I tend to agree that speed limits are essential in an urban environment, where there are lots of pedestrians and cyclists.
The equation risk of collision = (speed x surprise)-space disctates that the potential for surprise, and the probable lack of space will severely restrict the safe speed.
The mistake is extending this logic to other types of road, even motorways where there can sometimes be a very low risk of surprise and lots of space, so high speeds are possible in safety.
Speed limit enforcement, even where successful, can only control one of these three factors that govern safety. In some cases the others may be affected by the nature of the road, but the point is that space and surprise cannot be enforced, and until the cameras can do so it is wrong to call them "safety cameras".
Bad road layoutI saw the most stupid lights-road markings I've seen for a while. The lights are less than a year old, but with the money from the new tax year they've...
Today I avoided a serious accident on the M1 by managing these sufficiently that I could deal with a very nasty surprise. I probably also by my actions helped some others whowere following me avoid being involved too! But a speed limit would have done precisely nothing to help, since many of the vehicles involved were HGVs limited to 56MPH anyway, which happeded to be a bit too fast for the conditions. But most HGV drivers were insisting on driving on the limiter anyway, I was even tailgeted by one at one point. Admitted, HGV drivers have better visibility and can probably see further ahead than I could in a Vauxhall Astra at the time. The fact that many of the HGVs that had previously overtaken me when I was driving at what I considered to be a maximum safe speed for the conditions were later involved in the pile up shows what a dangerous delusion is fostered by fitting these speed limiters to lorries. I would rather the drivers were thinking for themselves.
Martin
-- Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.
