People object to speeding fines but receiving them is entirely optional.
Personally, I'd rather they clamped down harder on tailgating, poor lane discipline and uninsured drivers than on motorway speed limits.
Either works - I've had them do it for me but since I don't speed I just nod and continue my ride.
Also, around here, it's incredibly common to flash your lights to remind oncoming traffic to turn off their high-beams. It's a form of communication, and not all communication is distraction.
UK highway code is pretty clear on when it is acceptable or not to flash your headlights. Using them to alert others to your presence (ie, "I'm here please turn off your high beams") is fine. Doing it like the parent poster suggested could result in a £1000 fine if caught.
Using them as you describe could lead to a £1000 fine. I understand that people using them to warn drivers is also illegal, but two wrongs won't make this right. Why put yourself at risk for no benefit?
Honestly you should reconsider. There's enough bad driving on the roads without you adding to it.
The main issue is using fines as punishment, since people can affordably keep speeding if there aren't enough speed traps. The only way to solve most road problems is to forbid speeders from ever driving.
You already need a driving exam to drive, it doesn't seem crazy to now allow criminals who don't care about speed limits or safety from taking it.
There's some interesting facts (?) that I've learned on the topic of traffic safety over time: certainly the speed one has is directly proportional to how bad an accident will be should a crash (née "accident") occur because of the kinetic energy involved.†
However, the speed differential between different vehicles also has a correlation to the accident rate because some folks are going 'too fast' but others are going 'too slow'. I've heard this used as an argument for variable/dynamic speed limits which are changed on factors such as road conditions and visibility.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit#Variable_speed_lim...
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
† Numberphile has an interesting video on the topic: if a blue car is doing 70 (units/hour) and manages to just stop before an obstacle, what would happen to an identical model/mass red car going 100? Even though the red car was going only 30% faster, at the point that the blue car managed to (just) stop, the red car would be going 70.
The energy scrubbed from a starting speed of 70 is 70^2, so 4900; but going at 100 you have 10'000 energy (100^2): so if both cars managed to scrub ~5000 worth of energy, the blue car stopped, but the red car still at 5000 worth of energy left—i.e., 70 units/hour of speed.‡
* https://kottke.org/18/02/why-speeding-is-so-dangerous
‡ If you had the same blue/red cars going 55 and 100, while the red car would been going 'only' twice as fast, it would have had three times the kinetic energy because of 55^2 versus 100^2.
1) The speed limit obviously an arbitrary choice - the chance of death is decent at 50k/h (standard "town" speed limit in Slovenia) (so why not 40hm/k or 30km/h), and e.g. Germany has no speed limit on the highways (in some places) so there's really no good reason to set a limit of 130km/h (why not 110km/h or 150km/h)?
2) The easiest objection to (1) is "society has jointly decided about acceptable risk limits" but that clearly isn't true. Speed limits are simply a bad idea. A much better idea is speed constraints - roundabouts, speed bumps, chicanes [0] - i.e. actually forcing people to drive slower or else they ruin their cars.
The fact that governments default to traffic cameras etc. is proof (revealed preference) that they don't actually care about safety and people driving slowly, but what they want most is making their citizens live in fear, punishing them and extracting money from them. This is particularly obvious when there's a hidden police / traffic control on some section of the road where it's obviously safe to drive fast, but it's just technically within city limits so it has a low speed limit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicane#/media/File:One-lane_c...
See? It's all discretionary. As should speed limits be (at the discretion of the driver, based on the current road conditions).
The problems you mention have other, better, actual solutions (e.g. cycling lanes, speed bumps before road crossings, ...).
Doesn't the cyclist get a say? Or the pedestrian? Why should just the driver get to decide how much risk to impose on everyone else?
Its not uncommon for cheap inadequate safety measures to supplant real ones.
It's hardly better on rural streets with 100km/h limit and lots of space to overtake. It's not a speed limit issue, it's an issue with car drivers not giving a damn about cyclists and pedestrians because they have no concept of how dangerous this is. Speed limits are essential in a city, and bumps are needed in addition to them.
I have a huge problem with enormous super-highways having 60mph limits or lower.
Some of the roads out where I live were engineered with going 90+ in mind. In fact, there's a tale of an engineer going such speeds and getting out of a ticket by explaining that to the judge out here.
What was the speed limit? When you're over 15 miles from the city, it's 60, but pass a turn in the road and it's 70.
Not all road users are car drivers!
As are most limits.
I get that driving on a motorway at say 85 mph is probably not that much dangerous than the speed limit (70 mph) but 100? 120? 140?
I know about Germany, but would you say that Britain's or Slovenia's road are designed and kept to the same standard?
> 2) The easiest objection to (1) is "society has jointly decided about acceptable risk limits" but that clearly isn't true. Speed limits are simply a bad idea. A much better idea is speed constraints - roundabouts, speed bumps, chicanes [0] - i.e. actually forcing people to drive slower or else they ruin their cars.
how do you constrain speed on a motorway?
> The fact that governments default to traffic cameras etc. is proof (revealed preference) that they don't actually care about safety and people driving slowly, but what they want most is making their citizens live in fear, punishing them and extracting money from them. This is particularly obvious when there's a hidden police / traffic control on some section of the road where it's obviously safe to drive fast, but it's just technically within city limits so it has a low speed limit.
In this country (UK) there is this myth that the cameras are money making devices, when during the 2008 crisis they were turned off to save money for some constabularies, this is the same type of argument.
Roundabouts are not always a good solution, in US I kept seeing people taking them the wrong way going directly left..
Also what is your proof that cameras don't slow down traffic? Just talking about me it make me more conscious of my speed in the city to avoid getting fined. So I guess I'm the kind of people it is directed at.
Where I am in Southern California the freeway speed limit in most places is 65 MPH. EVERYONE drives over 65 MPH on the freeways. I think you are more likely to get pulled over on the freeway if you are in the left lane actually going 65 than if you are going 75-80 in one of the middle lanes (the speed everyone else is going so it looks normal).
This just creates a situation where basically everyone is "breaking the law" and gives cops a reason to arbitrarily pull anyone over that they want.
I fully agree with you that speed limits are not about safety they are about instilling fear in citizens that at any moment you could be pulled over and harassed (even worse for colored people) and about being a source of revenue to find this tyranny
Obviously these are optional extras on most cars, but the self braking and auto-distance-keeping could be made a legal requirement well before we see self-driving cars. I’d be all for that.
My car will comfortably sit at 110mph all day long, if I'm alone on a motorway in the early hours who am i hurting or endangering? It certainly isn't about safety because that same car will stop from 100mph in less distance than the highway code requires for 70.
- your loved ones
- the emergency services that have to clean your body off the road
- subsequent road users -- when the road is closed -- to clean your body off the road
There’s standard etiquette there to slow down when there are vehicles in the distance ahead or curves or imperfect visibility. You don’t have to drive like a mindless drone holding a one-size-fits-all-situations speed limit. You and other drivers are generally safer going 160 km/h on a mostly empty highway than 50 km/h through an urban where there’s a much higher risk of encountering other people/vehicles/obstructions.
A bigger danger than speeding on clear highways is things like tailgating, weaving between lanes, aggressive passing, and distracted driving. This often happens below speed limits, and is not the focus of automated speed enforcement systems.
In Ontario, Canada, we have wide, well maintained, and well engineered highways that have unreasonably low speed limits of 90 or 100 km/h. While there are times when it’s necessary to drive more slowly (bad weather, traffic ahead), strictly enforcing such limits on wide clear highways in good weather would be silly. People here generally drive 120-130 km/h because cars are designed to operate safely and efficiently at these speeds. Strictly enforcing unreasonably low speed limits would just breed contempt from drivers, so currently the police are lenient with the speeds people actually drive. Strict enforcement of speed limits could be more reasonable if they set realistic speed limits, perhaps variable ones depending on the weather and traffic conditions.
Germany has quite a high rate of road traffic deaths compared to other European countries.
Sure, but do you really think the risk of having an accident, and if so, the risk of it resulting in a fatality, has no relationship to the speed involved?
We accept that virtually every activity carries some risk, but we also choose (as a society, whether you as an individual agree or not) to set some rules to help limit the level of that risk.
>that same car will stop from 100mph in less distance than the highway code requires for 70.
What car is it and with what tires? I'll be happy to look up the facts.
And so is its "carbon footprint" 3x greater.
To answer your question: You're hurting everything that's alive on the planet.
You're welcome to drive no faster than that speed on any road you like. On several of them, please, please don't drive on any road that has a higher speed limit than 60 to keep the rest of us safe, though. And have your hazards on, so we can reasonably get around you.
Also, just as an aside, electric cars exist now.
Someone not as perfect as you won't know to back off in wet conditions.
Someone not as perfect as you won't anticipate when to brake early to accommodate the extra stopping time.
Someone not as perfect as you won't be as meticulous about vehicle maintenance.
Someone not as perfect as you doesn't have your quick reflexes.
Someone not as perfect as you doesn't apply 100% of his attention to driving, never looking at a cell phone or radio.
edit: made it nicer