This is a railway forum. On the railways almost no people are killed, in some years no passengers are killed. I think that zero deaths on the road should be striven for too. Do others agree?
If aiming to travel at the maximum limit there is a risk of exceeding it, breaking the law. The experts should IMHO advise keeping comfortably inside the maximum limit
'Sticking to the limit' is an inappropriate phrase. I know what happens if I go a few pence over my overdraft limit, so I make sure to keep comfortably inside it
I do the same when driving
Given how onerous restrictions would have to be to protect the worst drivers or computers from killing themselves or anyone else, you might as well ban all vehicles from the roads, as that'd be the only way to get near to zero deaths. The ban will have to include cyclists too, as, shock horror, they'll still face considerable risk of death or injury to themselves by falling off their contraption.
Even if you were to set a 5mph limit everywhere and have a person with a flag person walking ahead of each car, 'safe as houses' old Fred playing it safe at 3mph (5mph not a target!) would still managed to knock down his flag man somehow or fall out and run himself over. Meanwhile, those of us who survived life having having taken a sporting but respectful interpretation of speed limits, actually paying far more attention to the road then those who righteously cruised along at half the speed limit, half asleep, with a queue of cars behind them, will have been driven to suicide by those restrictions! Mental health is so important nowadays.
I don't have a problem with speed cameras being highly visible - they encourage you to slow down, and apart from the odd instance they do that. Without having cameras everywhere (not something I'd want anyway) it's a step in the right direction even if not a comprehensive solution to the speed problem.
TBH whilst speed can be a major part of some incidents, and an exaggerating factor in many others - I've always felt police have picked on speed a bit much. I know why - breaking the speed limit or not is binary, where poor driving practice is far more woolly.
But IMHO the biggest threat to me on the road are people who drive too close, and other things that a police car if passing wouldn't really bother with. Someone doing 35 in a 30 zone is probably a fraction of the threat than someone who is driving legally but not concentrating, or driving too close, or not indicating, intentionally using wrong lane on entering a roundabout to gain advantage etc.
I did once come to the conclusion that drivers are generally good and competent at operating their car (even the speeding ones) but generally quite poor at judging the whole picture, i.e the impact on others and their own decisions which can create risk.
Completely agree. Though that's why most Police forces only prosecute when over a certain threshold (such as Limit+10%+2mph), they're not normally zealots. There are far bigger issues on the road but they're harder to Police. The idea that someone is a good driver just because they observe speed limits is a notion that shouldn't be supported, there's far more to driving safely than that. Focusing on speed is almost a distraction, in various senses.