speeding fine

[Donkmeister]

they make sure that nearly all vehicles travel in convoy at the same speed.

To agree with your argument, I would have to introduce one very big assumption: cars travel at a constant speed.

This is patently not true. We've all experienced the situation where you drive at dead-on 70, and find yourself to be slowly approaching the car in front doing 68mph. You pull out to overtake, but the car in front now speeds up very very gradually. You look down and see you are still doing dead-on 70. You drop back and pull in but the same thing happens half a mile later.

This is sometimes because the driver in front is an a-hole who doesn't think you should be allowed to overtake him. However, in most cases the driver isn't even aware he's doing it...

If you accelerate up to 80, the driver of the other car won't involuntarily increase their own speed so drastically and you'll find that they drop back to the 68 they were doing before.

Even cruise control is not infallible... You still get variation of 1-2mph up and down over a period of a few miles due to gradient, wind direction, change of road surface etc, and different cars will be affected to different degrees.

On top of all this, we have different 70mph's. a true 70mph might show as 75mph in my car, 73mph in your car, 68mph in someone else's. If you fit GPS speedos to all cars, you still only have an accuracy of 0.1mph, so if I'm going 69.9 whilst you go 70.1, you will still catch up!

Driving at an arbitrarily set speed limit introduces these problems.

The only thing we can say with any certainty is that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.

Joe, any idea if she's being done for all her crimes yet, or will you be marching her down to the cop-shop to turn herself in?

 

[joe-90]

"In convoy no-one can hit anyone else as they are all doing 60 or whatever. Well Big Tone?"


How naive is that? So no -one is going to brake suddenly or hit someone in the adjacent lane coming in the opposite direction? How much driving have you actually done? I feel less safe in convoy at 60mph than at 80MPH on the open rural roads.

That's why train carriages don't crash into each other - they all travel at the same speed. It's the differential that's the problem.

Oh and have you never considered driving at a distance behind the car in front so that you CAN stop? Why do you tailgate?

 

[joe-90]

I do understand why we speed. And while the cars we have now are certainly up to the job, far to many drivers are not. That is the reason our speed has to be controlled by others we often over estimate our abilities. As with anything else in life, having a bit of paper saying you can is no guarantee of how well you can and experience counts for nothing if we ***k up."

The secret of not F...ing up is to drive at a safe speed that you feel is to your ability and for the conditions, which will vary from person to person, by the second and will be dependant on the road and present conditions...a speed limit or camera won't do that for you.

But if you do one day crash - then your silly speed will probably kill you. It's simple physics: Double your speed and quadruple your impact energy.

 

[joe-90]

Joe, any idea if she's being done for all her crimes yet, or will you be marching her down to the cop-shop to turn herself in?

No more fines have arrived so it looks like she was just a bit late slowing down on the one day. An easy mistake really.

 

[roadrunner333]

hat's why train carriages don't crash into each other - they all travel at the same speed. It's the differential that's the problem.

Oh and have you never considered driving at a distance behind the car in front so that you CAN stop? Why do you tailgate?

In case you didn't realise the difference, train carriages are linked together and don't stop and turn off at different points...why not take the train if that is the sort of travel you want?

After about a million miles of driving, I have never run into the back of anyone, even on snow , which we used to have a lot of in the seventies and eighties, so why do you assume that I tailgate?

 

[joe-90]

hat's why train carriages don't crash into each other - they all travel at the same speed. It's the differential that's the problem.

Oh and have you never considered driving at a distance behind the car in front so that you CAN stop? Why do you tailgate?

In case you didn't realise the difference, train carriages are linked together and don't stop and turn off at different points...why not take the train if that is the sort of travel you want?

After about a million miles of driving, I have never run into the back of anyone, even on snow , which we used to have a lot of in the seventies and eighties, so why do you assume that I tailgate?

Because you said there was a problem if the car in front braked suddenly - it shouldn't really matter what the guy in front does - you should follow at a SAFE distance.

 

[roadrunner333]

yes but you said,

In convoy no-one can hit anyone else as they are all doing 60 or whatever. Well Big Tone?

Well actually people CAN hit someone else, that is my point. This isn't a perfect world so travelling in convoy wouldn't work.

 

[roadrunner333]

Travelling in convoy at a set speed is the easiest way to cause people to a) fall asleep if tired, b) lose their attention span easily, c) start fiddling with things like switches , radios, etc, d) looking round at the scenery and other drivers/passenger to occupy their minds. Driving at a sensible speed which is varying and demands concentration, is the safest form of driving.

 

[Big Tone]

"In convoy no-one can hit anyone else as they are all doing 60 or whatever. Well Big Tone?"

I'm not sure why that is directed at me because I've said nothing about a convoy, but no matter...

You can generally only go as fast or slow as the slowest vehicle in today’s heavy traffic and I harp back to my point that speed is just one element of many complex aspects of good driving.

Would you rather have someone tailgating you at 50mph or a gap of 500 yards at 80mph? Would you rather be travelling at a legal 30mph on a icy winter’s day downhill when people are getting to work or 35mph uphill on a mid summers day when no-one is around and there is a clear view? It’s all about conditions and circumstances and you can keep batting ‘Speed Kills’ back to me all you like but it will not change the fact that it is an inappropriate speed for the conditions which kills.

I have done 120 mph in perfect safety in this country. It was along the drag strip at Long Marston. An open runway with just me and another rider both heading along an open strip of Tarmac both knowing what we are doing. We should have been killed according to the “speed Kills” argument but I’ll leave it for you to work why, and why the same speed didn’t kill me on the Autobahns of Germany.

When I only had a motorbike for transport back in the early 80s I had to travel 18 miles to work including the terrible winters you may remember back then. Minus 15 deg, plus wind chill, in appalling conditions. I vividly remember how cold I felt and how my fingers felt like each one had been hit with a hammer.

Even though I saw car drivers skidding and the aftermath of accidents on route I never once fell off. Why? Because I chose an appropriate speed for the conditions INCLUDING that for my own transport and personal limitations.

I could go on citing examples all day but you either get it or you don’t. The argument which comes back is always variations on the theme “so you want people to speed everywhere?” or “you want to give people carte blanche to chose their own speed?” etc. etc.

No! I don’t! If people have the right training and education and, most importantly, act responsibly you can rest assured you are far less likely to be involved in an accident than someone who just blindly follows speed limits.

Weed out the bad drivers and don’t persecute good drivers for doing what they have done well all their life – driving well…

 

[Big Tone]

BTW. I have done ~250 mph on Tarmac very many times and it’s quite likely most people here have. Can you guess where?

And we all lived to tell the tale.

I guess condtions and circumstances make it safe...

 

[oompah]

Take off and landing.

 

[joe-90]

That's like saying you smoked for 30 years and didn't get cancer - you might next year though.

You may not have crashed your car yet - but you may next year and double speed = quadruple impact. It's schoolboy physics mate. You never know when the day might come when a tractor emerges from a hidden gate - but can you stop? Less reaction time. Longer stopping distances? Bigger impact if you can't. You've just been lucky so far.

 

[Deleted member 105431]

Joe you are talking ******.

 

[sooey]

You may not have crashed your car yet - but you may next year and double speed = quadruple impact. It's schoolboy physics mate. You never know when the day might come when a tractor emerges from a hidden gate - but can you stop? Less reaction time. Longer stopping distances? Bigger impact if you can't. You've just been lucky so far.

Sounds like you should stick to walking everywhere joe, better still, stay in the house...but watch out for overhead planes...or satellites....or meteors or....

 

[Nige F]

"In convoy no-one can hit anyone else as they are all doing 60 or whatever. Well Big Tone?"


How much driving have you actually done? I feel less safe in convoy at 60mph than at 80MPH on the open rural roads.

That's why train carriages don't crash into each other - they all travel at the same speed. It's the differential that's the problem.

Why do you tailgate?

because he thinks his car is like a train carriage