the world.