Who was at the wheel" case to be heard. 572

I'm not so sure. I still reckon that the normal driver is constrained by the speed at which they feel "comfortable", and this, buttuming that the limit is set sensibly, is in general, something less than "warp speed".

Personally, I'm not "anti speed limits" - I'm strongly pro-"limits set for real safety reasons and not 'PC, think of the childrun' reasons". As I've said before, properly set limits are a good indicator of "hazard density", which makes driving both easier and safer. The problem with the modern "cry Wolf!" version of limit setting is that by devaluing the currency they've almost completely ruined the utility of limits as such an indicator.

One could say that "virtually every civilised country" is run by control-freaks with a very similar mind-set, I suppose... But that, although having a not inconsiderable correlation with the truth, is somewhat flippant.

To look a tad more objectively at it... The 30 limit in the UK was imposed in 1934 - 62 years ago! Since then although "Mk 1 Hom Sap" has not changed much, cars have changed out of all recoginition. I used to own an Austin 7, very much a car of that period. Apart from skinny little cross-ply tyres made from compounds approximating to concrete, with all the grip characteristics implied thereby, the brakes were a revalation... Tiny drums connected to the brake pedal with wires. Due to the way this connection was made, applying the brakes caused the front axle to tilt backwards slightly caused by the inertia of the vehicle - this loosed the brakes off again. Setting the brakes up "tight" enough to compensate for this caused them to snatch and send the car off in random directions, so you were left with two choices of setup, (a) stop, but with random changes of course, or (b) keep in a straight line but not stop until Doomsday. This little car *just* about managed the Highway Code braking figures. Look at a modern vehicle - a 1G stop on a dry road is almost a minimum nowadays. With legal tyres most cars will stop inside the HC "dry" distances on a very wet road. (In a recent "Top Gear", a clapped-out old Volvo estate was shown to be able to stop in *half* the HC distance from 60mph!!). Yet there have been no compensating changes made to speed limits, they are stuck resolutely in the 1930s, or, in the case of the blanket NSL limits, the 1960s.

If you examine the 85th percentile speeds on 30 limited roads with free-flowing traffic, in the majority of cases it is 5 to 10 mph higher than the limit. This suggests very strongly that responsible motorists are unconciously making the 60+ year "adjustment" for themselves. Unfortunately, of course, this fits in *exactly* with the DfT rules for the placement of speed cameras - which is why they nick so many people without making any improvement in road safety.

That's actually a nice thought... As long as the "powers that be" don't decide that the best speed for such automated traffic is 15mph!

-- and don't bother with ralf4, it's a spamtrap and I never go there.. :)

... There's pleasure sure in being mad That none but madmen know... Dryden