On or around Wed, 07 May 2008 09:27:09 +0100, JonG
enlightened us thusly:
>Austin Shackles wrote:
>
>>> Ah - many of us have found a really clever answer to that. Stay within
>>> the limit and everything else happens automatically.
>>
>> hooter that. I'll drive within (often quite a long way within) the limits
>> on roads that merit it, I'm damned if I'll obey arbitrary limits with no
>> credible reason for existing.
>>
>> and please don't try to tell me there are no such limits.
>
>I don't know, maybe, maybe not.
>
>I am interested in how you think you are able to tell simply from
>driving along a road what all the factors were in assigning a given
>speed limit to it.
I don't. I judge the road and the conditions. A non-exhaustive list of
things I judge includes:
* presence or absence of houses, and density thereof.
* presence or absence of side turnings.
* width of road, number of lanes.
* condition of surface.
* weather conditions.
* light or dark.
* my own physical condition (tired or not, for example).
* the limits and abilities of the vehicle.
Now, obviously, I don't consciously think about all these things all the
time, it's mostly semi-automatic based on many years and probably by now
hundreds of thousands of miles of experience.
You'll see me, for example, if you come an watch, do under 20 through the
village where I pick up schoolkids - where the limit is 30, when it's
going-home time. You'll see me do the same in towns, at busy times. If you
happen to see me coming through Lampeter at say 3 am, you'll see me doing 30
or even more.
In the following, you are to interpret the word "safe" as meaning "such that
the risk of collision (including collision with the scenery) is sufficiently
low as to make such very unlikely". I'd say that "very unlikely" should be
probability of less than 0.00005 (1 collision in 20,000 miles) for normal
purposes, if you want to try to quantify it. There's no such thing as
"safe" on the road, as an absolute, unless you simply decline to be there at
all, which is not what we're discussing.
All fixed limits are by their nature arbitrary. There's no magic which
means that it's always safe to do 30 in a built-up area and never safe to do
e.g. 35. In fact, it's often not safe to do 30, and 20 would be a better
speed, and this is begin reflected in the fact that there are now some 20
mph zones. However, while 20 mph is plenty outside school at knocking-off
time, it's irrelevant at 10pm on Saturday, provided that there are no other
risk factors.
Nor is there magic to say that it's always safe to do 60 on the open road,
some roads it's NEVER safe to do 60, yet the limit is 60. Other roads it's
sometimes safe to do more than 60. I don't think there's any (normal) road
on which I'd say it's always safe to do 60, under any conditions.
So yes, the majority of limits are arbitrary and a good driver judges the
road and the conditions to determine his speed. Very often, that speed will
be below the posted limit, but it's not necessarily so. I can show you a
stretch of road in South Wales where I had the car up to 90 with an
acceptable risk level. Such roads, motorways excepted, are rare, I admit.
The principal point about speed limits is to provide a big stick to hit
idiots with, which doesn't have the burden of proving that the speed was
dangerous. And, if I manage to get done for speeding by a non-concealed
device or dibble, then I'll happily accept the title idiot - not because I
exceeded the arbitrary limit but because I failed to spot the enforcement
and thus got caught by it.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
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