Driving well below the speed limit

[The exile]

A clear reason for going slow though is when passing one of the known favourite locations of the camera van - better safe than sorry! (I'm not talking ridiculously slow, but better slow down more than you would otherwise and avoid the risk of three points and a fine!).

If you need to slow down past the favourite site of a mobile speed camera then you’re clearly driving too fast (or without due care and attention)

 

[GRALISTAIR]

The weirdest reason I’ve ever had myself for “under speeding “ (particularly going gingerly round bends / corners) was a huge saucepan that was too full of chilli con carne in the boot! I did my best to ensure Icwasnt holding people up, though.

Similar reason. My wife was shouting at me "Slow down". However, it was Lancashire Hotpot and not Chili!

 

[jon0844]

I used to drive manuals all the time where I always felt a sense of failure if I slowed down actually having to use the brakes.

That's one nice thing with EVs that have one pedal driving. And if you do need to brake a bit harder, the regenerative braking will charge the battery too.

 

[Sun Chariot]

I have found automatics tend to change up a lot earlier than I might do in a manual, presumably to save on emissions, which might explain some additional braking .

My car - and many other autos / DCT vehicles - let the driver choose various driving modes (in Eco, fifth gear engages just below 30mph - versus in Normal, fifth engages near 35mph). 7th (top) gear is engaged by 60mph on all driving modes.
My DCT car has a habit of selecting too low a gear when I am descending an incline;. Likely been designed to assist engine braking but, in reality, a ruddy annoying experience. I put the selector into manual override, to change down on my terms!

 

[mpthomson]

One of the problems with drug driving is the decision by Theresa May to set the drug limits at essentially "detectable", rather than "intoxicating". This has had three effects:

1. Lots of convictions for "drug driving" for people who've eg taken cannabis a couple of days before and are in no sense impaired
2. As a consequence of above, drug driving losing a lot of stigma especially amongst younger age groups
3. As a consequence of both of the above, "actual" drug drivers deciding they may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb

This was easily forseeable at the time

(And in the case of cannabis is leading to a two tier justice system as the wealthy are getting medical marijuana on wafer thin pretexts at which point the drug drive limits no longer apply!)

The use of prescribed medical cannabis isn’t a mitigating factor in drug driving. If you’re over the limit then you’re over the limit, it doesn’t matter why.

The limits apply equally to illegal or legally held marajuana.

 

[Peter Sarf]

The use of prescribed medical cannabis isn’t a mitigating factor in drug driving. If you’re over the limit then you’re over the limit, it doesn’t matter why.

The limits apply equally to illegal or legally held marajuana.

In much the same way as if you are taking a lot of certain other prescrbed drugs there is a point where you have to consider yourself unfit to drive.

 

[Egg Centric]

The use of prescribed medical cannabis isn’t a mitigating factor in drug driving. If you’re over the limit then you’re over the limit, it doesn’t matter why.

The limits apply equally to illegal or legally held marajuana.

That's not true. There's a statutory defence if it's prescribed legally. Take a look at section 5A part 3: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/5A

In much the same way as if you are taking a lot of certain other prescrbed drugs there is a point where you have to consider yourself unfit to drive.

Of course. But the limits don't necessarily apply.

Anyways I picked up my (well Mrs Centric's in theory) second hand Tesla this afternoon and never mind limits (of a speed not drug nature), this thing SHIFTS. Not going to be bothered about others pootling below the limit in it when I can do 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and "brisk overtaking speeds" in not much less.

 

[Meerkat]

Yes but as I pointed out, this is far from flawless, in fact if you did this on a driving test you could end up failing - if the driver in front takes a corner too quickly, you do too, you both end up in a hedge. That's not a good thing.

It’s a guide, that allows you to go into the corner nearer your limit rather than cautiously.
Bit like how your limits can change when you have a passenger - the actual limit doesn’t but you don’t want to be standing on the brakes or steering as hard as you will tolerate on your own.

If you need to slow down past the favourite site of a mobile speed camera then you’re clearly driving too fast (or without due care and attention)

Or you live in Surrey and the speed limits are ridiculous!
One of the mobile ‘safety cameras’ often hides round a corner just as people are planning for an upcoming dual to single merge. So just as people are distracted by checking mirrors, looking for a gap, blipping to get into a gap etc there are others panicking and stamping on the brakes. Its all about safety though apparently.
And as often as not it’s the dawdlers who do the most panicky reactions to cameras - because they aren’t aware of the limit and they aren’t aware of their actual speed.

 

[Indigo Soup]

Or you live in Surrey and the speed limits are ridiculous!

The trouble is that slapping up a 40mph sign and repeaters is relatively cheap. Actually reducing the natural speed of the road to 40mph requires narrowing lanes, reducing sightlines, horizontal realignment etc., which is comparatively expensive. The former requires active enforcement. The latter naturally reduces speed.

This is where the old '85th percentile' rule for setting speed limits came from - the idea was that you'd set the limit at the expected 85th percentile of speed with no restriction. The other side of that argument is that if you want to reduce the speed limit, you ought to change the character of the road such that the 85th percentile speed is lowered.

There's actually a pretty decent body of evidence on how to do this. But signs and cameras are cheaper.

 

[Meerkat]

The trouble is that slapping up a 40mph sign and repeaters is relatively cheap. Actually reducing the natural speed of the road to 40mph requires narrowing lanes, reducing sightlines, horizontal realignment etc., which is comparatively expensive. The former requires active enforcement. The latter naturally reduces speed.

This is where the old '85th percentile' rule for setting speed limits came from - the idea was that you'd set the limit at the expected 85th percentile of speed with no restriction. The other side of that argument is that if you want to reduce the speed limit, you ought to change the character of the road such that the 85th percentile speed is lowered.

There's actually a pretty decent body of evidence on how to do this. But signs and cameras are cheaper.

I agree with all that, but would add that speed limits are a cheap and easy ‘we are doing something’.
They don’t make design changes to the road to make it safer, they don’t consider whether the accidents are really related to speed limits (nutters will be going way too fast whatever the speed limit, and will be overtaking more if the speed limit is lower…). They just say ‘ooh accidents, something must be done, let’s reduce the speed limit’
And it’s politically easy - just a drip drip drip that creates far less pushback than if they consulted on a general policy. Proposals are hidden away in a corner of the website no one looks at with A few little signs that only locals see. And of course locals always want a speed limit outside their house, but generally won’t want speed limits everywhere else.
Plus in the Surrey Hills they have an active MAMIL lobby that think a handful of people driving down to ride about are more important than local people getting to work etc.

 

[Brent Goose]

Apologies if this has already been covered but has people not accelerating in the acceleration lane been mentioned?

 

[bramling]

I agree with all that, but would add that speed limits are a cheap and easy ‘we are doing something’.
They don’t make design changes to the road to make it safer, they don’t consider whether the accidents are really related to speed limits (nutters will be going way too fast whatever the speed limit, and will be overtaking more if the speed limit is lower…). They just say ‘ooh accidents, something must be done, let’s reduce the speed limit’
And it’s politically easy - just a drip drip drip that creates far less pushback than if they consulted on a general policy. Proposals are hidden away in a corner of the website no one looks at with A few little signs that only locals see. And of course locals always want a speed limit outside their house, but generally won’t want speed limits everywhere else.
Plus in the Surrey Hills they have an active MAMIL lobby that think a handful of people driving down to ride about are more important than local people getting to work etc.

Agreed - reducing speed limits is akin to the poor management practice on the railway of announcements being the solution to every problem.

 

[Meerkat]

Apologies if this has already been covered but has people not accelerating in the acceleration lane been mentioned?

And then stopping at the end?
it’s lethal behaviour and should get bigger punishment than speeding.

 

[AM9]

And then stopping at the end?
it’s lethal behaviour and should get bigger punishment than speeding.

Well if they aren't let onto the main carriageway, they will have to stop somewhere on the slip road.

 

[Egg Centric]

Well if they aren't let onto the main carriageway, they will have to stop somewhere on the slip road.

Exactly. I have basically the opposite views on speeding to AM9 but this is not something to worry about at all, how often do you see this? It's extremely rare in my experience except in stop start traffic.

The initial post mind was about people not accelerating in the lane at all. If you're a competent driver this shouldn't be of any great difficulty, just treat them as any other hazard.

 

[Meerkat]

Well if they aren't let onto the main carriageway, they will have to stop somewhere on the slip road.

They shouldn’t get in that position in the first place - if they had accelerated to match lane 1 speed someone would let them out. But they pootle along until they run out of slip road then stop dead, not even running on into the hard shoulder.

Exactly. I have basically the opposite views on speeding to AM9 but this is not something to worry about at all, how often do you see this? It's extremely rare in my experience except in stop start traffic.

The initial post mind was about people not accelerating in the lane at all. If you're a competent driver this shouldn't be of any great difficulty, just treat them as any other hazard.

There was a junction on the A3 where I saw it every other time, and it happened quite often on M25 j9 clockwise (which is dangerous enough without failing to accelerate).
What is the competent driver supposed to do to avoid being left with an under speed merge, stop further back on the slip road? You can drop a bit to give yourself acceleration space (if you have the powers but it’s hard to predict what the muppets will do. They should just be banned and retested, like dangerous driving culprits.

 

[Brent Goose]

They shouldn’t get in that position in the first place - if they had accelerated to match lane 1 speed someone would let them out. But they pootle along until they run out of slip road then stop dead, not even running on into the hard shoulder

Indeed

 

[Egg Centric]

What is the competent driver supposed to do to avoid being left with an under speed merge

You can drop a bit to give yourself acceleration space

Exactly that. Leave enough space and you'll be golden.

This is not to excuse the slip road numpties but as with many other kinds of numpty they should not be a problem for you and if they are you would be advised to take further training yourself

 

[Brent Goose]

Problem is the situation is made needlessly complicated as you have to manage the traffic behind you and the rapidly diminishing space in front.

Also depends on how much power is available under one’s right foot

 

[Egg Centric]

Also depends on how much power is available under one’s right foot

The "Egg Centric Garage" is pretty diverse acceleration wise (those in the Musk Spiv thread will know we just got a 0-60 in 3.5s Tesla) but one of our cars is a 2006 1 litre Picanto with a broken exhaust and 196k miles on it and I promise you I would have no trouble emerging onto the M25 with some idiot stopping at the end of the slip road. There's not very many cars slower than that in normal use these days. Just leave space, honestly it's easy.

 

[Brent Goose]

Sure motorway are unlikely to be an issue but there are plenty of relatively short slip roads onto dual carriageways often straight from 30mph limits

 

[bramling]

Exactly that. Leave enough space and you'll be golden.

This is not to excuse the slip road numpties but as with many other kinds of numpty they should not be a problem for you and if they are you would be advised to take further training yourself

This doesn’t work if the slip road has two lanes, as many do, as what will likely happen is people behind will go round you. So you end up no better off. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how competent you are if surrounded by fools.

 

[Egg Centric]

This doesn’t work if the slip road has two lanes, as many do, as what will likely happen is people behind will go round you. So you end up no better off. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how competent you are if surrounded by fools.

If you leave enough space then you will be able to switch to the other lane behind the numpty!

(I do appreciate there are edge cases, as with everything in driving, where you may get stuck. But it should be vanishingly rare)

 

[bramling]

If you leave enough space then you will be able to switch to the other lane behind the numpty!

(I do appreciate there are edge cases, as with everything in driving, where you may get stuck. But it should be vanishingly rare)

It just doesn’t work here. Any attempt to create space is guaranteed to simply lead to others becoming impatient or even aggressive.

Hence why there’s so many accidents on the motorways round here (I’m thinking London ends of the A1M and M1).

 

[Egg Centric]

It just doesn’t work here. Any attempt to create space is guaranteed to simply lead to others becoming impatient or even aggressive.

Hence why there’s so many accidents on the motorways round here (I’m thinking London ends of the A1M and M1).

We'll have to agree to disagree. I drive down south all the time and while I agree southerners cannot drive, it really is not difficult to manage space around oneself (even if yes it does sometimes mean a couple "take advantage")

Try driving in Istanbul or Cairo to see what space enchroachment really is...

 

[bramling]

We'll have to agree to disagree. I drive down south all the time and while I agree southerners cannot drive, it really is not difficult to manage space around oneself (even if yes it does sometimes mean a couple "take advantage")

Try driving in Istanbul or Cairo to see what space enchroachment really is...

You still haven’t really said *how* I can manage space.

Take A1M junction 8, joining the motorway heading south. You will come off a multi-lane roundabout, where two lanes from the roundabout feed onto a short two-lane slip road (inclined), both of which merge to feed into the two-lane motorway.

The roundabout is traffic-light controlled, so the likelihood is that unless you’re the first one at the lights, you’re going to be following other vehicles.

If vehicles in front of you choose to ascend the slip road at 30 mph, as many do, what realistic options do you have? Bearing in mind that if you want to drop back to create space, you will be having to severely reduce speed, and are guaranteed to have vehicles passing you in the other lane, who will then merge in front of you at the top of the slip road. Furthermore, if you hang back enough to create space to be able to join at the same speed the motorway traffic is going, you *will* encounter aggression.

What happens in practice is that people already on the motorway see the shambles that is traffic approaching on the slip road, so most people tend to move into the right-hand lane to create space. So you then get people doing 50 pulling into the overtaking lane, to make room for people joining at 30. Every now and then it goes wrong and there’s an accident, and pretty much every morning peak this section of motorway suffers prolonged congestion as the motorway gets progressively slower and slower until grinding to a halt.

What I try and do is engineer things so that I’m first off the traffic lights, but this only works to a point, as you may well still encounter someone in front of you coming from the other direction.

Meanwhile, there’s a load more houses just been granted permission in the vicinity of this junction, so certainly not going to get better. The reality is many of these layouts date from times when there was a lot less traffic, and measures added since such as traffic lights mean traffic is nearly always bunched up.

 

[bspahh]

You still haven’t really said *how* I can manage space.

Take A1M junction 8, joining the motorway heading south. You will come off a multi-lane roundabout, where two lanes from the roundabout feed onto a short two-lane slip road (inclined), both of which merge to feed into the two-lane motorway.

The roundabout is traffic-light controlled, so the likelihood is that unless you’re the first one at the lights, you’re going to be following other vehicles.

If vehicles in front of you choose to ascend the slip road at 30 mph, as many do, what realistic options do you have? Bearing in mind that if you want to drop back to create space, you will be having to severely reduce speed, and are guaranteed to have vehicles passing you in the other lane, who will then merge in front of you at the top of the slip road. Furthermore, if you hang back enough to create space to be able to join at the same speed the motorway traffic is going, you *will* encounter aggression.

What happens in practice is that people already on the motorway see the shambles that is traffic approaching on the slip road, so most people tend to move into the right-hand lane to create space. So you then get people doing 50 pulling into the overtaking lane, to make room for people joining at 30. Every now and then it goes wrong and there’s an accident, and pretty much every morning peak this section of motorway suffers prolonged congestion as the motorway gets progressively slower and slower until grinding to a halt.

In 1989, I worked in Germany for 6 months. The A1 Autobahn near Hannover had 2 lanes with no hard shoulder and no speed limit. Some of the junctions had tight corners, with a cobbled surface at the start and end of the slip roads.

One week, I passed a rest stop with a 100m long slip road. It was half way up a long, fairly steep hill. It was much steeper than you would get on a UK motorway - perhaps about a 6 or 8% gradient. My normal cruising speed was 90mph and my speed had dropped to 80mph. I was overtaken by a Porsche going at least 120mph. The next week, I passed the same place, as a Mercedes 200 diesel with a caravan, family of 4 and bicycles on the roof pulled out of the rest stop which was doing about 20mph by the time it joined the carriageway.

 

[Meerkat]

Exactly that. Leave enough space and you'll be golden.

This is not to excuse the slip road numpties but as with many other kinds of numpty they should not be a problem for you and if they are you would be advised to take further training yourself

you will not be golden, you will be dawdling and then thrashing your car and having less merge time at the top, whilst managing a situation in which you are looking back for a gap whilst aware that you may have to brake for the still dawdling moron. The merge will also be harder as the traffic on the road will be reacting to the moron at the end of the slip road.
Even if you cope you are backing slow moving traffic down the slip road, which are often curved and have people accelerating onto them.
And of course saying ‘I’m a great driver; it’s easy to cope with!’ doesn’t allow for when other sub-standard drivers encounter the on-slip dawdler and respond sub-optimally.
They are really dangerous and need getting off the road.

 

[gabrielhj07]

Going against the grain of this thread slightly, I'd like to compliment any forum members who were driving southbound on the A1 yesterday afternoon. Fantastic drive from Doncaster to St Neots, and apart from the occasional average speed zone, I don't think I had to drop below 70 once.

 

[Egg Centric]

You still haven’t really said *how* I can manage space.

Take A1M junction 8, joining the motorway heading south. You will come off a multi-lane roundabout, where two lanes from the roundabout feed onto a short two-lane slip road (inclined), both of which merge to feed into the two-lane motorway.

The roundabout is traffic-light controlled, so the likelihood is that unless you’re the first one at the lights, you’re going to be following other vehicles.

If vehicles in front of you choose to ascend the slip road at 30 mph, as many do, what realistic options do you have? Bearing in mind that if you want to drop back to create space, you will be having to severely reduce speed, and are guaranteed to have vehicles passing you in the other lane, who will then merge in front of you at the top of the slip road. Furthermore, if you hang back enough to create space to be able to join at the same speed the motorway traffic is going, you *will* encounter aggression.

What happens in practice is that people already on the motorway see the shambles that is traffic approaching on the slip road, so most people tend to move into the right-hand lane to create space. So you then get people doing 50 pulling into the overtaking lane, to make room for people joining at 30. Every now and then it goes wrong and there’s an accident, and pretty much every morning peak this section of motorway suffers prolonged congestion as the motorway gets progressively slower and slower until grinding to a halt.

What I try and do is engineer things so that I’m first off the traffic lights, but this only works to a point, as you may well still encounter someone in front of you coming from the other direction.

Meanwhile, there’s a load more houses just been granted permission in the vicinity of this junction, so certainly not going to get better. The reality is many of these layouts date from times when there was a lot less traffic, and measures added since such as traffic lights mean traffic is nearly always bunched up.

In that particular junction if it's all 2 lane and they're doing 30 I'd just overtake them, but pretending it was only one lane for a moment the trick is to accelerate slower than them so a gap is opening up. Yes this may cause you to be tailgated either out of frustration or more likely gormlessness (most tailgaters are the latter no matter how aggressive they may appear) but actual Ken Noye style aggression is vanishingly rare and not something to worry about. Other than that general view it's hard to comment specifically, I do know that junction but not that particular move (lived in Radlett for a bit and don't remember any problems heading to/from the north, but wouldn't be going to/from south on it ever I think). If you capture some dash cam footage can always post it up...