SPEED LIMITS AND CAMERAS

Someone, and I forget who as I’m of an age when memory starts to reduce, once said words to the effect that where very many ignore a law it must be a bad law. This could probably be applied to many speed limits, which are considered inappropriate for that particular road by drivers. It seems to me that where there are so many drivers/riders breaking the limit there is something wrong.

Either the road has an inappropriate limit, which would seem to be quite likely from the various limits I see when I’m out and about, there is inadequate signage of the limit or, if the limit is indeed really the right one then there is something wrong about what the drivers can understand of the road conditions so something needs to be done to correct this. Time was when in setting a limit the authorities would monitor the road in question. The vast majority of drivers aren’t stupid or reckless and drive to what they perceive as a safe speed for the road.

Then the 80-percentile rule was applied to the results so that the bottom 10% of over cautious drivers’ speeds were ignored and also the top 10%, being more reckless speeds, were also ignored to arrive at the appropriate limit using the data from the 80% in the middle. Now it seems that limits are applied arbitrarily at the whim of whoever is in charge either being anti-motorist in the first place, on an over cautious health and safety basis or even as a vanity project so they can proclaim what a good job they’ve done for local residents’ safety. In this latter category I would include many of the new 20mph zones where the limit wasn’t needed in the first place as the existing conditions mean everyone keeps speeds low anyway and since they’re not enforced in the main they are largely ignored, so have been a complete waste of public funds.

They seem to have made little difference to casualty rates. So, in spite of protestations to the contrary it’s pretty obvious that the powers that be just love to continue raking in the income from speed cameras rather than correcting things and preventing so many getting caught out at these hot spots.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti all speed limits as they perform a function to keep us all safer, but if it was obvious they were all more relevant then it’s more likely that everyone would keep to them, knowing that they are the right limit for the right reason. But I don’t see that happening any time soon as it would wipe out the income from speed cameras.