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Top Dog · Site Moderator Joined: 06 Jun 2007 Posts: 1735 Status:

Good thing or bad thing?

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Top Dog.

Clunk · Ejected Joined: 29 Jul 2007 Posts: 935 Status:

Depends.
20mph near schools or on housing estates are OK.
70mph on a motorway at 2am no need.
Some speed limits are pointless. 40 by the lysley arms. Why? Cause some kids have died there once or twice? Thier own fault, not the road. I have taken that bend in an average hatchback at 80 (Naughty, I know. But needs must.) and not had any sign of twich or drift. To crash on that road involves stupid speeds with people who can't handle that speed.
The speed limit at the top of snow hill is worth it, as the sharp right and sudden downhill is an accident recipe. What they really should do there is smooth out the bend and the brow.
At the end of the A417 dual carrageway, where you go over the roundabout, and onto the single carrageway. The 40 mph speed limit they put there recently is ignored by lorry drivers. Because it is a dip, lorrys back up traffic then take a run up down one side to make it easier to get up the other. There was once a petition to have it removed.
I agree with speed limits, but sometimes not where they are put.

Local lass · Calnetalk Mayor Joined: 05 Jun 2007 Posts: 3093 Status:

Some speed limits are pointless. 40 by the lysley arms. Why? Cause some kids have died there once or twice? Thier own fault, not the road. I have taken that bend in an average hatchback at 80 (Naughty, I know. But needs must.) and not had any sign of twich or drift. To crash on that road involves stupid speeds with people who can't handle that speed.

the reason for that speed limit was it was a danger bend with cars coming out of old derry hill on to the a4.
in the last 20 years there has been nerly 10 deaths on that stretch the worst being four people in the same car.
you may have gone down there at 80 miles per hour but what if something came out of the wood.a car came out of that turning ?
there is a great need for that perticular speed limit to be in force.

speed limets on the whole though some do not need to be there.
speed cameras are a pain in the back side you can quite happily chug along a moterway with all the cars flowing see a speed camera and every one slaps on there brakes Roll eyes

we drove to austria and used the autobans we drove mostly 90 mph all the way and cars were behind us tooting there horn as we were to slow.they have no speed limets and yet have one of the lowest accident rating going.

there is a need for speed limets on certain corners and speed limets should always be followed by schools .

kathy27 · Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 10:50 am Post subject:

clunk is right its not the roads fault some kid has just brought a car that he cant handle, i think it should be you can only drive up to a certian cc until your more experianced.
surley common sence kicks in at some point, you slow down when theres a school or built up area.

Clunk · Ejected Joined: 29 Jul 2007 Posts: 935 Status:

rosco · Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 12:30 pm Post subject:

Speed does play a significant part in accidents, there is no way getting around that. What people often forget is that it is the energy that is involved in an impact that is crucial, this is proportional to the mass of the vehicle involved but the square of the velocity.

So, hitting something at 40mph has over 70% more energy than hitting the same thing at 30mph. Or alternatively, you have that much more energy to dissipate in your braking system to come to a complete halt.

It's all a balance between what is acceptable and what is not: a 0mph speed limit would give a near 100% safety margin (admitting that some pedestrians would still manage to trip over a stationary vehicle) but wouldn't be practical. No speed limits would rely on people's discretion on what was reasonable to them, which I think is not acceptable either.

You just have to have a reasonable limit where there is little risk of collision, and reduce it where the risk increase (uprotected sideroads, no crash barrier, many houses, children etc).
Just because a road can let you do 80mph plus doesn't mean you should if there is a significant likelihood of other road users pulling in front of you with insufficient visibility to see you.

Clunk · Ejected Joined: 29 Jul 2007 Posts: 935 Status:

Local lass · Calnetalk Mayor Joined: 05 Jun 2007 Posts: 3093 Status:

As I said. Speed doesn't kill. Stupidity does.

sometime they are the same thing.
you can go along the moterway in pouring rain and no matter what you will always see a car doing over a hundred in the fast lane.

rosco · Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:46 pm Post subject:

Bear · Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 7:32 pm Post subject:

Why can we not have areas where the speed limit can be different at different times of the day. For example travelling between Calne and Trowbridge you travel down Sandridge Hill into Melksham where you come across a 30mph speed limit at the bottom of the hill presumably put in place because of the junior school which is there. Now at 8.30 to 9.00am there is a considerable amount of traffic near the school and I would suggest that the speed limit at that time is warranted as it probably is in the afternoon at the end of the school day however returning at 5.30pm with hardly a car nd no pedestrians in sight that speed limit is still in force.