80 MPH on our Motorway's?

I'm quite happy chugging along at 60-70 mph in a car with a maximum speed near 140 mph. Mick's anti  argument seems to focus on doing emergency stops at 70 or 80 mph. In over 40 years of motorway driving, I've never had to make and emergency stop---or anything resembling it--yet. So, if you did have to do such a thing, then why was it?  I can think of 2 reasons--you're very unlucky and something most unexpected occured or you weren't paying attention to what is going on at least a 1/4 mile ahead and what other vehicles around you are doing. 

So, conversely, motorways should be even safer still if the maximum speed was reduced to say, 60 mph. But, there's many factors at work here, an shouldn't the question be will the accident rate go up or come down with a 10 mph increase in speed limit, and not everyone is going to drive at the higher speed anyway and on the M25, you'll be lucky to  get anywhere near it for large parts of it.

There's a lengthy report about it here.  http://www.abd.org.uk/motorwayspeedlimit.htm

There is difference in driving fast when the road is clear, to driving fast when it is innapropriate conditions, for example, rain,fog lots of traffic....and this would be where the variable speed signs come in.

Quite happy to follow the mandated speed in heavy traffic but see no reason when the road is clear or light traffic to have any limit (works well in Germany--this will get Mick going :) ) 

No not at all Karen.   My mistake. Nothing will ever go wrong.  Lets leave it there.

I'm sure Mick enjoys cars as much as I've always done and I started driving as quite a young kid; taken more driving tests than you know what to do with and had my driving checked several times as well. A room full of trophies from several national driving championships over the years.

His "nothing will ever go wrong" I'm taking with a pinch of salt as a flippant remark.   What I've never bought into in Labour's king pin of road safety is based on speed to the pretty much near ommision of everything else. A car going say 2-3 mph can be lethal; indeed as soon as a car starts to move it becomes dangerous. Labour would have been better served with better driver training/ instruction rather than opting for countless speeding fines which are easy to detect, prove, and little defense in court for those charged. I think they could have introduced driver education in schools too, if only for 4-6 weeks of a school year. And after passing their driving test, make it mandatory to have a bit more instruction on motorway and night driving.

I was 22 when I took the IAM test and failed....1) driving over too many manhole covers on the North Circular Rd, and 2) not tooting every cyclist I overtook. Never bothered taking it again after that, as interesting as it was for some 2 hours with an ex-Hendon police driver sat next to me.  

Hi Paul:  Do they have driver's ed in the high schools?  They do here, and most everyone takes it because it reduces the cost of car insurance, although the cost is still quite high for teens.

And Karen's right, you need to practice in varying road conditions - night, snow, motorway, parallel parking, etc.  And I would guess especially on all the narrow streets over there.  And a lot of the country roads over there are super narrow and have no verge, or anywhere to pull over or turn around.  Yet people fly down them.  So that's another area of caution.  The biggest thing kids have to learn nowadays is NO TEXTING while driving.

Ruth---I'm not aware of any high schools that have driver education at some point;  seems to be an idea that get mooted and with government spending cutbacks, seems unlikely to come to any fruition in the future.

The government's argument that an 80 mph speed limit will econonically stimulate the country----just who are these people that are so important to the economy that 10 mph is going to make a big difference to the country? I suspect most with company cars. If they really wanted to stimulate the economy, why not lower the riiculous amount of taxation on fuel?  I have one car that's sat in the garage for all this year and no longer used--no more fuel tax, road tax, MoT test costs, maintenance for my local garage. My other car is now 90% just going to work and back and local trips only. The government is trying to price you off the roads and its working--but people who would have had my business elsewhere in the country no longer have it thanks directly to the government. 

And going along theM4 today at 70 mph, I passed as many cars going less than 70 as there were overtaking me. So there's lots of drivers not interested in doing 70, let alone 80 not to mention with congestion, drivers won't be doing 80---the economy stimulating drivers according to government reports so far stuck in slow moving/stationary traffic. 

Hmm, very strange economic stimulus plan.  Do they think raising the speed will get people around faster?  I'd guess probably not.

One thing they can do to ease traffic and move it along quicker would be to allow left turns at red lights.  In most states in the US, you can treat a red light as a stop sign and simply go thru it if you're turning right and the coast is clear.  That way, people turning right don't have to wait in a big, long queue and can continue on, as long as it's clear to turn right.

Maybe they do it there already, but I don't remember seeing it allowed anywhere we drove over there.

Your  government wants you to drive faster becuase it uses more fuel to drive faster...henceforth they get an little wealthier off the taxes an bit faster.... at your expense.

I was traveling across country the year that our Govenor was on the board of transporation here in the US...and when I got back to Boston, I ran into an guy that knew this...he was an trourist bus driver. We left my friend's motorhome parked to go the tourist route one day. He was pretty upset with most the brick city streets in Boston. He said they were barely able to turn they are so small. His answer to us in what we'd like to see in transporation changes in his area....was two decker roads. One built over another...buses, trucks, and emergency vehicles on the lower lanes and cars and bikes on the upper lane. He felt the suggestion was safer for everyone. He said that he felt also that people could each have an lane of their own as they wanted to travel. I say go slower...not faster...you wanna go faster, then pick out an raceway turf for doing that. Where people are watching and there right in an instance if your in trouble. You know there won't be any wild animals running across the roads either. And chances are there won't be any little kids there either. There won't be broken glass to hit and blow out an tire....and you can have an nice little short film strip made of yourself in your car in competiton or just one of your own driving to show everyone else. Now doesn't that sound better...I think so.