Why do you 'have' to overtake a slow moving vehicle? As tractors are fairly common on rural roads I could say that if you feel you have to overtake then perhaps you should have started your journey earlier. I hope it was a bad choice of words rather than your general attitude to the road.

Saying that, I used to be a bit of a terror on the roads. I still drive quickly, but don't take the risks I used to. I think there must be a correlation between speed and white hair.

WTF???
How am I supposed to "plan" for tractor or other slow moving vehicle in advance? I don't know it's going to be there.
The majority of the time, I don't have to worry about anything. The problem is that the tractor can be following on the same road for 2 miles or so. Are you saying all motorists should tailback behind it??

IIRC slow moving traffic should pull in rather than allow queues to build up behind them. I've never seem a tractor or other slow moving vehicle do this.

Highway Code on overtaking:
https://www.gov.uk/using-the-road-159-t ... 162-to-169


I wish some of the tractor piloting yokels on the A414 did that. There are plenty of places to pull over, but they never use them.

I suspect that the reason they do not pull in is that they are pulling trailers.

Caravaners are well known for not pulling over even when there a mile long queue behind them.

They need one of these or this

Plenty of lay-bys where trailers would fit very nicely.

But will they ever be able to pull back out into traffic? Which is probably why they do not pull in.

The Highway Code and Roadcraft state that you should not exceed the posted speed limit when overtaking. I.e. if you cannot safely overtake without breaking the speed limit, don't overtake.

That said, I always go by the theory of get out the danger zone as quickly as possible.

So we're all agreed that as long as you get a few seconds before it does the dirty on you, the system is fine?

No we're not.
It's draconian and unwanted.

Another example of why it's a bad idea. What if you're rushing someone to hospital? That happens quite frequently. In life and death situations there's an arguement for being able to go over the limit.

On the contrary. It's another case where a system operates on the basis of an assumption of guilt - You ARE going to speed, so we're going to put this system in place to stop you - which is against the basic principles of both our legal system and civil liberty. It's a small further step down the slippery slope which we as a society seem to be on.

At a superficial level it's a vaguely attractive idea. Looked at in detail it's not just rubbish, it's dangerous.

I expect it’s also the first stage to road pricing - plotting where you are going and posting you a bill. Oh, BTW, we noted you went a bit fast there so we’ll add a fine to that.

It isn't a very sensible;e way to start road pricing. The system described sends data to the car, the one you fear takes data in the other direction, which is a completely different thing.


By logical necessity, it's not an assumption of guilt unless the technical measure of returning you to the speed limit is classed as a punishment for an offence.

If it allowed you to speed, but put points on your license and locked you in your car until you paid a release fee, then that would arguably qualify. Presumably it will be possible to disable the system and drive as fast as you like. People who do that and then get into crashes may find themselves subject to such presumption, they won't get a lot of sympathy though.

People often rush to interpret annoyances as breaches of their civil liberties. If we end every practice that offends somebody on that basis, we would have no speed limits any way. Nor would we have driving licenses, mandatory insurance or MOT checks. Seatbelts would be an optional extra, as would crash helmets.

I would not mind some kind of audio signal (as long as it wasn't persistent and distracting), but mechanical intervention is something I'd not be happy about as I would be ultimately losing control of my car at what could be a critical moment.

The system described may well be data travelling in one direction, but once people are happy with having one bug in their car, it's harder to argue against an extended version or a second one to send data the other way. I would

MOT checks are not mandatory for cars over a certain age. Whilst I am very keen on old cars and would happily own one, I am aware (from last old car owning experience) well aware that they are most in need of mandatory checking. If I we to suddenly find myself in possession of an old car, I'd still wheel it in for an MOT.

I'll remind our erstwhile folk here that a previous EU idea has yet to bear fruit: that being the modification of ECUs would be an MOT fail. As I understand it, that notion was dropped.