Englands fastest speeders

Cobra said:
You mean like viariable speed limits on the M25 ?
(and other areas now)

Yeah that is a huge success, :D
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It does allow for a greater concentration of cars on the road though as gaps are smaller between slower cars. Might be quite good if people did actually obey the limit, as for undertaking, commonplace on the M25, soon as I try and slow down to the overhead speed limit sign (which of course is apparently not a real speed limit, try explaining that one to a magistrate) and move over I cant get over to the left for the number of cars breaking the speed limit and undertaking me (which in itself is a more serious offence), despite my indicators and attempt at a goodly distance before dropping my speed to get out of everyone's way.
Re accidents close to home, my understanding is the same, but, we were discussing the 70mph Mway limit or at least I was and whether it should be variable.
Matt
 
PaulF said:
Now, before I start I should point out that I do like driving fast, mainly corner speed than in a straight line, a done quite a few days on race tracks.

However, with regards to the speed limit I did notice while in Canada a few years ago where the limit was 55 mph on the highway/motorway that mostly everyone obeyed the speed limit and the traffic moved freely, even through 'rush hour'.
We were there (Toronto) while the G10 summit was on and there were snap road blocks when the delegates were being driven around. We would be stopped for a few minutes then all the traffic would just move on steadily once the road was opened again, everything seemed to be done calmly and with minimal delay.
A contributory factor I believe was the ability to overtake in any lane, there was no 'overtake on the right' (or left as they drive on the other side of the road) which meant no perceived lane hogging and therefore no long queue in the outside lane waiting to pass the driver doing 5 mph below the limit.

In conclusion, the speed limit in this country may not be the factor for traffic jams or accidents. If all drivers stuck to the speed limit, no matter what that limit was, and the overtaking rules where changed to do away with 'lane hogging' then the traffic would most likely move a lot smoother and everyone would complete their journey quicker. Oh and it would also be a more economical and greener too. Doubt it will ever happen though.
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I've driven in Canada too, and my recollection is that they have just as bad traffic problems as we do here (certainly true for Sask and Prince Albert anyway - I'll let you know about Vancouver in a few weeks) but everything moves at a glacial pace. Staying awake driving distances is a big problem, although many Canadians don't worry so much about that 100kph limit.

And lane discipline is a great boon to both safety and traffic flow - all it requires is that people move over when they aren't overtaking. Having the possiblity of being passed on both sides increases the level of vigilance required to ensure it is safe to change lanes.
 
MatBin said:
It does allow for a greater concentration of cars on the road though as gaps are smaller between slower cars. Might be quite good if people did actually obey the limit, as for undertaking, commonplace on the M25, soon as I try and slow down to the overhead speed limit sign (which of course is apparently not a real speed limit, try explaining that one to a magistrate) and move over I cant get over to the left for the number of cars breaking the speed limit and undertaking me (which in itself is a more serious offence), despite my indicators and attempt at a goodly distance before dropping my speed to get out of everyone's way.
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But the whole point of the variables was to slow the traffic down so that the "congestion ahead" had a chance to clear.

Or like the stretch of the M1 J13-J10 (south bound obviously)
Is regularly set at 60 or even 50 MPH
even at 4am, when there is no need for it, that one is obviously a revenue collector
(But that's a whole new subject)


MatBin said:
Re accidents close to home, my understanding is the same, but, we were discussing the 70mph Mway limit or at least I was and whether it should be variable.
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It was more to the point of "is 70 too slow" in modern times?

And actually its variable now, along several stretches
as per my above quote,
and like all good TP threads they morph :D
 
Speed limits now *seem* arbitrary, with 30 and 40 limits appearing on raods that are not in built up areas and without lots of small roads feeding them. It's much more difficult now to see limits as being apout safety, and much more about either access restriction (by local anti-motoring councils) or about creating places to catch and fine motorists.

As for the idea of an 80 limit on motorways, that *might* be good since it would make legal what most people do now anyway. My biggest concern is that we've trained people to see the speed limit as a minimum, and no longer to be taken seriously, therefore many might drive at 90 or 100 routinely.
 
MatBin said:
On a speed awareness course I went on the other day I was advisd that the stopping distance for a car in a good mechanical condition and driven by a Class 1 Police driver stops in the same distance now as it did when the Highway Code was first written, possibly excluding "thinking" time. The reason being that although brakes, tyres, road grip etc have got better cars have got a lot heavier and so one cancels the other. Given that car diving ability hasnt gone up dramatically and human brains can only process information at the same speed it seems non sensical to raise the speed limit for general conditions, in fact lowering it might be better.
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The highway code stopping distance is calculated based on a straight multiple of velocity (which is the distance covered during the thinking/reaction time) and a multiple of the square of velocity (which is the distance covered in the time taken to convert the kinetic energy of the vehicle into heat by the brakes). The formula for kinetic energy is 1/2 . mass . velocity^2. Before my driving test I worked out the formula the highway code used so I could calculate any stopping distances that I forgot, but that was all in imperial so I expect they've changed the numbers into metres now.

Kinetic energy goes up in proportion to mass, and in proportion of the square of velocity so the principle of the calculation is correct. The multiples may not be be appropriate for modern vehicles. For example, my Imp weighs about 700kg, it has 155R12 tyres by some noname brand (possibly Nankang ditchfinders, but at least they are radial and not cross-ply) as the size is dead so none of the major manufacturers make them, and drum brakes. Even those can lock all four wheels in an emergency stop, so it has enough braking for the amount of grip the tyres can give. My nice car is 32 years newer, weighs 1300kg has 205/50ZR17 front and 255/40ZR17 rear tyres and mahoosive vented disks with four pot calipers all round (no silly single pot sliders). From any speed you care to name it will stop in a much shorter distance than the Imp. The mass is almost double but the potential to dissipate energy through the brakes is much more than double. Possibly if you're comparing some big repmobile saloon / estate that weighs over 2 tonnes with a small 1960s car that weighs a third of that (Mini, Imp, Anglia, Viva HA etc) then the numbers might be closer. I still don't believe that stopping distances for 60s cars are comparable to moderns though, and I'm the one that likes old cars (and really dislikes the trend of manufacturers to make cars heavier).
 
I've posted often that across the road from my office is a primary school. If I drive past at 3 o'clock doing 31mph in my Porsche 911GT3 with ceramic brakes I'm deemed to be dangerous but if I drive past at 3 o'clock doing 29mph in my 1923 Austin 7 with ineffective 2-wheel brakes, I'm deemed to be safe - that's 3am in the Porsche and 3pm as the brats are screaming out of the playgorund when I'm in the Austin!

PaulF said:
... the speed limit in this country may not be the factor for traffic jams or accidents. If all drivers stuck to the speed limit, no matter what that limit was, and the overtaking rules where changed to do away with 'lane hogging' then the traffic would most likely move a lot smoother and everyone would complete their journey quicker. Oh and it would also be a more economical and greener too. Doubt it will ever happen though.
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It's not in the British psyche to make room for other road users. I've never worried about letting genuinely faster traffic past. It can work to your advantage. Apart from all else, I vividly remember an occasion when I might have been doing a three figure speed [kph or leptons obviously] and having just let a badly driven Porsche past, on came the blue lights from the motorway slip road in front of me ... and I motored serenely on past them both!

There's a thread elsewhere about working in Formula 1. Because it's not in the British psyche to make room for other road users, I've discovered a couple of times that REAL Formula 1 drivers either use the hard shoulder at somewhere over 130mph to get past traffic or start tapping the back bumper of the car that won't get out of their way at a similar sort of speed! :banghead:
 
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Yves Geza said:
I've posted often that across the road from my office is a primary school. If I drive past at 3 o'clock doing 31mph in my Porsche 911GT3 with ceramic brakes I'm deemed to be dangerous but if I drive past at 3 o'clock doing 29mph in my 1923 Austin 7 with ineffective 2-wheel brakes, I'm deemed to be safe - that's 3am in the Porsche and 3pm as the brats are screaming out of the playgorund when I'm in the Austin!



It's not in the British psyche to make room for other road users. I've never worried about letting genuinely faster traffic past. It can work to your advantage. Apart from all else, I vividly remember an occasion when I might have been doing a three figure speed [kph or leptons obviously] and having just let a badly driven Porsche past, on came the blue lights from the motorway slip road in front of me ... and I motored serenely on past them both!

There's a thread elsewhere about working in Formula 1. Because it's not in the British psyche to make room for other road users, I've discovered a couple of times that REAL Formula 1 drivers either use the hard shoulder at somewhere over 130mph to get past traffic or start tapping the back bumper of the car that won't get out of their way at a similar sort of speed! :banghead:
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Funny you should mention kph, my new car hasn't had the speedo converted yet and still reads in kph, much to the delight of passengers who think I really am doing 100mph....
 
Steve Smith said:
The 70MPH limit was introduced in this country on the 1970's during a fuel shortage in order to reduce consumption. Before that, the national speed limit sign meant no limit.

EDIT: My memory is not what it was. It would appear that before the 1974 petrol shortage, the limit on dual carriageways was 70 and was then reduced to 60.


Steve.
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Neither is my memory but I think a 50mph limit was applied due to the fuel crisis.

I certainly passed my IAM test around that time and both the examiner and I agreed about it being sad not to be able to make progress:oops: :$
 
Alan Clogwyn said:
Funny you should mention kph, my new car hasn't had the speedo converted yet and still reads in kph, much to the delight of passengers who think I really am doing 100mph....
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Bruntingthorpe...
Stable enough to pull out the iphone...
140256548.jpg
 
Cobra said:
Wasn't he "blinded by the light"?
I didn't realise that song titles were admissible as a defence :D
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....Well, Rolf Harris apparently sang part of one of his songs in court yesterday! I really don't understand why the Judge didn't immediately stop that happening.

Cobra said:
Isn't it allegedly an AC Cobra doing 150( or something) MPH
on the M1?

Edit, was it really that long ago?
1965: Britain’s 70mph top speed limit was imposed on motorways – in what was supposed to be only a temporary measure.
(And was made permanent 2 years later)
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....Typical knee-jerk reaction and in ignorance of how high-performance cars are safer (with power comes responsibility).

I like the roads in Germany. Coming back to English roads such as the M20 is such a drag - 70mph feels like 40mph.
 
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:tumbleweed:
MatBin said:
On a speed awareness course I went on the other day I was advisd that the stopping distance for a car in a good mechanical condition and driven by a Class 1 Police driver stops in the same distance now as it did when the Highway Code was first written, possibly excluding "thinking" time. The reason being that although brakes, tyres, road grip etc have got better cars have got a lot heavier and so one cancels the other......

Matt
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Think it's time you ( and the instructors) had a wee google because that statement is so wrong :eek:

http://forums.pepipoo.com/lofiversion/index.php/t59947.html
 
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RedRobin said:
....Well, Rolf Harris apparently sang part of one of his songs in court yesterday! I really don't understand why the Judge didn't immediately stop that happening.
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I really can't imagine what song you are on about :D

Simmotino said:
If you need to go 80, you should have left earlier.
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Wasn't there an advert a little while ago, that said the journey was actually
better than arriving at your destination ? ;)
 
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Cobra said:
Wasn't there an advert a little while ago, that said the journey was actually
better than arriving at your destination ? ;)
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If only the law makers saw that driving is a pleasurable activity that could be enhanced with a little relaxation here and a clamp down on other things like scruffy lane discipline
 
Just read a stat that said the met police have 12 car related incidents a day :)
 
Byker28i said:
Just read a stat that said the met police have 12 car related incidents a day :)
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Yes but that could be any kind of POLAC from the most minor of coming together to a fatal high speed smash...
 
Going back to the comment that th majority of accidents occur within 3 miles of home and at less than 30 mph. I am not sure about the speed but every journey covers the first and last 3 miles so inevitably the odds are greater.
It may be a spurious correlation.
 
ChasG said:
Going back to the comment that th majority of accidents occur within 3 miles of home and at less than 30 mph. I am not sure about the speed but every journey covers the first and last 3 miles so inevitably the odds are greater.
It may be a spurious correlation.
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I think it has more to do with those being the roads that can be the most familiar so concentration isn't always the highest, I know when I worked in an office and even when I went to college, I started to vary my route as I found myself getting so used to the route that I almost became auto pilot and I'd arrive at the destination and not be able to tell you a thing about the journey...
 
At a guess, school runs, people still faffing and not fully concentrating on the journey (i.e. radio, sat nav), frozen/misted windows etc.
 
Byker28i said:
At a guess, school runs, people still faffing and not fully concentrating on the journey (i.e. radio, sat nav), frozen/misted windows etc.
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Or pulling out their iphones?
 
Simmotino said:
70 is plenty for the upper limit.

If you need to go 80, you should have left earlier.
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Agreed. I usually say that if you're in a hurry, you should have left earlier.

There isn't much that we do which is worth hurtling round like a lunatic for.


Steve.
 
Just read a stat that said the met police have 12 car related incidents a day
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The clue is the word incident. Many POLACC's are not accidents as defined by the RTA's.
For example, I had a windscreen smashed by a flicked up stone. It was a Polacc. Slightly dented the back step of a landrover on a post in the station yard. No damage to the post. Polacc. Cars get scratched by other drivers while they are unattended, Polacc. The trouble with stats is that unless you know the whole story, they mislead.

Anyway, when drivers are capable of driving faster than 30, let alone 70, I'll go along with speed limits going up. In my experience very few people are.
 
... certainly I've never seen a copper who had any car control! Far from it. It's frightening to watch the blues and twos lurch across the road towards you while Mr Policeman jerks at the steering wheel. Driving ability is no part of the job description. And I speak as someone who in the mid-80s was dragged back into motor racing by a enthusiastic retired Police Class 1 driver who didn't impress me at all behind the wheel!

FWIW, when I was growing up, a great family friend was the civilian transport officer of the Metropolitan Police. Apparently a huge number of accidents took place when a police car swerved "to avoid a dog that suddenly ran into the road", which was police-speak for "I'll show you how fast I can get round this corner!"
 
I don't think the chap on the A413 on that list was trying hard enough. 127 on that bit of road ? Seriously, that particular road is very wide, single carriageway and is of good tarmac. There's no pedestrian access either, so why the 40 & 50 mph limits ?

The speed limits in this country do not consider the modern motor vehicle, how well it handles, stops and of course, how powerful they are. Doing 110 on a motorway in a 40 year old saloon is one thing, in a modern family hatch it's quite another. Many of todays cars can easily cruise at 85mph - and do on the continent. Governments are just too scared to modernise the speed limits as it could lose them votes.
 
OK. I'll tell a story in favour of the police.

My late dad, who could pedal a car quite well, was hugely involved in the world of sport and its administration. One day, in the 1970s, they were researching the location for an International Marathon and they took longer than expected in, say, Derby. So they phoned ahead to, say, Nottingham, to explain they would be late. Then my old man loaded everyone into his Renault 30 V6 and floored it! He later calculated that he'd averaged 104mph from car park to car park - where they were greeted by the Mayor and The Chief Constable!

The Chief Constable just looked at his watch and said "you made up some time, I see!" :LOL: :LOL:
 
The speed limits in this country do not consider the modern motor vehicle, how well it handles, stops and of course, how powerful they are. Doing 110 on a motorway in a 40 year old saloon is one thing, in a modern family hatch it's quite another. Many of todays cars can easily cruise at 85mph - and do on the continent. Governments are just too scared to modernise the speed limits as it could lose them votes.
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No, they don't, nor should they when 99% of drivers shouldn't be allowed on a pedal cycle. I'm sorry, but driver standards do not match ambition.

FWIW, when I was growing up, a great family friend was the civilian transport officer of the Metropolitan Police. Apparently a huge number of accidents took place when a police car swerved "to avoid a dog that suddenly ran into the road", which was police-speak for "I'll show you how fast I can get round this corner!"
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No, it's an excuse for all manner of things. No garage skipper in the history of police driving has ever believed a police officers story after a Polacc, even with 15 nuns, the pope a high court judge and the Queen saying that the Police officer was driving properly. Hence 'creative' excuses.

In seriousness, on my driving course, we were driving directly into a very low sun on a high street somewhere in SE London. I was driving, and I could just make out a black dog trotting along the pavement. Then it disappeared. I slammed on the brakes, and then saw it strolling onto the pavement the other side of the road. The instructor, just looked at me, and said, there is no way that would have been believed!
 
Bernie174 said:
In seriousness, on my driving course, we were driving directly into a very low sun on a high street somewhere in SE London. I was driving, and I could just make out a black dog trotting along the pavement. Then it disappeared. I slammed on the brakes, and then saw it strolling onto the pavement the other side of the road. The instructor, just looked at me, and said, there is no way that would have been believed!
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:LOL::LOL: Fairy nuff!
 
Bernie174 said:
No, they don't, nor should they when 99% of drivers shouldn't be allowed on a pedal cycle. I'm sorry, but driver standards do not match ambition.
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Clearly you consider yourself, like me, as a member of the 1%
 
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MWHCVT said:
I is the best stunt driver on TP innit
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It was impressive Matt, but you are supposed to get up and walk away,
not go joy riding in an ambulance afterwards ;)
 
well i will openly admit to being slightly naughty from time to time, mostly on d/c's / m ways... stupid past a school in school time , throw the book at you, 1am on a sunday night, go through there at 45, i don't have a problem.

I am not so daft to admit to the max i have done on a uk road (in a car quite capable of more) , however at a mundane 70 on a motorway I am bored, if i choose to play on the audi/bmw lane (the right hand side one).. I find I am concenrating more on the road than the radio... i.e. 85ish makes you think more... and yes the car is capable of a lot more than that.
 
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Cobra said:
It was impressive Matt, but you are supposed to get up and walk away,
not go joy riding in an ambulance afterwards ;)
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I challenge you to refuse a ride in a nice ambo when it's three nice lady paramedics taking you to hospital :P :naughty:
 
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