Today's newpaper:
"However the Minister for the Interior, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba has said lower speeds on the roads will only be introduced after an ?agreed study?. The Interior Minister said that driving at 90kms/ hour did save 30% fuel compared to travelling at 120kms/ hour but any lower speed limits could only be introduced after a study was carried out. Rubalcaba also noted that correct tyre pressures could save 4% on fuel bills and claimed that driving with the windows open was 10% more expensive"
"agreed study" = two years minimum
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A couple of years ago I did quite a lot of miles in Switzerland, which has a 50mph (80kph) speed limit on normal roads.
I didn't notice that progress was particularly slower than in France, with its 90kph (56mph) limit, or that it took noticeably longer to get anywhere.
In fact, I found driving more relaxing because road users there seem to accept the rate of progress as it is and the harassment you get in France all the time from the brainless 'sit right on your back bumper, then overtake at any cost' brigade was entirely absent. You see a lot more up-market fast cars in Switzerland than in most of the rest of Europe, too!
Certainly in Switzerland I didn't see those roadside shrines to (presumably overtaking) accident victims that always seem to appear in the middle of dead straight stretches in France. Mind you, the Swiss probably don't allow that sort of sentimentality.
In my experience the most suicidal overtaking in all Europe is in Spain and Portugal, so I guess a reduced speed limit in Spain might actually make matters worse.
It would be a shame, though, if fund-raising scameras take the place of Spain's excellent automatic traffic lights, that inexorable change to red and stop you completely if you enter a built-up area at more than the speed limit.
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Reducing the speed "outside cities" is no bad thing but I am not sure from the article if the plan is to impose blanket limits on motorways and DCWs too. A lot of "urban" motorways and DCWs have the full 120/75 limit right up to the city limits; others (approaching Zaragoza, for example) suddenly drop down to 50/30 from miles away in an unpopulated rural area.
With driving, just like smoking, there is always the trade-off of raising revenue versus reducing victims/pollution and the Spanish government, like any other, will undoubtedly make sure they don't lose money on this!
Interesting snippet from today's news: Athletic Club Bilbao, the only Primera Division team with "clean" shirts, have just signed a deal to allow commercial sponsorship on their shirts for the first time in 110 years. The sponsor is none other than Petronor, one of the three petrochemical giants. Not that Petronor would want to see increased sales by encouraging more car use, of course. It's the "brand switching" argument - like cigarettes :-)
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Thats the point though, in this country it is commonly accepted that the rate of progress is determined by who is in the biggest hurry and driving aggressively to indicate one's desire to hurry is considered fair game. Its whether you should but whether you can.
The best scheme ive seen are the average speed cameras which dont involve the sudden braking ( unless certain drivers are too thick to understand the concept )
and seem to create a less competitive driving enviroment. The A14 between Huntingdon and Cambridge has this and it does work rather well as if you sit around 70, very few people come flying up behind you and people are generally more patient.
I think we may see a higher mental breakdown rate on the BR if the limit were cut to 50 here though, many cant even cope with 70! :-)
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Thats the point though in this country it is commonly accepted that the rate of progress is determined by who is in the biggest hurry and driving aggressively to >> indicate one's desire to hurry is considered fair game.
I can't say that I agree stu. The 'commonly accepted rate of progress' in my eyes is often dictated by the mimser at the front who wilfully impedes everyone else who'd like to travel faster.
In reality there ought to be room for all points of view...but that would mean an acceptance by those who wish to travel at a more sedate pace, helping out those that don't. In this country it is seemingly an accepted practice to 'keep people in their place' behind you... and that causes frustration.
On the roads in the Scottish Higlands there are great big signs saying 'allow overtaking' etc and there is acknowledgement that slower traffic should facilitate the progress of faster traffic.
Where in England would that happen? You're more likely to get someone actively trying to prevent you getting past and then giving you a load of main beam when you do.
I don't like aggressive driving or speed where it's dangerous and would wholeheartedly disassociate myself with it.
As ever, it's a happy medium that's needed, isn't it.
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Amen.
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If I remember correctly the 70mph motorway limit was introduced by Barbera Castle in 1967. It was in fact introduced in the same bill as the breathalyser and so the claimed accident statistics were automaticly complete rubbish. There were reductions OK, but were they due to the speed limit or the breatalyser? That was a motorway limit and not a national speed limit. Things stayed that way untill 1973 when the fuel saveing limit was introduced as a national limit and this morphed into todays NSL.
The Republic of Ireland introduced a national 55mph limit in 1968 if I remember correctly. I do remember for certian that I was pulled by a Garda sergeant on the firs day of it.
Northern Ireland did not get any form of national limit in the '60s. A story I heard many years later was that the then home secretary in Northern Ireland would not sign the breatalyser bill, which presumably embodied the speed limit legislation, as he was an alcoholic.
I can't really remember much about it before 1967 as I was locked in an Irish boarding school until easter of that year and we were severly restricet as to our reading matter, only our textbooks, the books provided in the libraries and the newspapers provided. No radio or television of course.
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If I remember correctly the 70mph motorway limit was introduced by Barbera Castle in 1967.
A common mis-conception.
As I posted somewhere above the 70 limit was introduced in 1965 by the then Minister of Transport, Tom Fraser as an experimental attempt to cut accidents. Barbara Castle made it permenant in 1967, but she is wrongly thought of as it's originator.
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As I posted somewhere above the 70 limit was introduced in 1965 by the then Minister of Transport Tom Fraser as an experimental attempt to cut accidents. Barbara Castle made it permenant in 1967 but she is wrongly thought of as it's originator.
IIRC Noel Gordon (of Crossroads fame) did a TV segment in the early 1960's shown driving her Rolls all the way up the M1 at some very high speed? I think that raised concerns.
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I can't say that I agree stu. The 'commonly accepted rate of progress' in my eyes is often dictated by the mimser at the front who wilfully impedes everyone else who'd like to travel faster. In reality there ought to be room for all points of view...but that would mean an acceptance by those who wish to travel at a more sedate pace helping out those that don't. In this country it is seemingly an accepted practice to 'keep people in their place' behind you... and that causes frustration.
You're more likely to get someone actively trying toprevent you getting past and then giving you a load of main beam when you do.
Westpig, have you got some kind of persecution complex? You've posted more than a few times about other drivers 'wilfully impeding' you and being flashed at. I drive a lot on the A-roads of the Mids and North and usually at the limit (conditions allowing), doing a fair amount of overtaking. I sit a reasonable distance back, wait for a suitable opportunity and then down-change and 'floor it'. I honestly can't remember the last time I was flashed and I don't see other drivers getting flashed (other than as a clearance signal to truck/trailer drivers). Someone driving slower than you is not wilfully impeding you, they may just lack the confidence/ability/desire to go any faster. Or are you suggesting that they move road position to block your overtake?
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I fully support Westpig's POV here and find it refreshing to see that POV posted by a working police officer who knows what he is talking about.
HJ
Edited by Honestjohn on 31/07/2008 at 12:42
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If only more were like him...
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Is `LUD` part of your registration number, Lud?
;)
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A Spanish newspaper says (translation)
"The Minister for Industry has proposed reducing road speed limits on the roads into cities to save energy, while the Interior Minister, according to El Mundo, has disagreed. In fact Rubalcaba said that a study would need to be carried out first.
ABC headlines the new energy plans and calls them ?operation light bulb?. The paper says that 49 million low energy light bulbs are to be given out by the government, and also notes the speed limit reduction by 20%. ABC also notes that there has been no dates set for the measures."
But the UK Indepent says, among other things
To protests from motorists and mockery in parts of the press, the Socialist government plans to cut motorway speed limits to 50mph and town speeds to 25mph. New austerity rules will be imposed on the air conditioning and heating of all public buildings. Street-lighting will be cut by half.
Almost 50 million low-energy light bulbs will be handed out by the government in an attempt to drive high-consumption bulbs out of the market in the next four years. The government will also sponsor a project intended to introduce a million electric or hybrid electric-petrol cars on to Spanish roads by 2014
Which isn't quite the same thing!
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 31/07/2008 at 14:45
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The limit on the M621 around Leeds has been 50mph for years. It was extended to cover a further couple of miles or so on the approach to Leeds a few years ago. I expect this was for safety rather than green issues.
The police in the unmarked car have rich pickings from drivers ignoring the reduction to 50mph.
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sq
When I drive along there I rarely see anyone keeping to the limit. You occasionally see a marked or unmarked car has pulled someone over, but not very often. There's a police parking ramp just around the corner from the 50 limit, but I've never seen a car park there.
I do keep to the limit along that section, but it's very difficult with most of the traffic ignoring it.
Edited by Pugugly on 02/08/2008 at 19:16
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I fully support Westpig's POV here and find it refreshing to see that POV posted by a working police officer who knows what he is talking about. HJ
So what is his POV?
I still don't know who these drivers are that are wilfully obstructing him, and then flashing at him when he overtakes.
I drive on A-roads and overtake reasonably often - I don't find people wilfully obstructing me (unless you count the trucks that by law stick to 40mph) and I'm not sure how the average car driver does wilfully obstruct, unless you simply mean that they are not driving as fast as you would like. And can't remember the last time I was flashed at for overtaking someone. I honestly, genuinely, don't drive along A-roads and see other overtaking drivers being flashed at either.
What do others find?
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I once overtook a red Cortina which I think was a MkIII pick-up, with lots of spotlamps on the front towing a trailer. It was bimbling along at 45 or so, as far out from the verge as it could reasonably get, on an nsl single carriageway, a rapid bit of that fine Roman road the A29. A wide bit appeared with nothing coming the other way. The carphound in the Cortina, a tattoed pieguzzler type I seem to remember, accelerated as hard as he could and leaned on the horn as I went by and when I was past and vanishing up the road at 80 or so (don't say it, boring) turned all his impressive array of lights on.
Things like that don't often happen qx, but they do sometimes. And there is an enormous amount of lower-level stuff which may well be unconscious, but is just as rubbish for all that.
If you never witness anything like that or experience it yourself, and never notice very clumsy, passive-aggressive mimsers holding up long queues of traffic on quite pleasant brisk roads, qx, then I think you lead a charmed life.
Or perhaps you can be a consultant to HJ on not noticing annoying stuff...
Edited by Lud on 02/08/2008 at 23:28
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Things like that don't often happen qx but they do sometimes. And there is an enormous amount of lower-level stuff which may well be unconscious but is just as rubbish for all that. If you never witness anything like that or experience it yourself and never notice very clumsy passive-aggressive mimsers holding up long queues of traffic on quite pleasant brisk roads qx then I think you lead a charmed life. Or perhaps you can be a consultant to HJ on not noticing annoying stuff...
No, not in many years have I had anyone blast a horn or flash lights when I've overtaken, and that's a LOT of overtakes. Nor do I like the idea of calling people 'passive aggressive mimsers'. I wonder where the aggression is here?
I DO encounter a fair bit of aggressive driving, but not whilst overtaking. E.g. when passing parked cars one often encounters oncoming traffic that drives out from the edge and drives 'at' me, or when pulling out at a junction or roundabout and an approaching driver purposely speeds up.
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clumsy passive-aggressive mimsers holding up long queues of traffic
I encounter plenty of slow moving queues of traffic on the narrow roads of East Anglia. I accept however that a lot of people are just not happy or comfortable driving at the same speed as I would. There are an awful lot of people who don't particularly like driving but to whom it it is a a rather stressful task undertaken out of necessity. If overtaking is not possible the its not the end of the world, just a few minutes extra on your journey. I can't say that I have often encountered deliberately obstructive slow driving and it is certainly not anywhere near the problem that dangerous overtaking is around here. To mentally lump all drivers at the front of the queue as clumsy passive-aggressive mimsers is probably not helping you blood pressure, Chill out turn on the radio and wait till the offending driver and your route eventually diverge. In the greats scheme of things being held up for a few minutes is not such great a problem
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CGN: I don't 'mentally lump all drivers at the front of the queue as clumsy passive-aggressive mimsers'. That is a misreading of what I said, which was that I quite often noticed such drivers being followed by long queues.
I have often said too on this site that many drivers are in a state of more or less permanent terror when they are driving and that this makes them worse drivers.
I'm afraid the term 'passive-aggressive' is upsetting people. It is a description of a comportment I often see, or think I see, on the road, but perhaps to other people it sounds like blaming the victim.
Bad, terrified drivers are victims, but they are the victims of what we may perhaps call late capitalism (which has sabotaged public transport and made cars cheap), not other drivers. It is other drivers who are their victims.
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One thing I've noticed is that there are two types of drivers. Those who treat driving as a pleasure, and those who treat it as a chore.
I treat driving as a pleasure, and will take any opportunity to drive. My wife treats driving as a chore, and will take any opportunity not to drive if she can help it.
Those who treat driving as a chore may be more likely to be nervous or over-cautious, but of course the flipside is that those who treat driving as a pleasure may be over confident and drive too fast/recklessly.
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they are the victims of what we may perhaps call late capitalism. It is other drivers who are their victims
And there was I thnking I was stuck behind an old boy driving slowly.
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stuck=victim though CGN.
Of course one has to take the large amounts of rough with the ever more stingy rations of smooth. I have tried to explain a number of times in other threads that there is a considerable, easily recognised difference between driving slowly and obstructive mimsing. Not even in the latter case however do I tailgate with main beams on blasting the horn to give the so-and-so something to really panic about. I leave a decent gap and sit in the queue muttering discreet curses along with everyone else. The fact that it seems to happen with increasing frequency is damn depressing though.
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Not even in the latter case however do I tailgate with main beams on blasting the horn to give the so-and-so something to really panic
That's good Lud. There is hope for you. Next step is to try and reduce your discreet cursing level. Am worried about the increasing frequency. Try a little Classic FM or Radio 4 :-)
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So what is his POV? I still don't know who these drivers are that are wilfully obstructing him
the last time I got flashed at was about 18 months ago. I was the last of 4 vehicles driving southbound on the A82 through Glen Coe in brilliant sunshine(for those that don't know the area it's like a Roman road in many places, with an enormous amount of vision, you can see for literally miles)...veh 1 was an Astra van on Scottish plates and he was tonking along, the other two were going quicker than we were but not desperately so.. and then us.
We caught up a High Priest Mimser, who as each vehicle went to overtake him, he'd position himself noticeably nearer the crown of the road and there'd be a load of main beam. When it was our turn, i had to wait for a while to clear a bridge, which had double white lines across it...nevertheless after this he pulled across the centre line so much i thought for a moment he was going to pull over completely to the offside carriageway...after a perfectly normal overtake, there he was flashing headlights
before the overtake i could see him in his mirror chuntering away to his wife, getting all worked up because people were...heavens forbid...overtaking on an open road.
what a twerp
if Scottish drivers (in general) can actively go out of their way to help someone overtake, why can't English drivers?
How many times have you driven down an 'A' road at night and caught someone up who won't put on main beam...so you (and they) can't see properly...so you can't see enough to get an idea of the road layout...really ignorant, yet likely the first vehicle hasn't got the faintest idea.
When you ride a m/c, a car driver can do the most minimal lane manouevre to help you past, they do in France...but not in good old Blighty....nah, you stay where you are mate
how many English drivers would drift over to the kerb, or indicate left etc... to help someone come past? Not very many nowadays it seems.
Oh and it doesn't surprise me many people aren't aware of this, they just sit in the queue oblivious
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Er, excuse me but nobody is obliged to have their full beams on to light the road up for anyone but themselves, thats a serious superiority complex there. Should we drop rose petals behind to make the road softer before you overtake? Get sat nav and it will show you the road ahead in the dark - Ive found it very useful for this.
Your right about your northern driver though, what an idiot. Only time ive ever flashed someone is when they cut back in inches from my bumper but that hasnt happened for some years now as most are pretty sensible if impatient at times.
I always move across to let a motorbike through - I figure its a dangerous enough persuit, may as well give them a sporting chance.
Arrogance breeds arrogance - treat slow drivers like a problem and its no wonder they treat you like one. You should chill out a little. Your 'On a Mission' sticker is in the post
:-)
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>>how many English drivers would drift over to the kerb, or indicate left etc... to help someone come past? Not very many nowadays it seems.
I tend to so this quite a bit if we're out for a quiet drive on the back roads in the peaks. It's quite enjoyable if the road is empty to go at less than the limit for a while, and not to be watching the clock like during most weekday journeys. While in this mode, I can't be hassled with people behind me, and will let them past at the first opportunity.
However, the problem is when a car comes up behind, I wait until I can see enough road to know it's safe, move left, and indicate left, and 7 times out of 10, the idiot behind just stays on the rear bumper not knowing what to do! I suppose people just aren't used to being helped to make progress!
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stu, no one is 'obliged' to put on their main beams to help overtaking vehicles, no. But anyone who doesn't use main beams driving on empty roads at night is not driving properly. And if they don't dip after being overtaken, until the overtaker has got a proper distance ahead, they are driving badly.
Surely this is just common sense?
Westpig doesn't seem to me to be treating slow drivers as a problem. He is complaining, as some people do, about slow, obstructive, unaware or 'passive aggressive' driving. I do too, and so do you (by agreeing that Westpig's highland mimser was being a twerp).
I too let fast bikes know that I am aware of them and that they can overtake without fearing that I may do something unexpected and kill them. They nearly always say thanks in some way.
Edited by Lud on 05/08/2008 at 13:52
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I dont use main beams at night unless I feel I need them, especially on roads that I know.
My headlights light up the road plenty for moderate driving.
As for obstructive drivers, Ive have found it exceedingly rare to find such drivers though they of course exist.
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Main beams may not always be essential but they are always better, even if you're just drifting along (with one eye on yr satnav, really!....). Of course using them keeps you busy even when there isn't much traffic.
Perhaps Westpig and I see more obstructive drivers because the traffic density is higher in London and the South-East, so the effects of very carp slow driving are more apparent? Anyway at least you admit they exist, unlike some... :o}
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Stu,
Would you accept that by putting on your main beam on a dark road that you know well, but the person behind might not, that you might well help them..because unless they're on a suicide mission, if you don't know the road it would be most unwise to overtake if you can't see where the road is going
All i'm after is for drivers to consider others as well as themselves
and after all the Road Traffic Act covers it, because under s.3 there's an offence of 'driving without consideration to other road users'
personally if i'm in no hurry and someone else catches me up, i'd like them to go past, because A, their lights won't affect my vision and B, they're one less thing to worry about
in the big scheme of things I do very little long distance driving nowadays and even less of unfamiliar roads...so most of what i'm saying is anecdotal and covers a fair time span..but..i see no reason why 'driving' shouldn't be done properly... and increasingly nowadays , in this country, it is not.
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another angle
if you're driving along a dark 'A' road at night and only really want dipped beam, because you're only going to drive moderately and are happy with that
if someone came up behind you who fancied driving more than moderately, would you mind if they applied main beam early, behind you, so that they could see the road ahead..or would you consider that rude and ignorant?
p.s. even if driving moderately the main beam will pick things up quicker and give you more of a chance to miss that road debris, pot hole, patch of water/carp/leaves etc
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