From today's "Daily Telegraph":
"...motorists caught travelling at 45mph in a 30mph zone would receive a penalty of six points and a £100 fine.
This is twice as high as the existing penalty of 3 points on the license with a £60 fine but ministers want enforce the rules to send a clear message to speeding drivers.
The proposals are aimed at distinguishing between the driver who marginally drifts over the speed limit and the one who flagrantly flouts it. "
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I am getting a serious case of deja-vu with this story.
Wasn't something similar mooted about 5 years ago which also included proposals for reducing the number of points should you stray slightly over the limit i.e 2 points for doing 35 in a 30?
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Wasn't something similar mooted about 5 years ago which also included proposals for reducing the number of points should you stray slightly over the limit i.e 2 points for doing 35 in a 30?
Yup. They've junked that bit. Something about "sending the wrong message" or some similar bit of wishy-washy patronising blether. Bah!
(No, I haven't been done lately - it's merely that any Government utterance these days tends to make me grumpy...)
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Two points here:
1. Surely it would follow from what they are saying that for minor offences the points should be reduced. Eg 56 in a 50 or 79 in a 70 should become 1 point not 3?
2. Unless I'm misunderstanding drivers can already face disqualification for two speeding offences. 97+ in a 70 will get you 6 points (and possibly a brief ban), so this twice = 12 points which is a mandatory ban. They are only suggetsing 6 points for worse speeding, so I don't quite understand the difference here? Unless the 6 point boundary would be quite a lot lower than 97 (which I suspect it would)
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Won't affect uninsured, untaxed, cloned plate vehicles.
Law only catches those who fear it.
Probably they are not generating enough revenues from speed cameras anymore.
So, they need to tight the screw a bit - otherwise how they would get a pay rise ;)
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It's probably a money saving exercise. Currently if you're speeding by a wide margin then you have to go to court, with all the costs to the tax payer that entails.
If these proposals become law, then more serious speeding offences could be dealt with by fixed penalty (or at least the first one would, you'd have to go to court for any subsequent offence that could trigger a ban).
It's the low speed ones that disturb me most. I hate 20mph zones, because 20 is a very, very difficult speed to maintain, and speedometers aren't very accurate at those speeds. I could see a lot of people picking up six points for 31mph in 20mph zones where it would be safe to do that speed.
Also the 45 in a 30 zone sounds ok, until you realise how many 30mph dual carriageways there are, where 45mph would be perfectly safe. There's one near me, and no-one stays at 30 along it, except where there's a fixed speed camera. Driving at 30mph along that road just feels plain wrong. My senses and driving skills subconciously tell me it's at least a 40mph road, so I have to concentrate extra hard on keeping my speed down.
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It's the low speed ones that disturb me most. I hate 20mph zones because 20 is a very very difficult speed to maintain and speedometers aren't very accurate at those speeds.
Why is 20mph a very very difficult speed to maintain? And why aren't speedometers very accurate at those speeds?
I'd say 20mph is tricky in 4th gear but a doddle in 3rd or even 2nd depending on the car. And speedos get less accurate at high speeds, not low speeds. Unless you've got an Austin A35 where the needle bounces between 0 and 30mph at low speeds....
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I'd say 20mph is tricky in 4th gear but a doddle in 3rd or even 2nd depending on the car.
You'd be surprised, actually - we live in a 20 zone and the Mondeo is an utter pain to try and keep at that speed - too slow for third and too fast for second. The 6-speed box has a surprisingly big gap between the two gears, which doesn't help. I guess this is the flip side of having a 2-litre diesel engine and gearing suited to relaxed cruising.
The Panda, on the other hand, will toddle along at 20 in third happily as anything and the Bandit, having gearing ranging from 5 to 11 mph per 1000 rpm, will do pretty much whatever in any gear anyway.
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we live in a 20 zone and the Mondeo is an utter pain to try and keep at that speed - too slow for third and too fast for second.
The 20 is a maximum. You could always drive at 15.
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The 20 is a maximum. You could always drive at 15.
Yes, I'm aware that it's a limit and not a target. Problem is that the limit has been slapped on the whole district without any consideration of suitability, need, whatever. My road (20 limit) is wider and straighter than some elsewhere in the area that are NSL. Many people drive along it at 35. Also, I have enough of the local dimbos trying to slipstream me at 20. At 15 they'd probably ram me.
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The Telegraph article only refers to a six point penalty for drastically exceeding the 30mph limit, so it looks likely tha revisions would apply to 30mph areas only.
This seems entirely sensible to me. There's plenty of evidence that cyclists and pedestrians receive more severe injuries the faster they're hit - and the latest quote is that the difference between 30 and 35mph is significant - double the risk of killing someone.
Keeping the 3 point limit for lesser offences also sounds sensible to me - You'd still be very unlucky to get 3 points for doing less than 35 in a 30 and if you can't drive at 30 +_ 5mph you don't deserve to be on the road anyway in my view.
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if you can't drive at 30 +_ 5mph you don't deserve to be on the road anyway in my view.
That's right, anyone caught doing 35mph should have their licence taken away for ever.
Good grief!
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.**********
How about fines being based on £10 per 1mph over the limit. Seems fair enough to me.
Points - well I wouldn't bother giving someone 3 points for say 5mph over the limit but fine them £30 odd. (So you might have to adapt the £10 per 1mph to £30 + £5 per 1mph + points)
Or is that all too complicated
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What's the fundamental reason of all this farce?
Once every now and then it was shown how 30 mph was so less harmful than 40 mph.
Suddenly 30 mph becomes dangerous!
Shouldn't the authorities now advise pedestrians how cross roads? If they are cautious, along with drivers, no one will get hurt at 30 mph.
20 mph is also uneconomical to drive and pollution is actually more!
I have seen twice people (adults) crossing motorway by running on last month alone (once at night).
Now, soon there will be some serious accidents (eg. incident where 2 kids died recently) and they will say reduce speed limit on motorway.
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Confusious he say: "Progress marches fowards with backwards steps, 40-30-20, soon man with red flag will return" Grasshopper.
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I don't think 6 points for grossly exceeding a non motorway speed limit is a bad idea. If you do 50 in a 30 zone, the chances are you are a danger to other road users including pedestrians.
But this while area is a mess. They only enforce the limits where they can make lots of money, not on local residential roads where enforcement would be nice, at least where I live. And as someone has said, it does not catch those who own untraceable vehicles, which surely must be a large proportion of dangerous drivers.
And how about some enforcement directed towards cyclists and pedestrians. A significant proportion of the pedestrians killed are intoxicated. And I am sure a significant proportion of cyclists killed are riding on the wrong side of the road, or at night without lights. Both activities were commonplace in Slough much to my amazement.
And I wonder how many of the deaths of pedestrians and cyclists are due to dangerous driving within the speed limit?
I suppose in these cash strapped target driven times increasing speeding penalties looks good without costing anything.
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A side issue of this is that the various legal specialists involved in motoring law will be most probably rubbing their hands in glee as they'll have an increase in clients on the edge of losing their licences and wanting some way of getting out of a ban. So whilst it may appear that more revenue will come in the increase in contested court cases will counter against the revenue accrued. Like anyone else I know a throttle works in two directions but isn't it time more was done to make pedestrians, cyclists etc more aware and responsible instead of going after motorists? Maybe I miss them but I don't see Government campaigns that try to reduce carelessness on the part of those that walk or ride a bicycle.
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This seems fair enough to me. The 6 points relates to those exceeding the limit by 50% or more. OK, it might be possible to do that by mistake, say at roadworks on a motorway or somewhere that a new limit has been introduced, but when we drive we need to be vigilant, and knowing what the speed limit is on the road you are on is part of that. Not noticing a speed limit sign one day might be not noticing a cyclist the next.
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Reasonable enough.
On every long journey I do , mostly on motorways I count the number of people who rocket past me when I'm doing 75-ish. I have no way to tell but would be fairly sure people driving at a ton plus is quite common.
Over an hour I'd see easily a dozen.
These are not people misjudging their speed, marginally over the limit.They know the limit; it has been so for 30 years .They are simply taking no notice of the law. When that happens you have to raise the penalties, and enforce them, until they do.
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Reasonable enough. They know the limit; it has been so for 30 years .They are simply taking no notice of the law. When that happens you have to raise the penalties and enforce them until they do.
When that happens you have to raise the speed limit until they stop flouting it.
:o)
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very good double page spread in the motoring section of today's DT re how the spin on 'Speed Kills' campaigns and speed cameras in general has been shown to be inaccurate
i really can't understand why so called intelligent people choose to ignore it, unless it really is because of revenue raising issues. If that is the real reason it's appalling.
Let thousands of people die needlessly, because you put all your eggs in the wrong basket and concentrate incorrectly too much on one issue.... and encourage a huge chunk of the population to belive it to the detriment of common sense and other areas that need to be concentrated on as well. Madness.
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My least favourite Terrorflag columnist these days, the reactionary twit Simon Heffer who looks as if he has a drowned red squirrel on his head in his mugshot, comes out today in favour of raising the motorway limit to 80 or even 90.
Problem with this issue is that it is genuinely divisive even here. Basically those who want to be allowed to go fast when they think it safe to do so are people of thuggish, right-wing aspect, while those opposed to it are tree-hugging wimps and horrible lefty ideologues. Never the twain shall meet, without a bit of bloodshed.
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My least favourite Terrorflag columnist these days the reactionary twit Simon Heffer who looks as if he has a drowned red squirrel on his head in his mugshot comes out today in favour of raising the motorway limit to 80 or even 90. Problem with this issue is that it is genuinely divisive even here.
You are surely not suggesting that a columnist of Heffer's stature is discussing the issue in black and white terms to provoke controversy? Next you will say that Malanie Phillips is not a conduit of truth and virtue.
Unfortunately the debate will go nowhere when idiots like Heffer discuss topics in such a childish manner. It must be nice being able to express outlandish opinions despite having no relevant qualifications and then get paid for it.
At least the Motoring section has a sensible article. Well worth a read.
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