Road safety: UK set to adopt vehicle speed limiters from 2022

Cobra said:
Seriously? how old are you again?
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56. When I was 3 my Dad bought his first new car a Mk1 Cortina 1.2 Deluxe. Bloke directly across the road had a new Mk1 Cortina 1500 GT. Next door neighbour had a Corsair 2.0 GT. His neighbour had a Ford Classic from new, which for some reason he just left on his lawn one day never to use again and bought a new mk2 Cortina estate.
The rest of the road was pretty much all new cars too. Only neighbour I can think of that didn't have a new car, didn't have a car at all as far as I know he didn't drive.

It probably helped that a high percentage of the wage earners in our road worked at Ford at Basildon, Dagenham or just over a mile away at the Aveley SVO plant.
 
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nilagin said:
It probably helped that a high percentage of the wage earners in our road worked at Ford at Basildon, Dagenham
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This /\ was going to be my next question
Of course working for a car company allows you certain, shall we say privileges ;)
But in the 60's ( if you remember the 60's you weren't there :p ) and 70's and maybe even into the 80's your average worker could not afford a new car.
 
Cobra said:
This /\ was going to be my next question
Of course working for a car company allows you certain, shall we say privileges ;)
But in the 60's ( if you remember the 60's you weren't there :p ) and 70's and maybe even into the 80's your average worker could not afford a new car.
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That’s why buses came along in threes,:LOL::LOL:most folk travelled by public transport, well up here anyway, to far from a Ford plant to get a cheap car.
 
mj4456 said:
That’s why buses came along in threes,:LOL::LOL:most folk travelled by public transport, well up here anyway, to far from a Ford plant to get a cheap car.
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Buses still come along in threes around here. The roads would be so much clearer with fewer buses.
There was the Ford Halewood plant up north, much cheaper housing too.
 
Not many people had cars let alone new ones where I lived as a kid in the 60's
We were hard up, but usually had an old banger because my dad was a car mechanic and could keep it going.
He worked in a garage opposite Bow church and I suspect the mot's were less than strict

His main job was a coach driver, the firm had little booking offices around the east end and they were also the pick up points.
Because so few people had cars the coaches were very popular for a day at the seaside or the annual week at a holiday camp.
I used to go with him sometimes, picked up at places like Poplar, Roman Road and Mile End then off to Clacton or M & R
(Margate and Ramsgate)
Stopped at a transport cafe half way for the facilities and a cuppa, always a whip round for the driver on the way back.
Loads of coaches then and the drivers all knew each other, cafes had drivers rooms with free grub for bringing the trade in
 
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Better driving standards are needed not a big brother system that probably won’t work properly and take all remaining fun away from driving. The speed limits are too low for modern vehicles and if people actually bothered to learn the craft of driving roads would be a lot safer. We won’t want to drive our cars if they’re monitoring everything we do but maybe that’s the point. Personal freedoms are constantly being eroded but most people don’t see it or don’t care.
 
Scirocco_09 said:
Better driving standards are needed not a big brother system that probably won’t work properly
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I think most of them needing better driving standards came out with the sun today. It wasn't those that were speeding that were causing the problem, but the ones driving far too slow, making no effort to accelerate, very poor road positioning.
 
nilagin said:
It wasn't those that were speeding that were causing the problem, but the ones driving far too slow
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Yes indeed. They're so stupid they think that road signs are there to be obeyed. What can you do with them?

Sony A65 8GB UnNumbered DSC02520.JPG
 
I can remember going from unlimited HGV's (we had a fleets of 20+ year old trucks until someone else brought the company out) to limited ones. When we had no limiters I was constantly trying to race my tachograph to get home rather than sleeping in the thing (another safety device that makes people try and go faster to beat its time limits) as I was allowed another 4 to 6 mph compared to everyone else, this caused me to be stressed all the time which I never really noticed until we had the newer limited trucks. We were stuck at 54-56mph so had no choice but to sit there and relax a little more !
 
nilagin said:
I would ban them. There is no reason for driving 20mph below the speed limit. If they don't have the confidence to drive, then perhaps they shouldn't be driving.
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Quite right. Ban anyone who doesn’t rush around at the speed limit or even faster. In fact we should make the speed limit the only legal speed on the road!
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Quite right. Ban anyone who doesn’t rush around at the speed limit or even faster. In fact we should make the speed limit the only legal speed on the road!
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Don't forget, Motorways also have a minimum speed limit, and even on non motorway roads, if you're driving too slowly, as in not in keeping with the conditions, you are likely to be stopped by the police.

The key to prevention of traffic queuing, especially on dual carriageways, is to keep to the left, and keep up with the speed of the traffic (as long as it's not over the limit). I was taught in my HGV days, to always make sure you get out of the way so that faster traffic can pass, even if that means pulling into a parking area for a few seconds.

With the amount of traffic on the roads today, people need better road manners but also need common sense.

I bet you're one of those guys with a 25ft caravan that drives at 40mph on a dual carriageway aren't you :sneaky:
 
Marc said:
He did say 20mph below the speed limit
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In all seriousness now: I'd agree that 10 in a 30 limit is antisocial but 50 in a 70 limit seems quite sensible to me. 40 in a 60 limit would depend a lot on the conditions.
 
Jelster said:
Don't forget, Motorways also have a minimum speed limit,
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Only where a white on blue number is displayed in a circular frame: https://www.drivingtesttips.biz/minimum-speed-limits-driving-too-slow.html - I've never seen one in the UK.
Jelster said:
and even on non motorway roads, if you're driving too slowly, as in not in keeping with the conditions, you are likely to be stopped by the police.
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I asked my lad about this (he's a traffic cop) and he says that's very rarely used and in fact hasn't been invoked since he's been on the force.
 
Been used down here (Devon and Cornwall is the local force) when climate protesters were blocking roads with rolling roadblocks.
 
Nod said:
Been used down here (Devon and Cornwall is the local force) when climate protesters were blocking roads with rolling roadblocks.
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Quite right - I forgot that. Lad was on that job I gather.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
In all seriousness now: I'd agree that 10 in a 30 limit is antisocial but 50 in a 70 limit seems quite sensible to me. 40 in a 60 limit would depend a lot on the conditions.
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It does depend on conditions but, if your doing 40 in a 60 on a single carriageway in good conditions, I would consider that anti-social, there's absolutely no need and you'd certainly fail a driving test.
 
Not all vehicles can drive at a roads speed limit, for example vans and Motorhomes( with an unladen weight > 3050 kg) are restricted to 50 MPH on a single carriageway, and 60 MPH on dual carriageway and 70 MPH on motorways. A car towing a caravan is limited to 50 MPH on single carriageways and 60 MPH on dual carriageways and motorways.
 
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AndrewFlannigan said:
Only where a white on blue number is displayed in a circular frame: https://www.drivingtesttips.biz/minimum-speed-limits-driving-too-slow.html - I've never seen one in the UK.
I asked my lad about this (he's a traffic cop) and he says that's very rarely used and in fact hasn't been invoked since he's been on the force.
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Funny that, as when I did my IAM training (bike) my mentor was a Met traffic officer, and he explained it pretty well to me. Go too slow, fail your IAM, possibility of being stopped by Plod. Do an overtake and exceed the limit, as long as it's not silly fast, and you slow down after the overtake, no issue.

I stand corrected, I thought there was a minimum limit on a motorway, but looking into it, the "rules" regulate that very slow vehicles are not permitted to use the motorway.
 
broc said:
Not all vehicles can drive at a roads speed limit, for example a Motorhome with an unladen weight > 3050 kg is restricted to 50 MPH on a single carriageway, and 60 MPH on dual carriageway.
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I think we're more referring to cars, I don't think anyone expects larger vehicles to be nudging the speed limit.
 
The speed limit is a maximum.

When I took my HGV test 35 years ago you would fail for not making forward progress.

This was absolutely not the same as driving at the speed limit.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
In all seriousness now: I'd agree that 10 in a 30 limit is antisocial but 50 in a 70 limit seems quite sensible to me. 40 in a 60 limit would depend a lot on the conditions.
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I would disagree with 50 in a 70. You are then putting lorries, vans etc. into the overtaking lanes and holding up other traffic unnecessarily all because you don't want to drive 6-10 mph faster.
 
There was a time when finance was heavily regulated, pre Thatcher, when you neeed a large deposit, to see the bank manager to ensure affordability and sometimes a guarantor in case you defaulted before a loan wood be granted. Good thing, bad thing now days easy finance, who knows?
 
Jelster said:
I thought there was a minimum limit on a motorway,
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Over the years I have traveled most of the country. The only minimum speed limit (10 mph) I've ever seen in on the Dartford tunnels.
Thats not to say there aren't others of course.
 
Cobra said:
Over the years I have traveled most of the country. The only minimum speed limit (10 mph) I've ever seen in on the Dartford tunnels.
Thats not to say there aren't others of course.
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That isn't a motorway, that is the A282. ;)
 
Will these speed limiters still allow people to do hyper speed around blind bends over hump back bridges ,on icey/snowy roads , near schools ect or will this automatically slow them in danger spots and poor conditions otherwise they are pretty pointless. At the end of the day a tag line I've seen on a cycling forum is just so true it reads Nothing is fool proof ! Fools are ingenious.
 
I think that as more automated control is introduced, driver attention significantly drops off, and people also tend to rely on the automation rather than controlling the car themselves. This leads to a drop in the standards of driving and driver ability.

If the car limits itself to the speed limit, there'll be a tendency for drivers to simply leave their foot on the floor leaving the car to limit how fast they are going. Either that ot set a higher cruise control speed and let the car get on with it.

In turn this leads to the driver having to pay less attention to what they are doing, so they'll not be thinking about what is going on, and not anticipating potential issues before they happen.


To give an actual example of something that happened to me fairly recently, I was driving on the North Circular in fairly heavy stop start traffic, so average speed below 10 mph, when I was hit from behind by someone driving a large Kia SUV. It wasn't a big impact, but enough to throw mine and my passengers' heads back.

We both pulled onto a side road and checked for damage. There wasn't anything visible, and as I was driving the "shed" car, I wouldn't have cared if there was a slight scratch or whatever. The interesting thing was the other driver's insistence that they couldn't possibly have run into me, because their vehicle was equipped with a collision avoidance system, so it was simply not possible for them to have run into me.

I suspect that they routinely drive in traffic not bothering to brake, but rather lazily relying on the collision avoidance to prevent them hitting cars in front in traffic, and for some reason on this occasion, it didn't work properly. An example of where automation allows the driver to pay very little attention to what is going on.

In terms of driving in general, much of the fun has gone out of it, unless one gets up at 6:00am on a Sunday morning to go for a drive out in the country. I'm certainly not interested in having lots of systems automating and controlling my driving, so, as someone above said, I'll be keeping my existing (currently 14 year old) "fun" car as long as possible with manual 6 speed gearbox, no stability control, no cruise control, no parking sensors, and no ABS. It even has manual winding windows (which I prefer to electric ones)!
 
So,there I was last week doing the speed limit on the inside lane (as it happens 40Mph and in a BMW which I know breaks all the rules when driving a German car) as I travelled along the M3 slip road to the M25 going North when matey boy in his HGV decides that's no way fast enough, despite a traffic jam ahead, a blind left hand bend and the variable speed being displayed decides to overtake me, shame he left his overtaking so late, with a bit more effort he could have actually have hit my right hand rear wing. 5 minutes later I overtook him doing all of 10mph in the traffic jam that is always present around the M25 at 5pm at the Heathrow to M40 stretch (and sometimes way beyond too).
Anyway, back to speed limiters, the odd thing is my new car has a limiter (which I can invoke, as did my previous car, as I am sure many others do) but this one is easy to reach and I use a lot (although it is easy to override) and I think it helps me no end, it's the compulsory side of things I object to, I always wore/wear a crash helmet, long before it became law, I always wore/wear a seatbelt before it became law, but I believe things like that are personal choice where the impact of not doing so can result in me paying a price. We have speed limits (which I obey), we have drink drive laws (which I obey) because those thing can impact others, but speed limiters are a cheap way of removing traffic police in my view and do nothing to make anyone safer, 30 can be a real killer in the wrong situation as can 70. Lets have better driver training and more traffic cops on the roads ensuring a decent standard rather than some arbitrary AI imposing a ridiculous limit.

I suppose in some ways I have just shot myself in the foot, if the HGV had that system onboard he wouldnt have been able to accelerate past me :-)
I'd still prefer a policeman to have pulled him over though.
 
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StewartR said:
Really? As I understand it, existing ISA systems (eg Honda, Land Rover, Ford) don't actually accelerate the car automatically when they detect a higher speed limit; they just allow the driver to accelerate. If your son had got the cruise control set to 120 mph, then I could understand how this might have happened - though in that situation it would certainly be a stretch to blame the car! - but otherwise I think I'm detecting the sweet smell of BS.
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I can assure you the car automatically accelerated without the cruise control being set to any speed, adaptive cruise control was engaged and it read the limit as 120.
Unfortunately I cannot tell you which car but oddly enough it was an EV.
From Wicki
Autopilot has the ability to follow another car, maintaining a safe distance from it as it speeds up and slows down. By default, it sets the limit at the current speed limit plus/minus any driver-specified offset.
And an actual incident, where the car self accelerated because the car in front moved out of lane
The driver was cited by police for "failure to keep proper lookout".The ***** (car) had slowed to 55 mi/h (89 km/h) to match a vehicle ahead of it, and after that vehicle changed lanes, accelerated to 60 mi/h (97 km/h) in the 3.5 seconds preceding the crash.
No apology required :-)
 
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I just got the car out today for the first time in two weeks, drove from Huddersfield to Durham to take the wife to see her mum for a few hours.
Stuck the cruise control at 60mph all the way up the m62 up the m1 and a1 and then on to some country roads which were mostly 60mph which I did about 45mph as the had bends on them, all in all very dull and uneventful. no one rammed me off the road at all.
 
C&C said:
The interesting thing was the other driver's insistence that they couldn't possibly have run into me, because their vehicle was equipped with a collision avoidance system, so it was simply not possible for them to have run into me.

I suspect that they routinely drive in traffic not bothering to brake, but rather lazily relying on the collision avoidance to prevent them hitting cars in front in traffic, and for some reason on this occasion, it didn't work properly. An example of where automation allows the driver to pay very little attention to what is going on.
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The other driver must have not read the manual. Collision avoidance system is to avoid collision at last second, it doesn't defy laws of physics by adding traction to tyres to magically avoid all collisions.

This is the problem with assistive technology: people. Unlike pilots, people don't take their time to understand the technology, people don't get the training to use the tech correctly and people are generally too dumb to completely trust these systems.

I'm all for automation, but unfortunately the human factor will be its downfall. Systems like automatic speed limiter will cause lapse in concentration and more accidents in areas where you are supposed to slow down (eg. sharp bends) The sooner we get to full autonomy the better.
 
wuyanxu said:
This is the problem with assistive technology: people. Unlike pilots, people don't take their time to understand the technology, people don't get the training to use the tech correctly and people are generally too dumb to completely trust these systems.

I'm all for automation, but unfortunately the human factor will be its downfall. Systems like automatic speed limiter will cause lapse in concentration and more accidents in areas where you are supposed to slow down (eg. sharp bends) The sooner we get to full autonomy the better.
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Automatic speed limiter has nothing to do with slowing down for sharp bends.
 
nilagin said:
Automatic speed limiter has nothing to do with slowing down for sharp bends.
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Exactly! With those tech, people may trust these too much and forgetting to slow down for sharp bends, and end up in a bush.

Am I agreeing with you? :eek:
 
wuyanxu said:
Exactly! With those tech, people may trust these too much and forgetting to slow down for sharp bends, and end up in a bush.

Am I agreeing with you? :eek:
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That's it END THE THREAD :-)
 
wuyanxu said:
Exactly! With those tech, people may trust these too much and forgetting to slow down for sharp bends, and end up in a bush.

Am I agreeing with you? :eek:
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I don't see how something that would prevent you from speeding would make you forget to slow down for a bend. That could possibly happen with cruise control, but even then people are likely to dab the brake pedal to disable it.
 
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