I’m not aware of motorway speeds other than 120km/h except on the M50 and near tool booths. That seems appropriate and broadly in line with the rest or Europe.
(edit: and It's not like everyone is cruising along at or above the limit. I pass a lot of cars in free flowing traffic when driving with cruise control on at 120)
The 80kph roads that are double track with grass down the center are a ... fixture of the Irish rural environment.
There are 2 countries I've driven in in Europe with higher limits, France (130 in good weather) and Germany (unlimited in some sections). UK is 70mph. Max I've seen in the US is 75mph.
Most traffic in Germany, even in the unlimited sections, tends to max out around 130. France tends to hit that 130 and not go above it.
I stand by 120 as a generally reasonable speed for a motorway with a speed limit.
So basically you are saying that you have seen 130, that it works well, but you still stand by 120. Makes no sense.
Where I live the upper limit is 120. If you drive at 120 people won't stop overtaking you. It's done this way because they have those mobile car radars to give people tickets when they need money.
What I'm saying is that the natural speed is around 120km/h, even on the far nicer roads in Germany and France. If the limits there are higher, and the bulk of drivers still aren't driving faster, then maybe 120 is just fine for what we have here.
The speed limit being 70 in the us is a bad joke. A relic from the gas shortage we had once that must have proven lucrative. Our roads are long wide and straight, it shouldn't be so low. (though Texas has some 85mph sections)
Yeah, but the hard speed limits existence in the first place was from this. There used to be roads with limits, and the limits also took a long time to go up, they are still low, and most backroads are still like 55 or lower
No, it wasn't. At least, anywhere other than Montana.
The limits were higher, then Carter made then 55, nationally. Montana used to have "Safe and Reasonable" as a daytime speed limit. During 55, it was forced to be that, but it was widely ignored and there was a $5 fine for "Excessively Utilizing Natural Resources". People would hold a $5 bill out the window when pulled over.
Excuse the rough conversions but here where I live in the US (New England) the speed limit is generally ~105km/hr on highways but isn't enforced below 130km/hr unless there's some other violation in play.
Some german politicians have an interesting "logic".
There are highways with speed limits because of they high accident count, after the speed limit the count dropped, therefore the speed limit isn't necessary anymore.
I was directly pointing to m50 on that count. It's not even an even limit on the whole m50. Some parts are 100km/h some parts are 120km/h. And I can agree that part is not much of a problem.
But most of the rural 80km/h road strands are too dangerous.
Anyone that thinks this is going to change anything in Ireland has never driven around Ireland. To say speed limits as taken as an amusing suggestion here is the biggest understatement I’m going to make all day.
Same issues in New Zealand. Good roads capable of driving fast, but there’s too much traffic and they should have invested in infrastructure 30 years ago.
In the UK we're starting to install average speed cameras in lots of places. Almost every major road in my area has an average speed camera on some stretch.
And I, for one, I think it's great. It's not a popular position but I'm a speed limit enforcement maximalist. I think if you're going 31 in a 30, after accounting for measurement errors, there should be enforcement action. Driving is one of the most dangerous things we do so I'm not sure why we're all so blasé about breaking this particular law.
Me too. There has to be a hard limit. It might as well be the posted limit.
Encouraging everyone to break the law just means selective enforcement is a bigger problem. If safety depends on cars moving the same speed, then everyone else should slow down to the speed limit to match my speed.
I really don't get this brinksmanship stuff. "Oh it's just 5 MPH, it's just 10 MPH." A limit was posted. The negotiation process doesn't happen _after_ the sign is put up. It's very simple.
All that said, I don't like ALPRs. They're so bad for privacy. I just know that they'll be connected to the Internet and used to track people wherever they drive, many of them already are.
Some countries have, or used to have, regulations saying that the devices aren't allowed to record the number plate details unless a crime is detected. I don't know how well that works since you're relying on the police to self-enforce that.
The UK doesn't have any such regulations and has fully embraced ANPR. They are being deployed everywhere now, for speed limit and red light enforcement, implementing toll roads and zones, enforcing modal filters, detecting cars reported in crime, detecting cars without insurance/tax/inspection, etc. and much of it is being converted to report to the "National ANPR Data Centre".
I wouldn't say I'm pleased about the privacy implications, but most people here are fine with it and seem to derive more benefit from it than harm. Vehicle crime is one of the UK's biggest problems, and I know several people who've had their stolen cars recovered thanks to the system, and ~everyone supports cracking down on uninsured drivers. It's become more controversial lately due to low emissions zones and the potential future introduction of road pricing, but that isn't really a push back for privacy reasons.
I just think in the UK, people don't have a cultural expectation of privacy when driving.
Interesting, because in the states, similar infrastructure is being deployed specifically for road pricing. I assume then we can start working on the more sensible uses you describe, but don’t have high hopes that it will be easy or quick.
That seems very sensible: in the United States driving is massively subsidized but even with so much general fund revenue we have more road infrastructure than we can maintain because cars don’t scale well. Shifting the cost back to the direct users will both provide desperately needed maintenance funds and reduce congestion by deterring low-value trips.
In theory, yes, it's sensible to fund the infrastructure. However, I think the priority should go towards safety issues first. Hell, they would issue so many tickets, I bet at first it would far outweigh the revenue from express lane tolls. Not everyone is using express lanes, but basically everyone is speeding, and speeding tickets cost more than the express lanes do. Once you hit long tail status, then move to express lane tolling.
I echo the sentiments of the parents where limits should be absolutely enforced, but also your concern about privacy.
At the end of the day though, this is what the majority is asking for, by dint of consistently breaking the rules. If people obeyed the limits, there’d be no need to expand the vast quantities of resources to build all the infrastructure for these cameras. It certainly sucks for those who always obey the limits (probably a low single digit percentage of drivers) and will get caught in the dragnet.
I foresee IR dazzlers becoming more popular on license plates and windshield/window frames.
There doesn't really have to be, we could let cars drive for the conditions. Also, unless the UK is different, there isn't a negotiation process before either...
I think if you're going 31 in a 30, after accounting for measurement errors
Sure, it is a limit rather than a recommendation. In terms of statute, anyway. Almost every social or legal convention in the UK pragmatically treats it as a recommended speed for some unknown reason and you could even pick up the attention of the police doing 40mph in a NSL on a bad day. (I even recall my driving instructor telling me I should "do the speed limit" unless I had good reason not to!)
Getting older, I'm in support of your idea, though. Stick the cruise control on at 50mph and see how big an entourage could be mustered with no easy way to overtake. It could almost be as fun as speeding was. I've long assumed this is the way lorry drivers keep things interesting..
I've found that this seems to entirely depend on who taught you to drive, and perhaps to some degree where you learnt to drive. In rural areas, almost everywhere is NSL but you'd die in pretty short order if you drove at 60 on tiny rural roads.
My instructor very much taught me that it's a limit rather than a recommendation, however, that's also balanced out with the minor fault of "making progress". Obviously if someone just drives at 5mph everywhere then they're clearly not a competent driver, but there's definitely a grey area. My instructor said as a rule of thumb, on a clear day, clear straight road without any hazards, you should be within 5mph of the limit on the test, but that otherwise, examiners are relatively tolerant of driving below the limit.
As far as the police go, I think it's because people driving slow is generally suspicious of perhaps them being a drunk driver or some other issue with their competence or road worthiness. I was once driving at 40mph on a dual carriageway in Scotland and got pulled over, but I explained to the police that I was just low on fuel due to a number of closed petrol stations, so I'm trying to conserve fuel by driving at the speed I get the best economy otherwise I won't make it to Inverness. They were completely satisfied with that and let me on my way.
The "solution" (until we get self driving cars, anyway) may well lie in the automatic speed limiters the EU are pushing and hope to make mandatory in the next few years. I'd really love to defer as much liability for speeding to my car as possible. It knows what the speed limits are, it can read signs, I just need a button that prevents it going over that speed and lets me otherwise drive however I like.. but we're not quite there yet.
In my younger days, I was more likely to drive over the limit, and to be honest I don't think it really made much of a difference in how quickly I got anywhere, but it used a lot more fuel, was more likely to kill me and was far more stressful having to keep switching lanes to maintain those speeds.
Nowadays I'm more like you described, and I prefer to just punch in the speed limit on the cruise control and enjoy my podcast/music. If the traffic ahead slows down, I slow down. I leave the outside lane to the angry BMWs.
If you want people to obey the speed limit, pay them more money. You don't need to speed to work or home if you live within a reasonable commuting distance of your office. You don't need to speed to go to some recreation activity if you make enough to actually enjoy your leisure time.
It's not the government's job to pay people more (beyond the public sector obviously), and while they can do certain things to improve commutes, reduce working hours, or increase holidays… I don't have any reason to believe those are the reasons for the rush.
(My belief may be biased by a certain person I used to know: he was driving one of two vehicles with me and my friends to an event that wouldn't start until both arrived; I asked why he was doing 98 mph (UK speed limit 70), and his answer was "If I was going faster I might have to waste time with a court case to prove I wasn't driving dangerously" rather than to slow down. The other vehicle was driven by someone who obeyed the speed limit, and we started at the same time and place).
The majority speed because it feels fun to stomp on the accelerator. If you compare door to door travel times, they’re almost always paying a good bit more - and maximizing their risk to everyone else - for a tiny fraction of the total travel time, especially at rush hour.
Yes - but in some places the limits are set unrealistically low under the assumption that people will drive above the limit. Let's use common sense and data to figure out where the limits should be, and then enforce them strictly.
There are good reasons why someone might temporarily be breaking the speed limit, that are even accepted legal defences in some countries (if you have enough proof).
Biggest one is just merging / changing lanes. Often you have to go 10 or 20 over the limit to merge without impeding a lane of traffic. I sometimes see people stopping(!) at the end of a merging lane when there was a perfectly good gap they could have gotten by just speeding up. Trying to merge from a dead stop onto an 80kph+ road is more dangerous than going 90 fore sure.
Another one is on 2-lane roads. You catch up to a truck/lorry and see a gap. The gap is big enough to get the overtake done, but you instinctively go faster to make the whole thing less of a close call. Is society really helped if every truck has a 20-car queue behind it because people are afraid they'll get fined if they help traffic flow?
On a more general note, I agree that there needs to better enforcement. However, better enforcement to me includes removing all the sneaky money-making schemes you see in the wild. They put a speed limit sign on the wrong side of the road, behind bushes or behind street-side parking (often making the limit non-enforceable legally), put up a speed camera and cash in on people that won't defend themselves.
That shit has to stop, put those ressources on deadly country roads, in front of schools and other accident hotspots instead. While we're at it, do more preventative traffic stops. It's not right that blind grandma or psychotic grandson have to seriously hurt someone before anything happens.
Little anecdote here: I passed my driving exam despite going 30kph over the limit while overtaking a tractor. I just told the examiner that I was trained to leave the opposite lane asap, slowed down as soon as I noticed how fast I was going and there was no issue.
In the UK there is no legal tolerance for going over the speed limit to overtake or merge. The only defence (and not even technically a defence) is that there was some emergency/duress. Some police might individually tolerate it, but it won't get you out of a fine and you'd almost certainly immediately fail your test. I'm actually kind of shocked to read that a (presumably European?) country would tolerate going 30kph over the limit on a driving test! However, the UK is fairly strict about traffic rules. You can't even go through a red light to let an ambulance through here. People have been fined for it, and their fines have been upheld at appeal.
Personally, I would imagine it's very unlikely to improve safety, and have seen near crashes result from it, so I think if you're needing to go 30 kph over the limit to make the overtake, then you probably should have just waited. However, I am completely willing to accept that this is a case where evidence should outweigh anecdotes, so if there was some study and reliable data to show that this sort of a tolerance is a good idea, then we should absolutely adopt it into the law under some objective criteria.
I do of course agree about malicious enforcement though. Again that's something that doesn't tend to be a big problem in the UK. Speed limits must be posted on both sides of the road to be enforceable, and if it's not the default limit (e.g. 30 in a built up area), there will be repeater signs every 200 metres or so. Plus we tend to also paint the limits on the road, and speed cameras are painted yellow and have a sign telling you that there are cameras, often with a reminder of the limit. You do occasionally get situations where the signs are obscured by trees, especially now that maintenance budgets have been cut, but you can use that to get out of the fine. My experience driving around the UK is that it's really rare that I don't know what the limit is, and if I don't, 99% of the time it's my fault for not paying attention.
In the US, in some states, there can be many miles of road with no posted speed limit signs. Unless you're already familiar with the area, or there's other traffic on the road you can match speeds with, about the best you can do is guess what speed to go.
As freeways go in the States: (state of) Montana (drive whatever speed you want); Austin, LA, and SAC (avg speed is 90) are the same.
As strict enforcement without the leniency of warnings go: most rural areas in the States because city and county revenue heavily depends on speeding tickets and fining home owners for petty infractions.
The most essential enforcement is in the areas:
1) residential
2) residential/commercial
Another racket is HOV/toll-lanes (also known as yuppie-scofflaw lanes) because they create more traffic, create dangers of speed differentials, and penalize people by socioeconomic strata. I wished the US adopted day-fines. [1]
PS: I haven't driven around Ireland (yet). As a general principle, I don't drive in other countries because of the insurance liability and idiosyncrasies in driving conventions and laws. RHD<->LHD can also be a hurdle to some.
Switzerland has 120kmh instead of typical EU limit of 130kmh. Slightly less pollution of all types, slightly safer roads, cars last slightly longer.
Typical swiss driver is anything but typical driver basically anywhere - polite, respectful, and just doesn't break rules in mormal situations. I really like it this way, and couldnt care less for the limit, saving 1-2 minutes is neglible every time.
That being said, anytime I cross the border to Germany there are these few first minutes of going faster, our roof box is basically the limit so somewhere around 160. Without it, maybe 220. After few minutes novelty wears off, you realize how dangerous and frustrating in actual traffic such speeds are, and go back to something closer to 130.
With fully automated driving, this wouldnt be a topic, I would be reading a book or sleeping. Looking forward to this.
Depends on the car. With a V6, it’s pretty negligible.
My SUV gets better mileage at high speed cruising due to the gearing. As long as you’re not constantly accelerating/decelerating and going with the flow.
> My SUV gets better mileage at high speed cruising due to the gearing.
what model would that be?
> As long as you’re not constantly accelerating/decelerating and going with the flow.
this can save even more fuel, if your SUV still uses fossil fuels and you accelerate at the optimal engine load and then glide. It's called pulse and glide.
Honda Pilot. I find myself taking the same 3 hour drive every couple of weeks this year. With the cruise set at 65 or 85, you’re in 10th gear (iirc) and there’s no significant difference. Variance is more driven by traffic in the city.
Once you start working the pedal, mileage drops ~20%.
My typical drive to visit family is roughly 125 kms with a 130 km/h speed limit and 125 kms with a 110 limit. If I drove at 100 all the time it would take 25 minutes more. More than a bathroom break I think.
Honestly I feel that driving faster is safer for me, since I tend to zone out if I don't have to pay attention to overtaking trucks.
> Honestly I feel that driving faster is safer for me, since I tend to zone out if I don't have to pay attention to overtaking trucks.
If you don't drive while being sleepy this is just a matter of getting used to it.
I used to drive to family visits 160-170km/h, but switched to 110 km/h (or train+bike depending on the circumstances). It feels slow at first, but you get used to it. The same when you do it the way around.
Nah. No speed limits is great, as long as everyone behaves by the rules.
Stay the hell out of the left lane, unless you’re passing. If you’re in the left lane and someone is in your rear-view, you move right. Otherwise, drive as fast as you feel like you can safely go, without having to worry about being pulled over and cited for doing something perfectly safe.
Driving on the Autobahn in Germany was one of the more liberating experiences of my life. I was genuinely sad when I got to the Netherlands and had to worry about keeping my speed below 130 when passing.
There's a point where speed becomes inherently unsafe due to visual limits. If cars were able to travel at Mach 2, then you'd be constantly at risk of getting into a crash whenever you change lane, because cars can approach quicker than you can make a decision.
There will be an upper speed limit somewhere, it might just be higher than cars can currently drive.
Also unrestricted parts of the autobahn have a pretty bad safety record.
Swiss don't break rules because there are speed cameras everywhere and fines are huge. But as soon they are outside of Switzerland, they will be the first to drove like hell is coming. Also, if you don't react to green light in a microsecond, or drive less than 10 km/h under the limit, they will start to honk.
Rules and their enforcement are perfectly fine and I'm really happy about that, but it doesn't make drivers better
Some traffic lights in Zurich are only green for 5 seconds or so, then you need to wait another minute or two.
I’ve never seen honking at 10kph under the limit, and I regularly drive longish trips to Germany for shopping on 80kph roads where you can often get stuck behind someone doing an indicated 72 (so about 69).
Also Swiss top up foreign fines - they apply the Swiss penalty based on amount by which the limit was exceeded, if there’s a data sharing agreement, as there is with Germany. Any enthusiasm is based on less enforcement rather than lower fines.
In the Netherlands highway limits have been 120km/h for several decades. Around 2010 it was raised to 130km/h (a pretty pretty popular measure by most accounts). In the last few years it became clear that the country as a whole was emitting many nitrogen compounds in the air, so as an emergency measure in 2019 the maximum highway speed was lowered to 100km/h. But only on specific sections at specific hours of the day (6:00-19:00), which keeps confusing me on the few occasions when I drive on a highway (a few times a year). So I just default to always 100km/h on all highways.
I drive an indicated 130kph on Swiss motorways, an indicated 108kph through tunnels, and generally an indicated 88kph on regular roads when I get the chance. I think the 80kph limit is too low for many country roads, and it inhibits overtaking slower vehicles, so you frequently enough see long trains of cars stuck behind something.
Once I hit Germany, I generally drive about 160kph on unrestricted motorway, but wander up towards 200kph if the lanes are clear. It is not stressful to drive fast as long as you’re not overtaking with a large speed difference. 130kph feels quite slow on the autobahn, it’s very noticeable when you’re on a restricted stretch.
Time savings add up on a 6+ hour trip, especially if you leave after work; +30kph is 180km after 6 hours, it can make the difference between needing a hotel or not.
When I ride my motorbike, I generally head to Germany, in large part because 80kph is so slow and Swiss enforcement is more eager. Of course speeding penalties are the same, since Swiss top up any German fines to Swiss levels.
But it would cost people's time. I almost guarantee that even if you pay people minimum wage, the savings in people's time outweigh any extra fuel use.
Try following traffic laws for a week and time your commute. You’ll find that you’re not saving anything significant at all - and unless you have unlimited piece work you can swap to any time you have an extra 37 seconds there’s no economic value to cancel out the fuel and elevated wear and tear on your vehicle.
when it matters, i.e. traffic hours in the morning and evening, it probably would rather save time as less traffic jams will occur (more likely the higher the variance of velocities)
> the savings in people's time outweigh any extra fuel use.
Safety versus making fun vrooming noises. Collisions cost enormous sums even before you think of the thousands of people who have life-altering injuries, and the vast majority of the time the driver is not saving any time at all (just sitting longer at the next signal or patch of congestion), or an economically negligible amount of time.
Because speeding causes traffic congestion, there is a fair chance this would even be an economic win since tamer traffic moving consistent speeds is better for commercial drivers.
Speeding helps on very long trips through lightly trafficked areas: if you’re driving on a desert highway through the American southwest, sure, going 85 instead of 75 will shave an hour off of your all-day drive but the vast majority of trips are much, much shorter than that and the risks to others are much higher.
On the other hand, higher speeds use a LOT more fuel, so going faster needs to be balanced out with more frequent fuel stops. Especially for electric cars where charging can take a while. Can definitely see situations where driving faster takes longer overall.
Definitely - that’s why I described it as drivers seeking excitement since it rarely is a win from a logical standpoint but there’s so much culture around driving fast.
For reference, we've just had "Speed Day" where the Garda goes out and mans the speed cameras. There are generally a set of known locations where this happens, and motorists being motorists, there's a bunch of headlight flashing just out of view.
The Garda then give statistics of 0.3% are speeding, but look how fast some people went (typically 160 in an 80 or similar). The RSA, when they did free flow analysis, found more than 50% speeding, and higher percentages in urban areas than rural motorway.
Meanwhile, small roads have slowly had their speed limits upgraded without corresponding infrastructure changes, such that 2 lane N roads over bogs with no shoulders can have 100kph (up from 80), in places where you can see the scrapes from frames hitting the pavement. The boundaries of towns have moved in, so that places that used to be 50 are now 60.
Ideal would be speed limit based on the road. I drove some "roads" in Ireland, where speed limit is 80km/h but driving faster than 40km/h is daredevil behavior. And don't mention the fact that some roads are not large enough for crossing another vehicule, but it can happen (and sometime the locals drive at 80... A lot of surprise braking !)
But it's obviously more difficult to implement, and more difficult for the speed camera management.
Yet, it would be better and certainly safer than the "one speed for those type of road fit all"
(to be honest, this proposal is more advanced than other countries where you hav three or four types of speed limit, and that's all)
> and more difficult for the speed camera management.
In Germany the police needs a specific reason for placing a speed camera. Like a statistic that there are a lot of accidents on that street at that particular spot, or that the street is exceeding noise levels. So, they already have to take into account every individual speed limit; and if the Germans can do this, the Irish can certainly too! :)
You kinda already have that, but you cannot make it too confusing for drivers.
German example for roads between cities: No sign at all, default speed limit 100. 70 sign (usually with a reason e.g. winding road, trees etc). 50 sign or even 30 sign, no overtaking sign, e.g. narrow road, pot holes, intersections. Works, but can be quite stressful to keep track of particularly for new drivers.
Issues with that: The locals who drive 80 will complain that there is no reason for a 40 sign and laws tend to require a reason (e.g. speeding tickets are cancelled retroactively if the state cannot justify why there needs to be a limit). Too many signs and cases confuse drivers and are easily missed. Installing, replacing, repairing and keeping track of signs is expensive. Too many rapid adjustments also don't work well with slowing down, accelerating, reading signs etc., so it cannot be too fine grained.
That is why there are "one speed for those type of road fit all" approaches: to keep matters simple.
how about 0 ? how about we do nothing and nobody moves ? this way we'll be 100% sure that no one can get in a car accident, that'd be sooo cool guys :D
> In urban, residential and other built-up areas the limit would be cut from 50km/h to 30km/h.
> The limit on main arterial routes in towns and cities would be capped at 50km/h.
> On national secondary roads, the baseline would fall from 100km/h to 80km/h.
One thing I always wonder with changes like this is, why make such a dramatic change (a 40% reduction in urban areas) in a single step? It seems more sensible to make the the change more slowly and study the results. Or, even better, make the change in half the country and let it run for a year as an experiment. (This could be a multi-armed experiment when you compare to, e.g., increasing enforcement instead.)
Because speed limits are quantized: 30, 50, 60, 80, 100, 120.
The 50->30 (30->20 mph) is a well known baseline 0 change for built up areas. It's meant to be not for major roads, it's meant for neighborhoods and other areas with many pedestrians.
First answer is simplicity: you have a few prototypical road types and speeds and easy to remember round numbers. E.g. 30 signs are common for inner cities, 50 for outer, but 40 or non-multiple of 10 is extremely rare. That is also reflected in gears for cars, i.e. going at those speed requires very little active input by the driver while going at exactly 42 would need constant manual adjustment.
> It seems more sensible to make the the change more slowly and study the results.
That was already done locally and other countries exist. So you would have to argue what makes Ireland that unique that further experiments are needed.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadThis won't do any good if this fact is not taken into consideration.
(edit: and It's not like everyone is cruising along at or above the limit. I pass a lot of cars in free flowing traffic when driving with cruise control on at 120)
The 80kph roads that are double track with grass down the center are a ... fixture of the Irish rural environment.
The only purpose is to be able to give tickets to take money from people.
Most traffic in Germany, even in the unlimited sections, tends to max out around 130. France tends to hit that 130 and not go above it.
I stand by 120 as a generally reasonable speed for a motorway with a speed limit.
Austria, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Italy all have 130 km/h speed limit on highways.
Where I live the upper limit is 120. If you drive at 120 people won't stop overtaking you. It's done this way because they have those mobile car radars to give people tickets when they need money.
The limits were higher, then Carter made then 55, nationally. Montana used to have "Safe and Reasonable" as a daytime speed limit. During 55, it was forced to be that, but it was widely ignored and there was a $5 fine for "Excessively Utilizing Natural Resources". People would hold a $5 bill out the window when pulled over.
I don't even have a rebuttal for a statement so demonstrably untrue. Speed limits were in place for decades before the 70s gas shortages.
And the limit on backroads is reasonable considering that oncoming traffic is passing by you mere feet/meters away.
It seems entirely reasonable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_by_country
But most of the rural 80km/h road strands are too dangerous.
And I, for one, I think it's great. It's not a popular position but I'm a speed limit enforcement maximalist. I think if you're going 31 in a 30, after accounting for measurement errors, there should be enforcement action. Driving is one of the most dangerous things we do so I'm not sure why we're all so blasé about breaking this particular law.
Encouraging everyone to break the law just means selective enforcement is a bigger problem. If safety depends on cars moving the same speed, then everyone else should slow down to the speed limit to match my speed.
I really don't get this brinksmanship stuff. "Oh it's just 5 MPH, it's just 10 MPH." A limit was posted. The negotiation process doesn't happen _after_ the sign is put up. It's very simple.
All that said, I don't like ALPRs. They're so bad for privacy. I just know that they'll be connected to the Internet and used to track people wherever they drive, many of them already are.
Some countries have, or used to have, regulations saying that the devices aren't allowed to record the number plate details unless a crime is detected. I don't know how well that works since you're relying on the police to self-enforce that.
The UK doesn't have any such regulations and has fully embraced ANPR. They are being deployed everywhere now, for speed limit and red light enforcement, implementing toll roads and zones, enforcing modal filters, detecting cars reported in crime, detecting cars without insurance/tax/inspection, etc. and much of it is being converted to report to the "National ANPR Data Centre".
I wouldn't say I'm pleased about the privacy implications, but most people here are fine with it and seem to derive more benefit from it than harm. Vehicle crime is one of the UK's biggest problems, and I know several people who've had their stolen cars recovered thanks to the system, and ~everyone supports cracking down on uninsured drivers. It's become more controversial lately due to low emissions zones and the potential future introduction of road pricing, but that isn't really a push back for privacy reasons.
I just think in the UK, people don't have a cultural expectation of privacy when driving.
Interesting, because in the states, similar infrastructure is being deployed specifically for road pricing. I assume then we can start working on the more sensible uses you describe, but don’t have high hopes that it will be easy or quick.
I echo the sentiments of the parents where limits should be absolutely enforced, but also your concern about privacy.
At the end of the day though, this is what the majority is asking for, by dint of consistently breaking the rules. If people obeyed the limits, there’d be no need to expand the vast quantities of resources to build all the infrastructure for these cameras. It certainly sucks for those who always obey the limits (probably a low single digit percentage of drivers) and will get caught in the dragnet.
I foresee IR dazzlers becoming more popular on license plates and windshield/window frames.
Sure, it is a limit rather than a recommendation. In terms of statute, anyway. Almost every social or legal convention in the UK pragmatically treats it as a recommended speed for some unknown reason and you could even pick up the attention of the police doing 40mph in a NSL on a bad day. (I even recall my driving instructor telling me I should "do the speed limit" unless I had good reason not to!)
Getting older, I'm in support of your idea, though. Stick the cruise control on at 50mph and see how big an entourage could be mustered with no easy way to overtake. It could almost be as fun as speeding was. I've long assumed this is the way lorry drivers keep things interesting..
My instructor very much taught me that it's a limit rather than a recommendation, however, that's also balanced out with the minor fault of "making progress". Obviously if someone just drives at 5mph everywhere then they're clearly not a competent driver, but there's definitely a grey area. My instructor said as a rule of thumb, on a clear day, clear straight road without any hazards, you should be within 5mph of the limit on the test, but that otherwise, examiners are relatively tolerant of driving below the limit.
As far as the police go, I think it's because people driving slow is generally suspicious of perhaps them being a drunk driver or some other issue with their competence or road worthiness. I was once driving at 40mph on a dual carriageway in Scotland and got pulled over, but I explained to the police that I was just low on fuel due to a number of closed petrol stations, so I'm trying to conserve fuel by driving at the speed I get the best economy otherwise I won't make it to Inverness. They were completely satisfied with that and let me on my way.
Nowadays I'm more like you described, and I prefer to just punch in the speed limit on the cruise control and enjoy my podcast/music. If the traffic ahead slows down, I slow down. I leave the outside lane to the angry BMWs.
(My belief may be biased by a certain person I used to know: he was driving one of two vehicles with me and my friends to an event that wouldn't start until both arrived; I asked why he was doing 98 mph (UK speed limit 70), and his answer was "If I was going faster I might have to waste time with a court case to prove I wasn't driving dangerously" rather than to slow down. The other vehicle was driven by someone who obeyed the speed limit, and we started at the same time and place).
Biggest one is just merging / changing lanes. Often you have to go 10 or 20 over the limit to merge without impeding a lane of traffic. I sometimes see people stopping(!) at the end of a merging lane when there was a perfectly good gap they could have gotten by just speeding up. Trying to merge from a dead stop onto an 80kph+ road is more dangerous than going 90 fore sure.
Another one is on 2-lane roads. You catch up to a truck/lorry and see a gap. The gap is big enough to get the overtake done, but you instinctively go faster to make the whole thing less of a close call. Is society really helped if every truck has a 20-car queue behind it because people are afraid they'll get fined if they help traffic flow?
On a more general note, I agree that there needs to better enforcement. However, better enforcement to me includes removing all the sneaky money-making schemes you see in the wild. They put a speed limit sign on the wrong side of the road, behind bushes or behind street-side parking (often making the limit non-enforceable legally), put up a speed camera and cash in on people that won't defend themselves.
That shit has to stop, put those ressources on deadly country roads, in front of schools and other accident hotspots instead. While we're at it, do more preventative traffic stops. It's not right that blind grandma or psychotic grandson have to seriously hurt someone before anything happens.
Little anecdote here: I passed my driving exam despite going 30kph over the limit while overtaking a tractor. I just told the examiner that I was trained to leave the opposite lane asap, slowed down as soon as I noticed how fast I was going and there was no issue.
Personally, I would imagine it's very unlikely to improve safety, and have seen near crashes result from it, so I think if you're needing to go 30 kph over the limit to make the overtake, then you probably should have just waited. However, I am completely willing to accept that this is a case where evidence should outweigh anecdotes, so if there was some study and reliable data to show that this sort of a tolerance is a good idea, then we should absolutely adopt it into the law under some objective criteria.
I do of course agree about malicious enforcement though. Again that's something that doesn't tend to be a big problem in the UK. Speed limits must be posted on both sides of the road to be enforceable, and if it's not the default limit (e.g. 30 in a built up area), there will be repeater signs every 200 metres or so. Plus we tend to also paint the limits on the road, and speed cameras are painted yellow and have a sign telling you that there are cameras, often with a reminder of the limit. You do occasionally get situations where the signs are obscured by trees, especially now that maintenance budgets have been cut, but you can use that to get out of the fine. My experience driving around the UK is that it's really rare that I don't know what the limit is, and if I don't, 99% of the time it's my fault for not paying attention.
Then i found myself backing into a hedge to avoid a large speeding tour bus in Ireland!
As strict enforcement without the leniency of warnings go: most rural areas in the States because city and county revenue heavily depends on speeding tickets and fining home owners for petty infractions.
The most essential enforcement is in the areas:
1) residential
2) residential/commercial
Another racket is HOV/toll-lanes (also known as yuppie-scofflaw lanes) because they create more traffic, create dangers of speed differentials, and penalize people by socioeconomic strata. I wished the US adopted day-fines. [1]
1. https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/constitutionali...
PS: I haven't driven around Ireland (yet). As a general principle, I don't drive in other countries because of the insurance liability and idiosyncrasies in driving conventions and laws. RHD<->LHD can also be a hurdle to some.
Typical swiss driver is anything but typical driver basically anywhere - polite, respectful, and just doesn't break rules in mormal situations. I really like it this way, and couldnt care less for the limit, saving 1-2 minutes is neglible every time.
That being said, anytime I cross the border to Germany there are these few first minutes of going faster, our roof box is basically the limit so somewhere around 160. Without it, maybe 220. After few minutes novelty wears off, you realize how dangerous and frustrating in actual traffic such speeds are, and go back to something closer to 130.
With fully automated driving, this wouldnt be a topic, I would be reading a book or sleeping. Looking forward to this.
My SUV gets better mileage at high speed cruising due to the gearing. As long as you’re not constantly accelerating/decelerating and going with the flow.
what model would that be?
> As long as you’re not constantly accelerating/decelerating and going with the flow.
this can save even more fuel, if your SUV still uses fossil fuels and you accelerate at the optimal engine load and then glide. It's called pulse and glide.
Once you start working the pedal, mileage drops ~20%.
That's a big safety and pollution problem in itself.
Honestly I feel that driving faster is safer for me, since I tend to zone out if I don't have to pay attention to overtaking trucks.
If you don't drive while being sleepy this is just a matter of getting used to it. I used to drive to family visits 160-170km/h, but switched to 110 km/h (or train+bike depending on the circumstances). It feels slow at first, but you get used to it. The same when you do it the way around.
Stay the hell out of the left lane, unless you’re passing. If you’re in the left lane and someone is in your rear-view, you move right. Otherwise, drive as fast as you feel like you can safely go, without having to worry about being pulled over and cited for doing something perfectly safe.
Driving on the Autobahn in Germany was one of the more liberating experiences of my life. I was genuinely sad when I got to the Netherlands and had to worry about keeping my speed below 130 when passing.
no, you finish overtaking as planned, except it is an emergency vehicle
There will be an upper speed limit somewhere, it might just be higher than cars can currently drive.
Also unrestricted parts of the autobahn have a pretty bad safety record.
I’ve never seen honking at 10kph under the limit, and I regularly drive longish trips to Germany for shopping on 80kph roads where you can often get stuck behind someone doing an indicated 72 (so about 69).
Also Swiss top up foreign fines - they apply the Swiss penalty based on amount by which the limit was exceeded, if there’s a data sharing agreement, as there is with Germany. Any enthusiasm is based on less enforcement rather than lower fines.
Once I hit Germany, I generally drive about 160kph on unrestricted motorway, but wander up towards 200kph if the lanes are clear. It is not stressful to drive fast as long as you’re not overtaking with a large speed difference. 130kph feels quite slow on the autobahn, it’s very noticeable when you’re on a restricted stretch.
Time savings add up on a 6+ hour trip, especially if you leave after work; +30kph is 180km after 6 hours, it can make the difference between needing a hotel or not.
When I ride my motorbike, I generally head to Germany, in large part because 80kph is so slow and Swiss enforcement is more eager. Of course speeding penalties are the same, since Swiss top up any German fines to Swiss levels.
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092...
> the savings in people's time outweigh any extra fuel use.
opinion
Because speeding causes traffic congestion, there is a fair chance this would even be an economic win since tamer traffic moving consistent speeds is better for commercial drivers.
Speeding helps on very long trips through lightly trafficked areas: if you’re driving on a desert highway through the American southwest, sure, going 85 instead of 75 will shave an hour off of your all-day drive but the vast majority of trips are much, much shorter than that and the risks to others are much higher.
The Garda then give statistics of 0.3% are speeding, but look how fast some people went (typically 160 in an 80 or similar). The RSA, when they did free flow analysis, found more than 50% speeding, and higher percentages in urban areas than rural motorway.
Meanwhile, small roads have slowly had their speed limits upgraded without corresponding infrastructure changes, such that 2 lane N roads over bogs with no shoulders can have 100kph (up from 80), in places where you can see the scrapes from frames hitting the pavement. The boundaries of towns have moved in, so that places that used to be 50 are now 60.
But it's obviously more difficult to implement, and more difficult for the speed camera management.
Yet, it would be better and certainly safer than the "one speed for those type of road fit all"
(to be honest, this proposal is more advanced than other countries where you hav three or four types of speed limit, and that's all)
Some country side roads are very narrow, surrounded by stone walls on both sides. There are no sidewalks obviously.
You'd be lucky to push 40 on the straight sections!
I'm based nearby so Dunloe/Black Valley/Molls is a regular cycle route for me
In Germany the police needs a specific reason for placing a speed camera. Like a statistic that there are a lot of accidents on that street at that particular spot, or that the street is exceeding noise levels. So, they already have to take into account every individual speed limit; and if the Germans can do this, the Irish can certainly too! :)
You kinda already have that, but you cannot make it too confusing for drivers.
German example for roads between cities: No sign at all, default speed limit 100. 70 sign (usually with a reason e.g. winding road, trees etc). 50 sign or even 30 sign, no overtaking sign, e.g. narrow road, pot holes, intersections. Works, but can be quite stressful to keep track of particularly for new drivers.
Issues with that: The locals who drive 80 will complain that there is no reason for a 40 sign and laws tend to require a reason (e.g. speeding tickets are cancelled retroactively if the state cannot justify why there needs to be a limit). Too many signs and cases confuse drivers and are easily missed. Installing, replacing, repairing and keeping track of signs is expensive. Too many rapid adjustments also don't work well with slowing down, accelerating, reading signs etc., so it cannot be too fine grained.
That is why there are "one speed for those type of road fit all" approaches: to keep matters simple.
There was a tragic case a few weeks back (on exam results day I think) when a speeding car was totalled in an urban area killing 3/4 occupants.
Reducing the speed from 100 to 80 won't change that behaviour.
> The limit on main arterial routes in towns and cities would be capped at 50km/h.
> On national secondary roads, the baseline would fall from 100km/h to 80km/h.
One thing I always wonder with changes like this is, why make such a dramatic change (a 40% reduction in urban areas) in a single step? It seems more sensible to make the the change more slowly and study the results. Or, even better, make the change in half the country and let it run for a year as an experiment. (This could be a multi-armed experiment when you compare to, e.g., increasing enforcement instead.)
The 50->30 (30->20 mph) is a well known baseline 0 change for built up areas. It's meant to be not for major roads, it's meant for neighborhoods and other areas with many pedestrians.
> It seems more sensible to make the the change more slowly and study the results.
That was already done locally and other countries exist. So you would have to argue what makes Ireland that unique that further experiments are needed.