New lower speed limits for national single track roads.

Good news for those of us who cycle on country roads, but another
"attack" on the motorist no doubt.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/dri...cle5864847.ece

--
Simon Mason

That's single carriageway roads, not single track. Single track roads
don't have speed cameras, they have sheep.

--
){:|:&};:

On 8 Mar, 21:35, TheMgt wrote:
That's single carriageway roads, not single track. Single track roads
don't have speed cameras, they have sheep.

--
){:|:&};:

I know, but I didn't want the header to be too long.

--
Simon Mason

wrote in message
...
Good news for those of us who cycle on country roads, but another
"attack" on the motorist no doubt.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/dri...cle5864847.ece

--
Simon Mason

That is really good news, but only if it is used as a method to genuinely
reduce car use and to penalise drivers. We need a LOAD more drivers getting
banned and suffering totally punitive fines.

Brian.

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:25:37 -0700, wrote:
Good news for those of us who cycle on country roads, but another
"attack" on the motorist no doubt.

When the SPECS cameras come in on A roads motorists will stick much more
rigidly to the speed limit. There is an argument that drivers will turn
into zombies once we have that level of enforcement.

Whilst I'm all for cars going slower I'd much rather have cars zooming
past me at 70mph driven by attentive (albeit law breaking) drivers than
have cars going past 45mph but being driven by people that have "switched
off".

wrote:
Good news for those of us who cycle on country roads, but another
"attack" on the motorist no doubt.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/dri...cle5864847.ece

One potential issue is that if drivers are forced to go at speeds below what
they feel is perfectly safe for that road then the risk compensation effect
may result in them paying less attention than they otherwise would, rather
like wearing a helmet supposedly results in more risk taking.

Thus you might reduce the risk of a high speed collision but increase the
risk of moderate speed collisions.

Adam

On 2009-03-08, Adam Lea wrote:
wrote:
Good news for those of us who cycle on country roads, but another
"attack" on the motorist no doubt.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/dri...cle5864847.ece

One potential issue is that if drivers are forced to go at speeds below what
they feel is perfectly safe for that road then the risk compensation effect
may result in them paying less attention than they otherwise would, rather
like wearing a helmet supposedly results in more risk taking.

That may be so, but in practice they will be driving just as fast but
paying more attention to where the cameras are. These days you can get
your satnav to beep when you're near one.

Maybe that's good for safety, I don't know.

It's hard to imagine that if this scheme goes ahead at all (the Times
article seems to exaggerate the status of the proposal a bit) that there
will actually be a lot of cameras on the kind of rural roads it's nice
to cycle on. I don't think I've ever seen a Gatso (or been seen by one I
hope that wasn't in a village or town or on a B road or higher.

Sharing the country roads with cars is not a big problem anyway in my
opinion. They just drive past, I don't care at what speed. You get the
occasional prat but he'll only be even more of a prat at 50mph.

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:24:16 GMT, Brown Cat said
in :

When the SPECS cameras come in on A roads motorists will stick much more
rigidly to the speed limit. There is an argument that drivers will turn
into zombies once we have that level of enforcement.

Yeah, but not a credible one. After all, we expect even learners to
be able to stick within the limit.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound
GPG sig #3FA3BCDE http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/pgp-public-key.txt

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 22:53:49 -0000, "Adam Lea"
said in :

One potential issue is that if drivers are forced to go at speeds below what
they feel is perfectly safe for that road then the risk compensation effect
may result in them paying less attention than they otherwise would

I found the opposite. I slowed down (some years back) and found
that I noticed so much more than before that I became significantly
more cautious as a result.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound
GPG sig #3FA3BCDE http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/pgp-public-key.txt

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

Brown Cat :

When the SPECS cameras come in on A roads motorists will stick much more
rigidly to the speed limit. There is an argument that drivers will turn
into zombies once we have that level of enforcement.

Yeah, but not a credible one. After all, we expect even learners to
be able to stick within the limit.

In fact, it's precisely the opposite way around.

It's easy to get a new driver to stick to speed limits - or even some way
below the limit. But once a novice driver has overcome their natural sense of
apprehension and gained some experience on the road, their personal need for
an over-cautious approach fades.

A bit like riding a bike, really.