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Originally Posted by ian@huth
The 70 mph national speed limit was brought in as a temporary measure in the 60s to see what the impact on accident statistics was. The test resulted in a lowering of the number of accidents and fatalities and less severe injuries. Two years after this temporary measure it was decided to keep it as a mandatory national speed limit.
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I thought it was in response to the shock that someone did 134mph and there was no speed limit at the time.
Now if only people would read the highway code and learn what the national speed limit is on dual carrigeways and single carrigeways (and how to tell one road from the other!)
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Originally Posted by ian@huth
The speed limits displayed on motorway signals are only advisory unless the speed is displayed within a red ring. There has been a reason for these to be displayed which may no longer exist when you go through the area. Whilst the speed limits may only be advisory, failure to comply with them will be taken into account if a prosecution results for whatever reason within the area that they cover.
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Also, the signs may be on because they need to restrict the flow to the road several miles up ahead where there could be a problem.
There's no point putting a low speed limit just where an accident is, much better to reduce it long before so the traffic doesn't bunch up and you get stop go traffic which often leads to other accidents.
If I had my way and unlimited budget, I'd upgrade all our motorways, and deploy the variable speed limit signs along all stretches.
That way you could have a higher limit on safe stretches of road, but in the wet, or fog, or if there's roadworks or an accident, the speedlimit can be reduced appropriately.
Say you have a stretch of motorway which in the dry it's deemed officially safe to do 100mph along, but in the wet you get standing water and 40mph is the safest cars should go.
At the moment you have people doing up to 100mph in the dry safely, but how many drivers do you think would slow to 40mph in the wet? Sure a load will drop to 60, or maybe 50, but only a few will go lower.
Legally they can go 70 in the wet without being charged with speeding, however this is highly dangerous, but you'd need a police patrol car to catch them.
Now with my system, the speed is set at what is deemed safe, and therefore going over automatically means you are driving dangerously, just as driving past a school at 3:30pm doing 30mph is legal, but could be deemed as dangerous driving.