Speeding fines change/increase TODAY, Monday 24/4/17

[Smudger]

I believe car manufacturers err on the side of caution and there is already a margin of error built into the speedo, hence why a sat nav displaying the 'true' speed is always 3-4mph higher. As for contstantly looking at the speedo, keeping a constant speed is not that hard, and they do tend to put the speedo as close to eye line as possible.

My Sat nav is always showing a lower speed than the speedo. I don't think it's legal for a car's speedo to under-state the speed, but they can overstate by a certain percentage.

[ik9000]

Car design needs to reflect the law and safety concerns, not the other way around. If your car didn't suit the road laws because it had poor gearing choices or too small a speed indicator then complain about the manufacturer's design choices, not the law.

how many cars sold even in the 2000s were intended to do primarily 20mph? They weren't. 30mph is the default speed limit, but in many places blanket reductions are being introduced. Try living in Croydon where the council have done just that - and without consultation to the majority of areas. It's not a safety concern at a blackspot it is a broad brush everything within this boundary approach. And that is madness.

I do find it annoying how many manufacturers persist on using analogue speedometers that devote a quarter of a circle - or less! - to the legal speed range. Some of them even use such speedos displayed on screens, which could be easily toggled into a track mode to access the higher speeds.

Those dials go that high because cars are sold in multiple countries, and some of them have more generous limits (or none e.g the Autobahns). concentrate on your driving and watch the road not your speedo.*

*edit - for clarity, I'm not endorsing speeding, I'm saying that by being so strict on limits and fines for even 1mph over the limit it encourages people to worry more about the speedo than watching the road. That is dangerous. Particularly if a child steps out in front of you. It just adds more time delay to the point where your foot hits the brake if you're distracted away from the most important thing - watching the road - in fear of getting a ticket and points.

[ik9000]

When I first got my own car I found it hard to judge speed correctly, so I just set the speed limiter to 30mph. Then quickly learned in London that is not appreciated by other road users.

Oh I have developed a thick skin from that - the few times I've driven in central London were a learning curve. If they want a ticket good luck to them.

[ik9000]

If you're finding it hard to keep the needle on exactly the speed limit? Drive slower for goodness sake!

and you'd be happy sitting behind me doing 27 in a 30 would you? I wouldn't.

[kalniel]

FFS how many cars sold even in the 2000s were intended to do primarily 20mph? They weren't.

True, they were intended to do 56mph primarily, but they're also designed to do all the incremental speeds from 0 to 70, albeit 1-about 5mph only temporarily. If your car is missing one of those increments then you've got a problem with your gears.

I agree some 20mph zones are not helpful, but as long as they don't use pollution increasing things like speed bumps then it's usually OK to travel between 15-20mph.

[DDY]

and you'd be happy sitting behind me doing 27 in a 30 would you? I wouldn't.

I wouldn't be happy, but I certainly wouldn't be upset.

Surely you wouldn't get upset over someone doing 27 in a 30?

I do however get upset when people aggressively pressure me to drive faster than I am comfortable, I'm not so hypocritical to get upset over someone who's uncomfortable driving at exactly at the speed limit, or for what ever reason.

[DanceswithUnix]

My Sat nav is always showing a lower speed than the speedo. I don't think it's legal for a car's speedo to under-state the speed, but they can overstate by a certain percentage.

Almost, a speedo in a consumer car (commercial vehicles are different) can overstate the speed as much as it wants, there is no limit. So it can say you are doing 40mph when you are doing 30mph, forcing you to slow right down, that's all legal and fine (and 10 to 15 years ago commonplace but I think most manufacturers are getting better at that). There has to be a small margin to allow for tyre wear changing the effective wheel radius.

Which leads me to...

Surely you wouldn't get upset over someone doing 27 in a 30?

So they drive at an indicated 27, which in my Alfa would be an actual 26 but in most cars would mean they are doing an actual 23 or 24mph. Along comes Mr Audi with a satnav so he knows his precise speed & who wants to do an actual 30mph, gets annoyed at the person in front doing 25% less than the speed limit and does an dangerous overtake manoeuvre because some people are like that. Going slow can be dangerous because of other people.

[EndlessWaves]

how many cars sold even in the 2000s were intended to do primarily 20mph? They weren't. 30mph is the default speed limit, but in many places blanket reductions are being introduced. Try living in Croydon where the council have done just that - and without consultation to the majority of areas. It's not a safety concern at a blackspot it is a broad brush everything within this boundary approach. And that is madness.

Those dials go that high because cars are sold in multiple countries, and some of them have more generous limits (or none e.g the Autobahns). concentrate on your driving and watch the road not your speedo.

Speedometers are changed anyway for the UK as we use MPH instead of KPH as the rest of the world does.

I grew up with 20mph zones, there were several major ones around here in the 90s. And if you're citing the situation abroad then I believe they were popular in Europe even before they were here.

and you'd be happy sitting behind me doing 27 in a 30 would you? I wouldn't.

Why'd I be annoyed? 3mph isn't going to make any difference.

2 minutes on a 20 minute journey if you were travelling at a constant speed, and as it's typically an urban limit with lots of stopping it'll be even less than that. Why should I care if I arrive 30 seconds earlier or later?

[DDY]

So they drive at an indicated 27, which in my Alfa would be an actual 26 but in most cars would mean they are doing an actual 23 or 24mph. Along comes Mr Audi with a satnav so he knows his precise speed & who wants to do an actual 30mph, gets annoyed at the person in front doing 25% less than the speed limit and does an dangerous overtake manoeuvre because some people are like that. Going slow can be dangerous because of other people.

In my mind that validates the fixation of driving at the speed limit and 'encouraging' people to keep their eyes on the speedo rather than on the road, in order to prevent Mr Bimmer from carelessly overtaking and running over an old biddy.

So, what do you drive?

I'm not a proponent for overly slow driving, an arbitrary limit has to be set somewhere for the purposes of the rule of (traffic) law but this limit shouldn't pander to the aggressive or reckless.

[kalniel]

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So they drive at an indicated 27, which in my Alfa would be an actual 26 but in most cars would mean they are doing an actual 23 or 24mph. Along comes Mr Audi with a satnav so he knows his precise speed & who wants to do an actual 30mph, gets annoyed at the person in front doing 25% less than the speed limit and does an dangerous overtake manoeuvre because some people are like that. Going slow can be dangerous because of other people.

This Mr Audi driver with a satnav would be quite happy following in said situation. It's hardly the going slow that is dangerous in the above - it'd be the dangerous overtake. Of course, maybe there would be a safe overtake Mr Audi could take, however if it's a 30 limit then there is probably sufficient hazard not to make it safe, in which case I'll usually overtake IF there is a safe, visible, straight when the limit changes to national, since the acceleration difference in most cases maximises the speed difference and therefore shortens the overtake.

Now people who drive at 30 on a de-restricted road when conditions are good.. they are unsafe.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm not a proponent for overly slow driving, an arbitrary limit has to be set somewhere for the purposes of the rule of (traffic) law but this limit shouldn't pander to the aggressive or reckless.

I think there is the problem, the limit shouldn't be arbitrary it should be there for a damned good reason.

I want to drive safely and watch the road so that I can react to changing threats on the road. That means I do my best to stick to the limit, but that means I need to be allowed to wear my grown up trousers and take responsibility for my actions on the road. Sadly that isn't the case, there are plenty of areas where doing 31 in a 30mph area will get you points so safety has to take a back seat to playing the numbers.

I find the Waze app does help these days, I generally drive around with my phone stuck to the windscreen so the speed limit icon changes colour when I hit the speed limit, so I can back off to comfortably under it. That icon is closer to my line of vision than the speedo and unlike the speedo it knows the current limit which is handy in those odd occasions where something happening on the road means you don't immediately notice a speed limit change.

Modern cars don't help, 30mph and 60mph all feel much the same. Not like when I learnt to drive, my first car (a mini) different bits of the car rattled at different speeds so I could tell I was at 30mph from how the rear view mirror rattled. Above 50mph it sounded like you were in a hurricane with all the wind noise. But then in those days if the police saw you doing 30mph in a 30mph area then they would pull you over and breathalyse you for suspicious driving as any sane person on an empty road in good conditions would be doing 35 to 40. But then that was police doing the policing, these days it is just down to cameras and they can't make a value judgement on whether you are doing something dangerous they just compare a number and then apply zero tolerance because criminals need cracking down on eh?

I was at the local Alfa dealer the other day test driving the new Giulia. Apparently it has one of these systems that picks up pedestrians walking out from behind a parked car and stops you before the idiot goes bouncing off your lovely paintwork. If I'm looking at cars with that feature I presume it must be commonplace on other marques by now? I do wonder if that will make some drivers think that they can take liberties with safety because the car will compensate, when in reality it can't change the laws of physics so the driver still has to look out for kids and drunkards etc. That's in the same way that kids are taught that speed kills, and so their take home message from school is that it is OK to step into a road without looking because the speed limit is 20mph and the cars won't kill you at that speed.

Meh, roll on autonomous cars. This isn't driving any more, it is de-skilled soul destroying boredom where the bleeding heart beancounters have won.

[DanceswithUnix]

This Mr Audi driver with a satnav would be quite happy following in said situation.

Apologies for the wide tar brushing, I just find that when out and about in the kit car the only people who ever tail gate me are Audi drivers. The speedo in the kit car is calibrated so I know that if I am indicating 29mph in a 30 zone then I am doing exactly that, but some people just can't help but bully. Such tail gating is way more dangerous than speeding, but as long as it happens within the speed limit then cameras won't pick it up so lack of action makes it a state endorsed activity.

... and yes I just dip the rear view mirror and pretend they are not there so I can concentrate on my own driving, but at the back of my mind I hope that if something does require an emergency brake that their reactions are really really good because even basic O-level physics says my lightweight car can't have a big enough reaction force to brake a 2 ton idiot wagon driving less than a reaction time behind my rear spoiler.

So yes in my previous example the person doing the dangerous overtake is the person at fault, even in the case of someone doing 30mph in a NSL area, but the only difference between 30 in a 60 area and 25 in a 30 area is scale of numbers and how impatient the person behind them is. In both cases, people are being people and the problem is lack of respect not only for other road users but for the speed limits themselves as they are seen as arbitrary.

AIUI roads that are 30mph are allocated more money for maintenance than 60mph roads, so it is in a council's interest to get roads downgraded to as slow as possible.

[DDY]

I think there is the problem, the limit shouldn't be arbitrary it should be there for a damned good reason.

There will always be an arbitrary element to speed limits even if they're based on well informed decisions.

In practice, speed limits are based on heuristic decisions or design codes which are empirically derived. There is no exact science and there will never be, considering the vast number of variables and probabilities involved.

On a tangent, we can both agree that 31 in a 30 zone is inconsequential if it were not for traffic law enforcement? But what about 32? 33? I'd still say that's small potatoes. 35? Right, lets set the speed limit to 35.

Regardless, Mr Audi Bimmer McRageface will still drive up the arse of someone doing 33 in our new 35mph zone, itching to overtake.

[shaithis]

You'd hope they would pro-rata the income declared on the persons last self assessment return!

Considering who writes the laws, I wouldn't count on it being fair.....speed cameras are now just another form of taxation. Their original edict was to slow cars in hazardous locations (schools, accident black spots etc)....but now they just throw them everywhere and keep on increasing their abilities because they realised they can be a goldmine.

I wouldn't have such an issue with them if it wasn't for the constant threat they impose on your insurance costs....one lapse of concentration and it can be a lot more then a fine.....and do insurance companies really need propping up more?

[Xlucine]

...I also presume there are still going to be caps on the fines, rendering progressive charges somewhat moot.

Correct, £1000 on a normal road and £2500 on a motorway

[Kumagoro]

I don't see why there should be a cap. If you are loaded then the fine part is meaningless.