Re: Victory for green lanes

The message <68dt7qF2ssk13U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from Peter Clinch <p.j.clinch@xxxxxxxxxxxx> contains these words:

So you support the notion that a politician with a lack of basic
knowledge of and an antipathy to much of the remit is the ideal
candidate for an important ministerial position.

No.

I have no knowledge of speed limits in Texas in the 1960s but that has
nothing to do with what went on in the UK.

Yet you've divorced it from everywhere else in the world. Were speed
limits in the UK really that different (i.e., due to our own government
ministers acting completely independently) to anywhere else in the
world)? No. So it's rather daft blaming everything on a single
government minister, especially since ministers tend to act on advice of
civil servants who in turn act on other research.

I have just had a quick trawl on the web. Prior to that all I could have
told you about foreign limits was that Germany still doesn't have a
maximum speed limit on much of its autobahn network and the Isle of Man
has so far resisted every attempt to give it a maximum speed limit.

The situation these days is complicated by the speed limits introduced
as fuel saving measures but prior to the first oil crisis I suspect that
the UK was in a minority of nations in having a national limit. As it is
a good many countries have motorway limits in excess of the UK limit.

And why would civil servants, who only a few years earlier, had helped
Marples frame the motorway legislation in such a way as to make it
expensive to give motorways speed limits (which is why we have the
absurdity of a posted limit on every slip road leading to a 70 mph
section of a motorway) change their spots.

You have an answer for everything Pete but your answer doesn't add up.

yet it is what has been observed, especially as regards cyclists and
pedestrians, who are of course primarily injured seriously by motor
vehicles outwith their control. See, for example,
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/9/3/205

But cyclists were much more frequent way back when and there is no way
you can make the argument that rare cyclists are more at risk than
frequent ones stretch to cars where the reverse is the case.

Since when has losing ones job involved either jail or a criminal record?

Who suggested anything of the sort? It was said to be a punishment,
nothing more, nothing less. Disciplinary action doesn't start at
criminality and gaol.

I thought you were claiming an equality in punishment. Loss of job,
however painful, is little more than a slap on the wrist compared with
incarceration which, most likely, also has loss of job on the
specification ***.

So you would have it that when it is relatively easy to know how fast is
fast enough you should be denied using your own judgement but when the
conditions get worse you are are sufficiently responsible and
sufficiently experienced to know when to slow down from an arbitrary
speed limit that may be well below the safe limit for that particular
road.

No. Aside from anything else, it /isn't/ easy to know how fast is fast
enough. The evidence is there in the casualty figures.

Most accidents are a slow speed.

But we are back to judgement again, and practice.

How do you know what the cause of such accidents is? Perhaps the drivers
just fell asleep at the wheel (IIRC driving when tired is at least as
big a risk as excessive speed and the majority of accidents where
excessive speed is a factor don't involve speeding).

if you fall asleep at the wheel doing 50 you have vastly less excess KE
to dissipate than if you do it at 80. As you well know. So 50 is a
"more appropriate speed" to fall asleep at...

You are most likely to fall asleep doing something that is relatively
undemanding. I sometimes drive when I am too tired and it is easy to
fall asleep wombling along in a convoy with nothing to do but follow the
vehicle in front. I know when I get to the stage of no longer looking
out for overtaking opportunities I had better start looking out for
somewhere to park up for a rest.

I had intended to trawl the Internet for speed limits for individual
countries, starting with Germany, but, as is often the case these days,
I immediately ended up with Wikipedia. I commend in particular what it
says about the 85th percentile rule and law enforcement generally, and
would draw Petes attention particularly to what allegedly happened in
Norway when they raised a low national speed limit to a slightly less
low limit.

--
Roger Chapman
Nearest Marilyn still to be visited - Great Orme.
89 miles as the crow flies,
considerably more as the walker drives.
.