In additon to Heather's points, who's going to pay for these horrific accidents?

Speed and bad driving/drivers dont have to be one in the same though. Someone who goes a little bit quicker than they ought to (where it is 'safe') may also be very aware of the road, the conditions, traffic volume, the cars capabilities, etc. Someone doing 20 in traffic whilst applying makeup (yes I saw that this morning with the car infront) is a bad driver regardless of the speed they are travelling at.

The thing is cars are faster, safer, can stop quicker, handle better, etc etc than anything that was around when the 70mph limit was introduced. I personally think the limit on motorways ought to be increased.

Not that I'm againt speed cameras as such either. For me they could install one outside every shopping district and school in the country - where they're actually needed.

I might tell you a bit more about my job in the Road Safety and Circulation department then

a road is designed for a speed, the highest the speed, the wider the hard shoulders, the more expensive the sliders etc. a basic road,where you can travel up to 50 MPH needs on top of the width of the road 4m on each side to ensure that most people who crash survive. and that mean 4m with NOTHING in it.

the rough cost of a km of road is about 2 million pounds for a 50mph limit, 6million pounds for a motorway and 20million pounds for a racing track.

And strangely enough it is not drunk people who die the most, or speeding people. Those constitute only about 5% of the population driving and they are "lost cases". We do not try to make the roads safe for these, as they will always manage to go kill themselves somewhere else.

The typical accident case is a sunny afternoon, noone anywhere, on a B road. Say a couple with children. The driver does not pay attention to the road for 1 second, goes into the hard shoulder, steers the wheel way too much to compensate, and crashes into anything that's coming the other way, cars or trees or buildings. Usually it's not youngsters, or drunks but reasonable middle aged people.

So as long as governments can't afford the 20m wide road track needed to make a decent road i think the limits will stay as they are.

Aside from my commuting issue, one thing I've noticed this week is the extremely cold spell has absolutely buggered the roads round my way. Potholes all over the place. Even if I wanted to speed I'd be mad to do it; I'd have lost half my tires before I'd gone 100 yards.

Jon

That depends on how the system records data. If I use plate 1 to zoom through the first camera, plate 2 through the second camera and plate 3 through third camera then surely the machine would only have a record of three cars passing one camera? If I then revert to plate 1 for the fourth camera etc, I would hope the system would disappear up its own circuits trying to work out why I didn't register on the other two cameras when there are no junctions for me to turn off from And don't give me none of that 'the system would alert the nearest polis car' - just leave me to dream......

Al

I know my views are pretty controversial, harsh and slightly insane, but they're also well thought out and link into my greater plan for population control!

The speed limit is there for a reason I know, but until we resume on our natural course of evolution by natural selection we're not going to progress as a species. We're overpopulated as it is...

Not everyone will agree with this which is fair enough but some day drastic measures will have to be taken and we'll look back and wonder why we didn't do anything about overpopulation before.

Now, there is something we can agree on. I'm of the opinion that we're in the death throes of western civilisation at the moment.

We need an asteroid or two.

Ideally after I have died though

I went through the roadworks between j25 and j28 on the M1 a couple of times last week. 16 miles of 50mph, and not a single effing road gang in sight.

The 50 limit is there for two reasons, the narrow lanes and the vari-guard used for worker safety.

Oh yeah, the average speed cameras are wonderful, so much so that many people were concentrating almost completely on their speedometers, and frequently forgot all about lane discipline and station-keeping.

See, the narrow lanes are only a problem if drivers are likely to be distracted by some other factor, like, ooh I don't know, average speed cameras!! Plus the vari-guard does not deflect vehicles in a 50 mph impact, like it is designed to do, so worker safety is a bit of a joke.

Even so, they are not going to change it, but why not have electronic speed signs and raise the speed to 70 when no road gangs are on site?

Cruise control FTW! This is really the only time I every use it. That way, I’m not watching my speed as much, and I can concentrate on the other numpties more. Some really do lurch around through roadworks too.

It was Top Gear that suggested that you could go through the first camera. Stop for half an hour and then blast through the rest at over 200mph and not get caught. I have not tried this.

It's not that hard to maintain an average speed, even without cruise control is it? Just nudging it up to 50mph and relaxing isn't difficult is it? If your vehicle maintains your acceleration after you've stopped putting pressure on the pedal, I'd suggest a chat with a mechanic.

Clarkson said this once too and I think its nonsense. I can keep my car at a constant speed (maybe its +/- 1 ot 2 mph) without constantly eyeballing my speedo.

I understand what you're saying, but I didn't imagine the cars I saw straddling the lines; nor the ones that were constantly drifting right up to the car in front, backing off and repeating.

The cameras do average out your speed over a distance but, as I understand it, if you're well over the limit as you pass a camera you still get a ticket.

That's just people going 'OOoh I don't like narrow lanes, thus I will take all the space in the world' and 'I know, I'll make everyone go faster if I nudge them along'.
I don't believe those are because they're distracted by the speed limit; they know exactly what they're doing.

Some mahoosive 4x4 tried that with me the other night. It didn't work then and it won't work the next time someone tries it with me. It's just rude and impatient and I won't be intimidated in to speeding.

Mark