Looks like plans for an 80mph motorway speed limit have been scrapped. Some suggestion the idea had broad support, but the Tories got cold feet because it might alienate women voters: www.guardian.co.uk/global/2013/j ... otorway-80 Will this actually affect anyone, given that many car drivers tend to sit at about 80-85mph when conditions permit? And the police don't really take interest until you get above that sort of speed.

Looks like plans for an 80mph motorway speed limit have been scrapped. Some suggestion the idea had broad support, but the Tories got cold feet because it might alienate women voters: www.guardian.co.uk/global/2013/j ... otorway-80 Will this actually affect anyone, given that many car drivers tend to sit at about 80-85mph when conditions permit? And the police don't really take interest until you get above that sort of speed.

As you say, it'll take speeds of 85+ to make the cops pull you right now. If the speed limit was 80 it would mean that it would take speeds of 95+ that brought the cops to your attention.

It isn't the maximum speeds that are dangerous, it is high speed without taking attention to the road conditions. 100mph on an empty motorway with clear visibility is safer that 69mph in heavy motorway traffic after a rain shower.

The actual limit is not an issue, whatever it is set at is not really a huge issue at all and 80mph makes very little difference but would probably be enforced more seriously than the current one.

What is a problem is the potential differences in speed between on vehicle and another and the ability, or lack of ability of the human eye and brain to judge approaching speeds from behind when viewed in a rear view mirror - the important point here being that we must never consider a completely delimited motorway system.

I have experienced a derestricted autobahn at dusk in a PSV vehicle that was cruising along nicely at 70mph, the driver pulled to the left to overtake a truck and judged that the car headlights that he saw in his mirror were sufficiently far away to not be a problem to us or the other driver - wrong - the other car was some sort of Merc or BMW sports variant that must easily have been traveling in excess of 120mph, probably well in excess - our driver swerved back to the right and the car was gone in half a second.

Its not the fact that the other driver was driving so fast but the fact that the differential in our speeds was then so much greater and the fact that its impossible to judge those approaching speeds in the dusk/dark - at least with a 70 or 80 mph limit you have a much lower differential, often just 10mph or so.

Now they're putting up all the motorway average speed cameras like the M42 birmingham and M1 Luton just do the whole network and have variable speeds set to conditions. Including open speeds at night on clear motorways. Surely a common sense approach is what's needed.

"open speeds", "night", "common sense".

Yep, makes no sense at all.

I've been on a motorway at night with nothing in front or behind me, if i do 160mph who does that affect?

Like wise 70mph in rush hour is too much, i'd happily do 50mph.
We have people constantly monitoring the motorway, how hard is it to change the speeds accordingly, especially with those blue cameras that give them all the data.

The poor sod you crash into the back of.

I don't particularly care if someone wants to do 80-90 on the motorway, as long as they're paying attention and being careful. Much faster than that and I don't believe the vast majority of drivers have the ability to react quick enough or the skill to react in the correct way if something out of the ordinary happens.
If someone wants to drive at race car speeds then they can drive on a race track.
As Jerry points out, it's often bad enough with a speed difference of only 10-20 mph between vehicles.

Until all the morons on the roads are dealt with and those who think that rules/laws do not apply to them then nothing will change.
MORE SPEED CAMERAS
MORE ON THE SPOT FINES
MORE TRAFFIC COPS
MORE VEHICLE TAKING AWAY
DRIVING TEST FOR EACH TYPE OF VEHICLE YOU USE AND RETEST EVERY 3 YEARS
Then I will be able to drive on the empty roads without let or hindrence

I live in Germany and most of the autobahn network in my area is unrestricted.

Most people cruise at around 100mph. The irony of this is that if you do much less you are probably creating a hazard by not keeping up with the flow of traffic. That said, people go far, far faster; especially when the roads are quiet. In a high powered sports saloon 150mph is perfectly safe and sturdy; until someone pulls out into your path.

I give a particular wide berth to anything on Polish plates, because the driver is probably drunk. I have seen these boys stopping at service station to 'refuel' with booze.

I said if there was no one in front of me.

Granted at some point there will be but that wasn't my point, if there was just myself, why can't i do 160mph on a dry empty road?
Doesn't Germany have a safer record on the motorway than us

I don't know about the safety record but you have to bear in mind that its a much bigger country and take into account the concentration of motorway traffic around major conurbations, my guess is that the fabled "nothing in front of me" will be far more prevalent in Germany than here, there's only the M180 that I can think of in the North where I'd even think about putting my foot down if it was legal - a motorway to nowhere built because they could.

The main point is of course that you just know that in this country if it was decreed that there was no speed limit on any motorway between the hours of midnight and 5am then you'd need to double the shifts of paramedics all over the country for every fekkwit in a Corsa with go-faster stripes and/or an overpowered Merc/BMW/Audi sports derivative would be out there trying to get 150mph out of their penis extensions - it would be carnage.

And just remind me again - when is most freight shifted around the motorway networks in this country, it couldn't be at night could it




Nope, if you want to know what the combination of quiet motorway, high powered "sports" car, and the belief that you can drive a car very fast and still react to the unexpected when it happens, then just read this [urlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7539432.stm[/url, the fekkwit in question drove at high speed into the back of a car which was at a "normal" motorway speed, the fekkwit in question being proved to have still been accelerating when the impact occurred.

You can still put the responsibility in the drivers hands and limit the idiocy.

Say, if you have an accident proven to be 100mph or more, insurance doesn't pay out for your write off. (if you live)

Porsche drivers will think twice about being super silly.

Its a cute idea, cute, but naive - and most production cars will do 100mph, we aren't just talking about petrolheads here, there's probably six fekkwits in your own street who think they will be well capable of handling their own car at 100mph in the middle of the night on the M62.

Since you passed your test (assuming you have passed a driving test), have you undertaken any enhanced driver training?

If only you thought twice before posting.

By enhanced what do you mean?

I have car, bike, PCV, HGV,i have a cpc with the last two.

Pass plus...no

Yes, you're right because rubbishing my idea is easy. Lets punish the majority of sensible people because 'some' idiot will cause a crash.

Lets just void everyone's motorway privileges until everyone has done motorway training because that would get rid of all the current accidents, i mean 70mph is way too fast if you haven't had motorway training.

There are Nobs on the road, that is a fact but there are people in the majority who are not, so we restrict everyone for the sake of the the protection of the minority.

I drive relatively (by others standards) slow on the motorway i'm usually around 65-72 mark but i'd love the opportunity to be treated like an adult, like the German government treat their people, and be in a position of having an empty road and being able to do a bit more, safely.

Certificate of Professional Competence is an admin theory qualification.

So you've never done any speed training, defensive driving courses, Advanced Driving course etc?

No wonder you believe you can drive as fast as you want to, unfortunately you'll discover just how bad a driver you are when the emergency services are peeling back the tin to drag your sorry remains from your car

Quote ="The Video Ref"Looks like plans for an 80mph motorway speed limit have been scrapped. Some suggestion the idea had broad support, but the Tories got cold feet because it might alienate women voters: www.guardian.co.uk/global/2013/j ... otorway-80 Will this actually affect anyone, given that many car drivers tend to sit at about 80-85mph when conditions permit? [i[uAnd the police don't really take interest until you get above that sort of speed[/u[/i.'" They do on the M60 near Middleton. I got nicked for doing 80mph at 11:30 in the morning on a fairly quiet stretch. 3pts and £60 or a naught boys course. Nobody's fault but mine but gives lie to the " you won't get nicked for doing 80"

Quote ="The Video Ref"Looks like plans for an 80mph motorway speed limit have been scrapped. Some suggestion the idea had broad support, but the Tories got cold feet because it might alienate women voters: www.guardian.co.uk/global/2013/j ... otorway-80 Will this actually affect anyone, given that many car drivers tend to sit at about 80-85mph when conditions permit? [i[uAnd the police don't really take interest until you get above that sort of speed[/u[/i.'" They do on the M60 near Middleton. I got nicked for doing 80mph at 11:30 in the morning on a fairly quiet stretch. 3pts and £60 or a naught boys course. Nobody's fault but mine but gives lie to the " you won't get nicked for doing 80"

It's not about protecting the minority. If the idiots driving at 100mph only killed themselves then that'd be one thing, but they don't. They crash into people driving sensibly.

You doing 160mph for instance (in your example). At that speed the slightest thing goes wrong and the car is out of control even for experienced and trained drivers. There's a pothole in the road, a piece of truck tyre debris, an unexpected bend in the road that you misjudge, the potential causes for disaster at that speed are many. And not only could you hit other drivers on your side of the road (though you did say if there's no-one around, but as Jerry says that's highly unlikely on British roads. I was travelling from Nottingham to York at 2am on a Wednesday morning there was only 1 stretch of road for less than 5 minutes where there were no other cars on the road, and that wasn't a motorway it was a stretch of York ring road) but you can easily cross the central reservation and/or break through the central barrier at that speed and hit cars on the opposite side of the road.

As I said, you want to drive at racetrack speeds, do it on a racetrack not on a public road.
70mph is a perfectly reasonable speed limit in my opinion and 70 is a perfectly reasonable speed at which to complete either a short or long journey.

Out of interest, were you stopped by the police or caught by a camera?

Eh? I told you by standards i'm a slow driver, losing my license isn't a option to me so i've never risked it, i even stopped drinking for 8 years full stop up until 5 years ago.

Defensive courses, they are part of the PCV, you carry people not cargo, you are taught to read the roads in front of and second guess what people are going to do.

Speed training, licence wise no, i've done track days, formula ford stuff but to race i need the 'b' license and i'm not too bothered as i'd rarely use it for the cost i'd have to outlay.

I'm not a speeder, i think you're getting the wrong end of the stick, i'm saying treat us like Germany, apparently they have a safer record, so it can't be all bad.

When I ran the Merc dealership, one of my customers had an operation on his left knee which would restrict his driving ability for a couple of weeks. He phoned me to ask if my car was automatic (it was, only a fool buys a manual Merc) and whether there was any chance we could swap cars for a fortnight. After putting him on our insurance and me on his, he got his wife to drop him and the car off at the depot. I gave him the keys to my E350 and accepted the keys to his chipped Honda NSX.



I put about 3000 miles on the clock of that thing in the two weeks I had it but only once did I try to open it up. I was visiting another customer in Glasgow and left home early one mid-June morning. Round about Shap, at 5.00 am, I opened it up. I bottled it at 160mph (with more than a couple of hundred revs left) and dropped back to 80mph. What was apparent to me was no matter how good a driver I thought I was, there was no way I had complete control of that car. Anything untoward happening would have led to me losing control and I dread to think of any consequences. That was on a bright, dry mid-June morning, on a completely empty road, When I opened that car up, I never saw another vehicle on either carriageway.

Spend some time driving on a two-lane autobahn and then come back and let us know what you think

The experience that I had (previous page) was on a two lane autobahn, nothing more grand than a dual carriageway, so as on the A1 (for instance) you change lanes frequently if only to overtake HGV's - its dangerous when the differential speed between the two lanes can be 50mph or even more, far too dangerous for me to expect British drivers to be able to handle it even on our three or four lane motorways.