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So, where do we think that the 80 trials will take place?
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>>where do we think that the 80 trials will take place?
On the front page of the tabloids.
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M6 / M74 Lancaster-ish to Hamilton-ish would be a good start in my view. Often more or less empty. Weather could be an issue though but maybe they could make the limit variable according to conditions.
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Why does there have to be a speed limit on an unrestricted* motorway?
Take away the limit and you get rid of "the speed limit is x and I am doing x so no one should be driving faster than me".
People would then be forced to actually drive.
* By this I mean not urban motorways where noise may also be a factor for the limit.
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While I'm on a roll, when is driver training going to be brought into the 21st Century?
Speed kills we are told but we teach people to drive around town, parking, turning the car around in a 50 point turn, some have never been beyond third gear then let them loose on a three or four lane motorway with no training and in some cases no idea.
Last edited by: gmac on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 19:29
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...'course they'll have to ban those nasty smelly HGVs from lane 2 now. Can't have them trundling along at 56mph for mile after interminable ruddy mile just so they can get get past the one doing 55.9 mph in lane one when the rest of us who aren't delivering dog food are allowed to do 80 now can we?
;-))
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I use the motorways at night when the HGVs are tucked up safely in their garages ;-)
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>> I use the motorways at night when the HGVs are tucked up safely in their
>> garages ;-)
Ho ho, not in the UK they're not, some of the most hopeless incompetent untrainable and cheapest lorry drivers come out at night...the night trunker...arrgh...and most lorry drivers are terrified of 'em, not cos they're too fast or aggressive its simply they're unaware of anything at all and once the cab's past the 45 ft of trailer is forgotten.
And don't for Heavens sake get anywhere near one if it should happen to select reverse gear, or have your will up to date if you do.
:-)
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Part of my comment was tongue in cheek gb though the motorways, the last few times I've travelled, have been very quiet at night.
The odd mail and supermarket truck but not the convoys I used to see.
Dover to York 3 and a bit hrs rolling out of Dover/Folkestone at 3am and sticking to speed limit for fuel economy. Usually see one Police car just north of Peterborough where the A1 goes back to two lanes tucked away on the left after the services.
Last edited by: gmac on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 20:08
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'''Usually see one Police car just north of Peterborough where the A1 goes back to two lanes'''
In a previous life at a point just south of Peterboro when it was still 2 lane, a certain chap who posts here was cruising at 70+ or so when he came upon a Ford Escort doing probably 50 this being about 2am, as he sliced by he noticed with glee the word police stencilled on the drivers door and the single dome blue light on the roof...oops.
Once past this particular bloke slowed gradually to the 50 limit and said Escort followed him for about 5 miles, officer probably doing a fair impression of the laughing policeman imagining how much said lorry pilot was squirming.
He gave the lorry a flash and turned off some time later...phew...decent bloke that copper.
:-)
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Hehe...they're not all bad, I've had a few let offs, still had a few points but nothing in comparison to what they could have done. No bad antics just stretching the 10%+2 a bit.
Making progress as AC might call it.
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They're only allowed to drive 9 hours a day or something anyway, so they should make them do it ( lane 1 only mind ) between 21.00 hrs and 07.00 ( Guess they have to have breaks I suppose ) Them and the caravanists. Then normal people could zoom around at 80 between 07.00 and 21.00. Or during "truck hours" at least they'd only be congesting one lane so it'd all be good. Can't see any major issues with that plan.
;-)
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Surely it's already being tested because 80 seems to be the accepted limit anyway. The police have implicitly accepted that.
So really it's going to be a 90 trial.
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Make it a ton. Nice round figure.
Most people will still be waddling along at 45 or 50 anyway. 60 perhaps when they are drunk or feeling brave.
One can only hope that they will stick to the left lane and hard shoulder where they belong so that the traffic can pass without undue risk.
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"So really it's going to be a 90 trial."
No it's not. the whole point I believe is that 80mph will be the enforced limit. No leeway, so in fact not much change from the present.
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>> They're only allowed to drive 9 hours a day or something anyway, so they should
>> make them do it ( lane 1 only mind ) between 21.00 hrs and 07.00
>> ( Guess they have to have breaks I suppose ) Them and the caravanists. Then
>> normal people could zoom around at 80 between 07.00 and 21.00. Or during "truck hours"
>> at least they'd only be congesting one lane so it'd all be good. Can't see
>> any major issues with that plan.
>>
>> ;-)
>>
I can. To balance things out, you speed freaks would be banned from Lane 1, so when one of you rams up the ass of the mimser in front cos you nodded off at the wheel, not being forced to take breaks like us, the whole damn lot of you will be stuck in a giant queue instead of trundling along behind that nice artic at 55.9mph.
And you can stay there all day too cos all the recovery trucks are in my lane. :-)
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Oh that's easily sorted, and what's more would create much needed jobs too, all that's required is to station bulldozers every couple of miles or so, so that when someone lashes up and crashes or breaks down they just get shovelled off onto the hard shoulder and left there to have a long think about how they might avoid inconveniencing others in such a manner in future. The same bulldozers could be made more cost effective by substituting them for the snow plows when necessary. Think that about covers it. :-)
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Now that.... I like!
But how are you going to get 'em onto the hard shoulder when the inside lane's full of lorries?
And more to the point.... who's gonna deliver the bulldozers ?
Last edited by: Harleyman on Thu 13 Jun 13 at 22:06
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Aye but, don't forget, the lorries would only be there at night and they'd just have to have one of their ticky tocky tacky breaks or something while the bulldozer did its thing. As for delivering the bulldozers, well, that's simple, they'd do that at night too. Might hold up a few caravanists while they did it too which would as a hidden benefit serve them right. It's pretty watertight as a plan, though I do say so myself don't you think?
:-)
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I din't ask WHEN the *LORRIES* (here's the clue) would deliver the bulldozers.
Possession, my dear chap, is nine points of the law. Find yer own bulldozers. :-)
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If 80 is going to be the enforced limit then I think it best left as is.
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>> If 80 is going to be the enforced limit then I think it best left
>> as is.
>>
agreed
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>> Might hold up a few caravanists while they did it too which would
>> as a hidden benefit serve them right.
>>
So can we 'caravanists' do 70mph legally when the limit is raised?. Lorries 66mph?
:)
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Fine by me. (At night of course) Wouldn't want to be unreasonable about it.
:-)
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>>
>> Yippee !
>>
>> 80 where safe, 20 where not. Makes sense to me...
What about roads which are neither motorways nor urban roads near schools? Our semi-rural road currently has a 40mph limit ~ what would that become under the 80 or 20 system?
Last edited by: L'escargot on Fri 14 Jun 13 at 08:55
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That would be a compulsory 80
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>>Our semi-rural road currently has a 40mph limit ~ what would that become under the 80 or 20 system?
Unaffected one would have thought? They only seem to be discussing the possibility of raising some 70s to 80 and lowering some 30s to 20 which seems a sensible approach to me. I don't think there is any suggestion of doing away with the ones in between is there?
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I don't think there is any suggestion of doing away with the ones
>> in between is there?
>>
There was some talk a while back about restricting many country lanes to 40mph. There is also a groundswell of opinion that HGV limits could be raised from 40 mph to 50 mph on appropriate single-carriageway roads. I believe the latter has received support from a lot of car drivers and I can fully understand why.
And there's the problem. If the authorities target all the potential hazards, road signs will proliferate like weeds; in some places this has already happened.
If we leave things as is, there will be roads with totally inappropriate limits both above and below what is actually sensible.
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"...But last year campaign groups estimated that raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph would cost society an extra £1 billion a year, including £766 million in fuel bills and more than £62 million in health costs..."
No it won't. The speed limit might be raised to 80mph but it does not mean everyone will drive at 80 so the extra £756m in fuel is a bad guess at best.
There is no data just speculation. According to front page of the Times this morning it is the Female vote which has put the brakes on this.
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>> "...But last year campaign groups estimated that raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph would
>> cost society an extra £1 billion a year, including £766 million in fuel bills and
>> more than £62 million in health costs..."
>>
>> No it won't. The speed limit might be raised to 80mph but it does not
>> mean everyone will drive at 80 so the extra £756m in fuel is a bad
>> guess at best.
..and, an awful lot of people drive at 80, 85, 90 as it is...so their driving habits wouldn't change one iota with a different limit. It would just make more people fit into a legitimate zone.
I'm not convinced the current speed driver's do would necessarily be increased with a new 80mph limit, either. As an example, I regularly drive at a speed I'm comfortable at, (which is more than our current limit)...but when I'm abroad and couldn't care less about a speed camera and think the worse case scenario is a foreign cop stopping me and relieving me of a load of Euros etc...then do I drive faster and think to hell with it?...or gambol along at my normal pace. Yep, it's option 2, because that's what I'm happy with.
So the new 80mph limit would have quite a few people come back into a legitimate zone, many would continue their existing habits (inc a great chunk who increasingly think 'economy' over 'speed')...so what's the problem?...Oh it's a few road safety charities who only look at a small part of a very big picture and think all speed is wrong.
How blinkered. If our politicians had spines, they'd do it anyway.
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Quite Westpig. Of course when I was young there were no speed limits once you were out of town, and that's the way I like it. But I suppose they have to have an NSL with today's traffic densities, if only to reassure the mimsers that their driving may be dangerous, but is at least legal.
I drive more slowly than I used to. It's partly age - get tired having to concentrate that tensely for any length of time so why bother? -, partly not wanting to knacker a 100,000-mile car any sooner than necessary, and partly all these cameras and things. It's quite nice wafting and often being legal I find.
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It's also reported in the Telegraph:
tinyurl.com/lyy2xcr
"A survey of 13,000 drivers for the AA found that 53 per cent of women are in favour of a 80mph limit while 73 per cent of men favour the change.
Some 41 per cent of women think the speed limit should remain at 70mph."
Would this not mean the Government risk alienating 53% of women and 73% of male drivers ?
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No problem then really. Just keep the 70mph limit for women and raise it to 80mph for men...
:-)
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The UK could switch to driving on the right at the same time with the 70mph lobby staying on the left :-)
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I vote for going back to what the limits were when I learned to drive ~ no limit on rural roads and 30mph on only the narrowest of urban roads.
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80/20 Trial - mikeyb
