Englands fastest speeders

[Jelster]

Hmmm.... Without question the most common ticket officers from my Traffic garage give out is for mobile phones. I reckon speeding tickets come in about third or fourth place. ALL of our pro-active enforcement is done on surface streets not motorways with the vast majority of it being in limits of 30mph or less....so, no, it isn't too hard for us.

We do patrol the motorways (for me this does include the M25) and do deal with speeders, but in most cases those who get tickets have been driving like idiots that has included excess speed. On these occasions it is common for us to give a speed ticket rather than a WDC ticket or process for dangerous if, when stopped, the message given has been understood.

Mobile phones really, really wind me up. You see people in £80k cars holding a phone to their ear, when bluetooth is standard, they're just too f.... lazy to pair it to the car.

 

[viv1969]

I find it impossible to criticise the police for filling the coffers with money garnered from idiots.

 

[SFTPhotography]

Car accidents are accidents and are non intentional, murder and rape are. Catching people straying above the speed limit is quite, IMHO, a lesser priority, than catching rapists and murders, hence the resourcing you see, but it should be more in bias of catching violent offenders and deterring antisocial and drunken behaviour. All IMHO of course

 

[big soft moose]

I find it impossible to criticise the police for filling the coffers with money garnered from idiots.

indeed - there is a very simple solution for those not wanting to have to pay speeding fines (other than getting their wife to take the points ala MR Huhne ) - don't flipping speed !

I've been fined for speeding once in 20 plus years of driving - back when i was young and foolish (and doing 34 in a 30 in a big shiny 4x4 right past a police station was indeed pretty damn foolish) 3 points and and a 60 quid fine taught me not to do it again

 

[SFTPhotography]

Back on topic, one for the traffic polis, out of how many accidents do you see is excess speed the route cause. Or another way, what proportion of accidents are caused or involve someone driving above 100mph or 30mph above the posted limit? I'm really curious mainly because in the past, I have chosen (and I am now paying the price) to drive well in excess of 100mph.

 

[Gaz J]

According to HMG, you don't want to pay for Police, and thats why the numbers are being reduced. In any case, they cannot be omnipresent, just because you don't see that happening, does not mean it doesn't.

Correct, Germany does, in spite of the opinion held by some have speed limits on motorways. They were introduced because of the number of accidents, which reduced as a result.

As for your other point, no it's not patronising, it's simply from experience of listening to the whinny excuses from people who can't be bothered to read road signs, or look beyond the end of their bonnet and who will persist in trotting out the excuses of how they didn't know it was a 30/40/50/60/70 mph limit.

I dont see it because it doesnt happen. I know some police officers and have asked them why dont they have a crack down on it and its not a high priority.

There is no one on this thread who hasnt broken the speed limit at some point. Talk to anyone who says that they have never broken the speed limit and youre talking to a liar.

 

[Wookee]

Car accidents are accidents and are non intentional, murder and rape are. Catching people straying above the speed limit is quite, IMHO, a lesser priority, than catching rapists and murders, hence the resourcing you see, but it should be more in bias of catching violent offenders and deterring antisocial and drunken behaviour. All IMHO of course

Unfortunately, in regards to 'accidents', neither the government nor the Police agree with you there which is why we haven't called them 'accidents' for some years now. They are called collisions as to be an accident it would imply that no-one was to blame and that is very, very rarely the case.

As I tried to outline above, we don't really look for speed on its own, we look for bad driving as it is that that causes collisions. This invariably encompasses excess speed for the conditions when you take out the elderly, those using handheld devices and the drunk/drug drivers.

 

[viv1969]

I don't even think it's collisions anymore.

Road traffic incidents.

 

[SFTPhotography]

Ok, collisions, RTA's.... I am not a polis, I am not up in the upto date jargon.

Out of how many collisions, a percentage is fine btw including everything from the old to the drunk, is excessive speed the contributory factor, and out of the ones which speed is the route cause of the collision, is very high speed 30mph above the limit and/or 100mph plus the cause of the collision.

Then how many people do you catch speeding that aren't involved in any RTA/collision and how many do you catch driving well above (30mph over the limit) or at 100mph that aren't involved in an RTA/collision.

 

[Steve Smith]

who will persist in trotting out the excuses of how they didn't know it was a 30/40/50/60/70 mph limit.

Which rather than being an excuse, actually makes it worse as they have just admitted to not paying attention!


Steve.

 

[Wookee]

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...ment_data/file/269601/rrcgb-2012-complete.pdf

If you have a look from page 189 of this link it lists the recorded contributory factors from 2012. Incidentally, it also calls them 'accidents' and I have no idea why as they told us to call them collisions.... I can only guess it's to make it easier for people unfamiliar with the terminology to search for them.

You won't find anything related to the actual speed recorded as this is something that is worked out after these contributory factors are recorded by the reporting officer. Certainly at most of the recent serious collisions I've attended excess speed was a factor. The only ones I can think of that weren't were cyclists and one down to a poorly maintained scooter.

 

[nilagin]

Car accidents are accidents and are non intentional, murder and rape are. Catching people straying above the speed limit is quite, IMHO, a lesser priority, than catching rapists and murders, hence the resourcing you see, but it should be more in bias of catching violent offenders and deterring antisocial and drunken behaviour. All IMHO of course

The Police are there to uphold the law as a whole. As the vast majority of the population breaks the law with motoring offences as opposed to murders or rapes, there will obviously be a higher number of people being prosecuted for traffic offences over breaking any other law.
All your bleating about the police and speed limits boils down to the fact you got caught. Just be a man and accept it. You did wrong, you got caught, you've had a price to pay for it.
Strange that you want police to leave motorists to do as they please and spend more time on other crimes, yet you bleat when a policeman on his way to deal with such an important incident wasn't locked up for braking traffic laws in his efforts to get there as soon as possible.

 

[Gremlin]

At the other end of the scale I really would like to see minimum speed limits too. totally fed up with being caught behind weekend drivers, doing 20MPH or less on
roads where it isn't easy to overtake while they sightsee and wander all over the road

 

[neil_g]

The Police are there to uphold the law as a whole. As the vast majority of the population breaks the law with motoring offences as opposed to murders or rapes, there will obviously be a higher number of people being prosecuted for traffic offences over breaking any other law.
All your bleating about the police and speed limits boils down to the fact you got caught. Just be a man and accept it. You did wrong, you got caught, you've had a price to pay for it.
Strange that you want police to leave motorists to do as they please and spend more time on other crimes, yet you bleat when a policeman on his way to deal with such an important incident wasn't locked up for braking traffic laws in his efforts to get there as soon as possible.

indeed. he cant even spell police right for goodness sake..

 

[boliston]

At the other end of the scale I really would like to see minimum speed limits too. totally fed up with being caught behind weekend drivers, doing 20MPH or less on
roads where it isn't easy to overtake while they sightsee and wander all over the road

It would be almost impossible to police minimum speed limits and someone might have good reason to be driving slowly, such as not wanting to miss an important turning that is coming up. Also driving is not just about getting from A to B as fast as possible, and there is nothing to say you cannot enjoy the scenery on a scenic road (there are quite a few down here in rural "zummerzet"! In such a case I would probably slow down when I got a straighter section to let a faster driver overtake, but often people will not make any effort to overtake even if given plenty of chance.

 

[Gremlin]

It would be almost impossible to police minimum speed limits and someone might have good reason to be driving slowly, such as not wanting to miss an important turning that is coming up. Also driving is not just about getting from A to B as fast as possible, and there is nothing to say you cannot enjoy the scenery on a scenic road (there are quite a few down here in rural "zummerzet"! In such a case I would probably slow down when I got a straighter section to let a faster driver overtake, but often people will not make any effort to overtake even if given plenty of chance.

So sightseeing also allows you to wander all over the road, hence the driver behind being reluctant to overtake ?
Yes I can understand someone going slow when looking for a turning but that really isn't the sort of driver I mean

 

[Yves Geza]

Really?? I did look at some facts around this a little while ago and in the Met they go a bit like this..... You are 3 times more likely to be killed in a collision than you are by being murdered, but we have 3 times more officers involved in murder squads than we do in Roads Policing. You are about 3 times more likely to receive a serious injury in a collision than you are to be seriously sexually assaulted....yet we have 3 times more officers involved in dealing with the latter.

That's the sort of specious statisic that lines up after lies and damn lies! How many people drive or travel in cars and how often compared with how many people commit or even consider committing assault?

 

[Steve Smith]

It's a little known fact that 87.3% of all statistics are made up.


Steve.

 

[Cobra]

It's a little known fact that 87.3% of all statistics are made up.


Steve.

But are you 100% sure of your figures?

 

[Steve Smith]

Yes. The other 19.2% are true!


Steve.

 

[Cobra]

Yes. The other 19.2% are true!
Steve.

But statistically speaking that leaves us with an anomaly of 6.5%
Or aren't they taken into the equation?
And just used as a buffer?

 

[Yves Geza]

Speaking as a 6.5% old buffer ...

@Simmotino - speed limits are arbitrary and largely meaningless as I exemplified in my post about the primary school oposite my office. Drivers who know their own limits, drive within them, often regardless of the number shown on the road sign - sometimes above and often below - and know pretty accurately what speed they're doing. There will always be others who underestimate or overestimate their own ability and society always throws up some who disobey any rule or authority. By and large, people who ignore speed limits are going to ignore them, whatever number they are. There's also an argument that 'arbitrary' speed limits bunch traffic at that speed and cause different problems from the ones they solve! As @Gremlin said, people lose concentration, and that's dangerous at any speed.

As for people here boasting about modern cars compared to ones I call nearly modern ones, I can remember driving Vauxhall Chevettes which had a nicely located 5-link back axle and were far more stable and advanced than contemporary Escorts. I'd have no qualms driving them in the right circumstances at whatever speed they could achieve. Equally I have owned and driven a great variety of W124, W126 and W107 Mercs which are still supremely capable vehicles at three figure speeds and which stop beautifully when you stand on the brakes with a properly modulated pedal feel that's at least the equivalent of modern "brake assist"!

BTW, I can parallel park too but to answer @donut, by my standards I can't drive! I mean don't get me wrong, I probably know as much as anyone here and can do as well as them but if I draw a football analogy, I'm a competent Club player or a superb Sunday morning amateur! However, i've been lucky enough to sit next to friends who were World Class, World Cup Internationals and when they "played kicky-uppy" with a car, they could make it do things that not many people could even believe! Perhaps because of that, although I despair of most driving standards, I'm not pessimistic about them in the sense that most people are trying to do the best they can in a car and virtually all "collisions" are indeed "accidents". I consider it my job
to use whatever skill I have to avoid the actions and mistakes of others!

 

[Cobra]

Some years after passing my test and cuting my teeth on an A35 van ( brakes? what brakes? ) and an Austin 1100, (FWD? Pah!)
I moved onto 3L capri's and had quite a few. Pure driving pleasure
( and latterly the 2.8Is But that was a completely different animal altogether, it took a lot more on the loud peddle to get a "back end re-action" from that one).

They were the most fun you can have in the wet, with your cloths on.
I made it my businesses to seek out deserted car parks (yes they did exist in those days)
especially in the snow and ice, that taught me a hell of a lot about driving, control and anticipation,
from the merest twitch of the back wheels.
Of course living in the land of roundabouts, driving was always a pleasure in the wet, after a dry spell.

 

[viv1969]

w............as always a pleasure in the wet, after a dry spell.

Too...many...jokes....
Must...mock...Chris...

 

[Bernie174]

Which rather than being an excuse, actually makes it worse as they have just admitted to not paying attention!

Correct. One of the first questions when stopping a driver for speed is to ask them what the speed limit is on the road they are on. You'd be surprised how many have no idea at all.
Follow that with "How fast were you driving at?" The answers were an eye opener. People simply have no idea what speed they are driving at.

 

[Cobra]

at all.
Follow that with "How fast were you driving at?" The answers were an eye opener. People simply have no idea what speed they are driving at.

I agree, I'm usually concentrating on the road conditions, environmental conditions and the traffic around me,
to keep looking at the speedo
But its a sad fact and I agree with you, that a lot of people cannot judge speed distance etc.

 

[donut]

Ok, collisions, RTA's.... I am not a polis, I am not up in the upto date jargon.

Out of how many collisions, a percentage is fine btw including everything from the old to the drunk, is excessive speed the contributory factor, and out of the ones which speed is the route cause of the collision, is very high speed 30mph above the limit and/or 100mph plus the cause of the collision.

Then how many people do you catch speeding that aren't involved in any RTA/collision and how many do you catch driving well above (30mph over the limit) or at 100mph that aren't involved in an RTA/collision.

its not just about speed being a contibutory factor ,,,,,when /if something does go wrong ,the faster you are going the more chance of causing a lot more damage to those around you ,,,,funny how the person who's abilty didnt quite live up to their expectation seems to get away with it and some innocent gets all the crap for the rest of their lives , ( if they still have one afterwards)

 

[Steve Smith]

when /if something does go wrong ,the faster you are going the more chance of causing a lot more damage to those around you

Exactly. And the relationship to speed is not linear, it's exponential. The equation for kinetic energy is energy = half the mass times the velocity squared so a car travelling at 42.4mph has twice the energy and twice the damaging potential of the same car travelling at 30mph.

The car travelling at 60mph has four times the energy of the same car at 30mph.

In an accident, this energy converts to cars and people being bent out of shape.


Steve.

 

[Gremlin]

I agree, I'm usually concentrating on the road conditions, environmental conditions and the traffic around me,
to keep looking at the speedo
But its a sad fact and I agree with you, that a lot of people cannot judge speed distance etc.

Same here but I also think that cars have a comfort zone too, my ancient golf liked to cruise around the 80+sh mark, so if you didn't keep a constant
watch the speed would creep up.
My present car seems happier at 60ish so TBH not a big problem as it sticks in the speed limit and I can pay more attention to the
traffic

 

[Yves Geza]

But its a sad fact and I agree with you, that a lot of people cannot judge speed distance etc.

Here again the law and the Highway Code are meaningless. There's no point in being taught that the stopping distance from 70mph is 315 feet when no one is taught what 315 feet actually looks like ... "from here to that third lamppost up there"! There's even less point if no one is taught what it feels like to hit the brakes really hard and stop in those 315 twitching, snaking feet!

And of course when Steve Smith talks about kinetic energy, no one ever considers the KE of faster traffic and no copper or camera would ever pay any attention to a vehicle pulling into the path of a faster one - because [regardless of the legality of the arbitrary numbers] it's obviously just as easy for you to slow from 80mph to 70mph as it would have been if I'd slowed behind the 60mph vehicle I'm closing on.


By the way, did I mention up the thread that it's only slow drivers who need fast cars!? For many years I've enjoyed driving small, slow cars where you can be working behind the wheel and enjoying your motoring while no one notices you're doing it! Many years ago James Hunt had an Austin A35 and felt the same!

 

[Steve Smith]

Here again the law and the Highway Code are meaningless. There's no point in being taught that the stopping distance from 70mph is 315 feet when no one is taught what 315 feet actually looks like

In the late 1970s there was a TV road safety film with the motto "Only a fool breaks the two second rule". The idea is that you should always be at least two seconds away from the car in front. The plan was to take note of a mark on the road and when the car in front gets to it, you say the phrase (which conveniently takes two seconds). If you are still talking (or thinking it) when you pass the mark, you are too close.

The beauty of this is that it scales up the distance automatically as the speed increases. Not exponentially which would be ideal, but I'm sure it was worked out to be effective at the normal range of driving speeds.

Just to do some maths here, 70mph is about 103 feet per second. Obviously that would be 206 feet in 2 seconds, but as it's a stopping distance. i.e. reducing from 70 to 0 in two seconds, it seems about right to me.

Next time you're on a motorway in 70mph traffic, see how many cars are 200' away from each other. I suspect not many!


Steve.

 

[Yves Geza]

In the late 1970s there was a TV road safety film with the motto "Only a fool breaks the two second rule". The idea is that you should always be at least two seconds away from the car in front. The plan was to take note of a mark on the road and when the car in front gets to it, you say the phrase (which conveniently takes two seconds). If you are still talking (or thinking it) when you pass the mark, you are too close.

The beauty of this is that it scales up the distance automatically as the speed increases. Not exponentially which would be ideal, but I'm sure it was worked out to be effective at the normal range of driving speeds.

Just to do some maths here, 70mph is about 103 feet per second. Obviously that would be 206 feet in 2 seconds, but as it's a stopping distance. i.e. reducing from 70 to 0 in two seconds, it seems about right to me.

Next time you're on a motorway in 70mph traffic, see how many cars are 200' away from each other. I suspect not many!


Steve.

You do see the nonsense of that don't you? If you leave 200 feet between cars, to drive from London to Brighton on the motorway, you'd have to go to Scotland to join the back of the line!!

... The vehicle in front, that is covering 103ft/sec will of course also take time to slow down. It is very unlikely to decelearte to 0ft/sec instantly! Even allowing 2,000 feet between cars, there simply isn't time to build a solid brick wall across the carriageway!

 

[Bernie174]

Jonathan

The problem is that 2 seconds is eaten into in reaction time, and doesn't take into account the fact that most drivers world ends at the end of their own bonnet. I grant you, it's unusual for a car doing 70 to suddenly be doing zero, although it does happen.
I dive 140 miles a day on motorways, and the accidents I see are always in the outside lane, and are always the same cause. One vehicle stops or has top break suddenly and the next 2, 3, 4, 5 (pick a number) go into the back of each other. If I was into expensive German and Swedish cars, I'd shed a tear!
The cause is inevitably too close to the car in front and not looking beyond that car and too fast for the road conditions and the distance they are behind the car in front.
When there isn't an accident it is more by luck than judgment.


So, given people are incapable of navigating from point a to point b safely at as you refer to them, arbitrary figures, what justification is there to make matters worse? None, all you do is make the serious injuries into bodies. That is exactly what happens in Germany, where the limits where they exist are higher. Even with a far more thorough driver training system, they have more deaths and it doesn't take Sherlock to work out why.

 

[Yves Geza]

Jonathan

...

I dive 140 miles a day on motorways, and the accidents I see are always in the outside lane, and are always the same cause. One vehicle stops or has top break suddenly and the next 2, 3, 4, 5 (pick a number) go into the back of each other. If I was into expensive German and Swedish cars, I'd shed a tear!
The cause is inevitably too close to the car in front and not looking beyond that car and too fast for the road conditions and the distance they are behind the car in front.
When there isn't an accident it is more by luck than judgment.

I can argue that if that is always what's happened and always the same cause, it is not presenting the case in favour of speed limits! As I suggested earlier, speed limits cause traffic to bunch up and people switch onto auto pilot and stop concentrating!

Of course I agree that the higher the impact speed, the greater the damage, but in these cases the impact speed difference will surely have be 10 or 15 or 20 mph. By the same token, my experience of driving in Germany is that road users are rather more aware of the speed of vehicles around them and make greater allowances for other road users, because they have some understanding that vehicles in the rear view mirror may be arriving at a serious rate of knots!

 

[onomatopoeia]

Next time you're on a motorway in 70mph traffic, see how many cars are 200' away from each other. I suspect not many!

I usually am, I have no interest in driving up the exhaust pipe of the car in front as I'm not racing them. Trouble is that if you leave a decent gap to the car in front, someone will fill it.

Something I notice a lot on busy motorways where all the lanes are in queues at 60-70mph is people driving too close and every few seconds dabbing the brakes for confidence. This is exactly the situation where whenever I leave a gap someone decides they can make more progress in the same lane as me and dives into it.

 

[Byker28i]

Would you want to be the one telling the mother, daughter, son, father other whoever that their loved one isn't coming home anymore because of some cretin that enjoyed driving fast..I know I wouldn't want to be..

Is there a Godwins corollary that states someone will claim the death of children, or kittens, in a driving thread?

 

[boliston]

You do see the nonsense of that don't you? If you leave 200 feet between cars, to drive from London to Brighton on the motorway, you'd have to go to Scotland to join the back of the line!!

... The vehicle in front, that is covering 103ft/sec will of course also take time to slow down. It is very unlikely to decelearte to 0ft/sec instantly! Even allowing 2,000 feet between cars, there simply isn't time to build a solid brick wall across the carriageway!

never had a problem with leaving a 2 second gap on motorway - even more if someone is very close behind - its a life saver if the unexpected should happen

 

[DorsetDude]

The thing with higher speeds is all it means is you end up at the back of the next congested queue quicker, meaning you therefore spend longer in traffic queues.

 

[Bernie174]

I can argue that if that is always what's happened and always the same cause, it is not presenting the case in favour of speed limits!

You could argue that, but I would take issue with it.
The speed limit itself doesn't cause bunching, it's the drivers who do that, there's nothing in the Highway code that forces any driver to drive on someones bumper, or cut into a space the width of a rizzla paper. If you increase speed limits you just have bunching at higher speeds, with a worse result.
You are right about the first 2 or 3 cars in a pile up having a relatively low initial impact speed, but thats not the end of the matter, the impact speeds increase the futher back you go, and each impact is transmitted back towards the front for each vehicle still in contact. Thats why you see worse damage to the vehicles futher back in a multiple than you see at the front.

By the same token, my experience of driving in Germany is that road users are rather more aware of the speed of vehicles around them and make greater allowances for other road users, because they have some understanding that vehicles in the rear view mirror may be arriving at a serious rate of knots!

But it doesn't do them any good, they still manage to kill more of each other!

 

[SFTPhotography]

But it doesn't do them any good, they still manage to kill more of each other!

It's still hardly a blood bath, and it's my view, despite the extra deaths/injuries, that their system is better.