Zero tolerance

[Craiglxviii]

Pete, we will have white vans replaced by courier drones shortly so 90% of human parcel deliveries will go away...

 

[Craiglxviii]

Or maybe equip all cars with GPS and transceivers that detect speed limits and force the car to do that speed. As an adjunct we could equip them with cameras to monitor their surroundings and take away the steering wheel and brake control as after all its clear drivers cannot be trusted to drive the vehicles in a safe manner themselves. Then we can put all this nice men in speed partnership vans on the dole.

Trouble is that comes into the “enforcing the law” point. Want a landslide general election victory? Form a party. Make your single campaigning point “returning Britain’s roads to Britain’s drivers”, you’d get 80% vote share!!!

 

[Naraic]

This is incorrect. The limit (or at least one of them) is 70mph. The 10% +2 is guidance provided the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to all Police officers to apply their judgement in each case - it is NOT a God-given right to drive at 79mph.

Apologies if I come across as a bit overzealous here but excess and inappropriate speed are a pet hate of mine - no personal offense meant

No offense taken, but you have missed my point.

If we accept that there is some latitude taken at the moment, then what this guy is saying is...don't take the ****.

 

[davemercedes]

It see

No offense taken, but you have missed my point.

If we accept that there is some latitude taken at the moment, then what this guy is saying is...don't take the ****.

It seems top me that the Police chief is the one taking the hiss... Speedometers - at least those driven by a gear and cable used to be legally allowed a ten percent variance; I'm not sure if they have any variance allowed now. But most of us have a speedo that errs on the ambitious i.e.: it seems the speedo manufacturers chose this bias. But what if you do have one that reads 10 percent slow? There you are driving at exactly 70 by your instrument and kerching! you're nicked for being law abiding. The law or the police chief in this case, is a bit of an ass.

My TomTom satnav beeps as I approach every (know) camera. I tend to drive on that speed through all controlled ares including average speed zones and thankfully I haven't been caught out anywhere. It's interesting that when my speedo reads 43, the sat nav is dead on at 40. But yesterday, while driving on the new "smart" 4-lane camera controlled length of the M5, my satnav showed exactly 60, my speedo showed 63 and the Mercedes cruise control showed 65. A lot of cars were going past me at somewhere between 10 and 30 mph more than I was doing (they were probably all playing the leapffrog trick and slowing down before the next camera)!

But what a nonsense anyway - yesterday in both directions of travel the road was 3/4 empty and driving at 70 felt like you could get out and walk quicker! Isn't it about time the variable speed limit allowed drivers to shift up a notch when the traffic is very light?

 

[davemercedes]

It see

No offense taken, but you have missed my point.

If we accept that there is some latitude taken at the moment, then what this guy is saying is...don't take the ****.

It seems top me that the Police chief is the one taking the ****. Speedometers - at least those driven by a gear and cable used to be legally allowed a ten percent variance; I'm not sure if they have any variance allowed now. But most of us have a speedo that errs on the ambitious i.e.: it seems the speedo manufacturers chose this bias. But what if you do have one that reads 10 percent slow? There you are driving at exactly 70 by your instrument and kerching! you're nicked for being law abiding. The law or the police chief in this case, is a bit of an ass.

My TomTom satnav beeps as I approach every (known) camera. I tend to drive on that speed through all controlled ares including average speed zones and thankfully I haven't been caught out anywhere (having said that I'd better be afraid of the post for the next few weeks...). It's interesting that when my speedo reads 43, the sat nav is dead on at 40. But yesterday, while driving on the new "smart" 4-lane camera controlled length of the M5, my satnav showed exactly 60, my speedo showed 63 and the Mercedes cruise control showed 65. A lot of cars were going past me at somewhere between 10 and 30 mph more than I was doing (they were probably all playing the leapffrog trick and slowing down before the next camera)!

But what a nonsense anyway - yesterday in both directions of travel the road was 3/4 empty and driving at 70 felt like you could get out and walk quicker! Isn't it about time the variable speed limit allowed drivers to shift up a notch when the traffic is very light?

 

[LostKiwi]

But what if you do have one that reads 10 percent slow? There you are driving at exactly 70 by your instrument and kerching! you're nicked for being law abiding.

Speedometers by law are not allowed to read lower than the actual speed but are allowed to be 'optimistic'.

 

[Craiglxviii]

It see

It seems top me that the Police chief is the one taking the hiss... Speedometers - at least those driven by a gear and cable used to be legally allowed a ten percent variance; I'm not sure if they have any variance allowed now. But most of us have a speedo that errs on the ambitious i.e.: it seems the speedo manufacturers chose this bias. But what if you do have one that reads 10 percent slow? There you are driving at exactly 70 by your instrument and kerching! you're nicked for being law abiding. The law or the police chief in this case, is a bit of an ass.

My TomTom satnav beeps as I approach every (know) camera. I tend to drive on that speed through all controlled ares including average speed zones and thankfully I haven't been caught out anywhere. It's interesting that when my speedo reads 43, the sat nav is dead on at 40. But yesterday, while driving on the new "smart" 4-lane camera controlled length of the M5, my satnav showed exactly 60, my speedo showed 63 and the Mercedes cruise control showed 65. A lot of cars were going past me at somewhere between 10 and 30 mph more than I was doing (they were probably all playing the leapffrog trick and slowing down before the next camera)!

But what a nonsense anyway - yesterday in both directions of travel the road was 3/4 empty and driving at 70 felt like you could get out and walk quicker! Isn't it about time the variable speed limit allowed drivers to shift up a notch when the traffic is very light?

This is what I was saying. If the roads are empty and the weather conditions allow it, shift the (legal) limit up to 80. Or 90. The cars are all designed to do above that anyway. It requires all roads on the system to be “smart” but then these roads are already linked to the controllable gantry system anyway...

On speedos, the bias is positive (reads faster than actual) and progressive usually beyond 40mph in 5-10% of speed, or thereabouts. Not every car is the same within brand or model.

All of my cars will subtract 1-2mph of actual speed from the cruise control setting.

 

[davemercedes]

Speedometers by law are not allowed to read lower than the actual speed but are allowed to be 'optimistic'.

Well, it's all a "what if theory", but just suppose you had a speedo with a fault from brand new that did read lower by 10 percent... With the current guidance you might have got away with it for years driving at what you and I would probably call quite sensible speed and actually being "safely" within the 10% + 2 guidance. Then this Chief Plod decides that if you're doing 71 on a motorway you're for the high jump.

I did get a speeding ticket some 20-odd years ago. Taking MIL back home down south after Christmas on the morning of 1st January on a motorway that was honestly virtually empty - literally one other car every mile or so. I drove past a jam sandwich sitting on the hard shoulder and put myself into his VASCAR field... Five or six minutes later they came flying up with every light flashing and I received an instant ticket.

But he asked my opinion about the process and if I was unhappy about it, then the driver piped up and said "it's dangerous if someone pulls out in front of you" There followed a discussion on "dangerous" driving and the probability of a collision occurring at speed - but he couldn't really justify road safety when I told him they had probably touched 140 in their toy racing car (they had Senators in those days) to catch up with me from a standing start. He couldn't argue either when I pointed out that my 40 years of driving experience easily trumped the driver's 4-week police course (he was maybe aged 28-30 and he did ask for my opinion!). Heh heh, As you can guess, I was pretty ***sed off at being pinched! I also pointed out that every morning on the same motorway (but very busy) I normally drove at/up to the legal limit but I regularly used to get passed by "kids" in GTE's driving at atrocious speed and behaving with no manners including undertaking, cutting across three lanes etc - and where were they at that time in the morning? Never on the motorway! Going by some of the things we see, it's probably the same today or maybe more so with budget cuts while they're simply relying on cameras for speeding tickets with next to no "behavioural" policing any more.

Yes, I was speeding but sometimes the law is definitely a bit of an ass.

 

[LostKiwi]

Some years ago when I was younger and arguably a bit more stupid I had a very noisy V6 Capri (this was in my NZ days). As a young male in his mid twenties this did attract a moderate amount of the wrong kind of attention....
One particular morning I was on my way to work. I had a broken speedometer cable and was waiting a replacement from Ford (was going to be a week) so was driving by guestimating speed on the rev counter. I went past a motorcycle traffic officer who took 'a moderate amount of the wrong kind of attention' and started to follow me. I noticed immediately and was very careful to keep speed down. Turned left at the next junction. He followed. Turned right at the next one (it was an alternative route to work so not out of my way). He followed. Hmmm... I bet he's going to pull me over. Sure enough he closed right up on my bumper and turned on his blue lights, so I stopped. He locked up the bike, dropped it on the ground and slid under the back of the car (I inched forward slightly so he didn't hit it). He picked himself up, walked to my widow and said "I should knock your f*cking block off for stopping like that!" I duly replied "Well you know the rules - you should be able to stop safely in half the distance of clear road ahead" (direct quote from the road code). He had no answer to that but was clearly seriously pi**ed off! It was worth the ticket for doing 31 in a 30 zone as that was the only thing he could find wrong with the car!