Been saying that for years - nobody listens ........

This (which I'm not particularly singling out RayRapp for - it's a common attitude) and the assertion by Claire (ditto) that she can assess what a safe speed is rather presumes that he only reason for speed limits is to control the propensity of car-drivers to drive into things.

It's not.

Cars breaking the speed limits also detriment local communities through noise, for example. Or through instilling such fear in pedestrians that they daren't go out. A 40 speed limit on a dual carriageway might be because a number of footpaths (which you the driver can't see) cross the dual carriageway, for example. The assumption that because the road is straight and wide you can decide how fast to drive is fundamentally flawed.

The argument that a driver assessing the safe speed and driving accordingly is better than one following the speed limit is fundamentally bogus anyway. There's nothing stopping you assessing what the safe speed is and then driving at that or the speed limit, WHICHEVER IS LOWER. Assessing a safe speed and obeying the law are not mutually contradictory, though plenty of people defending their actions seem to imagine that they are.

It IS very much like all those members of the workforce who decide the PPE rules don't apply to them, or the need to put the spade in to swap the valve doesn't apply to them, or whatever it is. They are all sure they know what they are doing. They are experts, who know how to actually do the job. They make their own assessment of how to do it safely. They don't need some "jobsworth erring on the side of caution" telling them how to do it. Just like those of you driving at 80mph on the motorway.

Personally, I don't routinely break the speed limit (except inadvertently, on occasion). I'm also towing for a relatively high proportion of my driving, and guess what - even driving at 60mph on the motorway is actually no great imposition.

The current attitude to speed limits reminds rather of the attitude to alcohol and driving two or three decades ago - I can make my own judgements, I'm a better judge of my capacity/capability than some rule-setting jobsworth who doesn't know what a great driver I am, the law doesn't really apply to me.

Fortunately the prevailing attitude to drink-driving has changed. I look forward to the attitude to speeding changing likewise.

......ah, it does it automatically AFTER the scrunched up preview version.....

I remember when driving used to be fun...

There seems to be an alarming increase in the amount of women I've seen recently texting whilst driving. I was overtaken on the motorway the other day by a woman looking down with the phone in her hand, totally oblivious to what was happening in front of her. Incidentally I was doing about 75mph, so she was well over the speed limit. I don't want to offend any lady forum members but I've seen about 20 people doing this recently and every one has been a woman.

On the flip side, the majority of people I see 'talking' on the phone whilst driving, are blokes.

William

That's another popular but substantially bogus argument.

Has mankind evolved faster reflexes in the same time period too?
Are most 'accidents' down to technological failure or driver failure?

The highway code stopping distances are very simple - they are 2/3 (ie two-thirds not 2-or-3) seconds thinking time followed by braking at 2/3 g. (Good old o-level physics - v-squared equals u-squared plus two a s)

As implied above, evolution has not equipped mankind with faster reflexes since the speed limits were 'invented', so thinking distance remains. Arguably, the 'technological advances' which have filled cars with radios and satnavs and mp3 players and telephones and so on should have caused thinking distance to have been increased.

A car without downforce (ie socking great wings front and rear, and travelling above 100mph or so) and/or sticky slick tyres (high speed, new set of tyres every couple of hundred miles) is going to have a hard time beating the laws of physics and comes up against a hard limit of deceleration at about 1g. Sports cars will achieve 1g in braking, most cars on the road don't. MPVs and chelsea tractors and SUVs and so on won't. Anyone who hasn't regularly practised extreme braking probably won't (manufacturers have claimed that post-accident interrogation of black-boxes has generally shown drivers didn't brake as hard as they could have done). Even if the 'technological advances' have got the car twice as close to the limit you've only got the braking at 0.83g rather than 0.67g. And how much difference does that make?

7mph.

Even if your technologically advanced car gets you twice as close to the laws-of-physics limit as the old banger in the highway code, if you're going more than 77mph you're in a worse situation than that old banger at 70.


If you've decided you're so clever that the speed limits don't apply to you, then fine. That's your decision. I won't convince anyone that obeying the law is something you should do - I'm well aware that it's impossible to use logic to argue anyone out of an opinion they didn't reach with logic in the first place.

Trying to dress the decision to flout the law up in bogus arguments about "assessing the safe speed" or "technological advances" doesn't really wash, though.