rodk wrote:Alastair
Your argument could apply to any limit. Hence why should it be a reason not to have a 20mph limit?
Whilst you may not agree with 20mph limits, surely you do agree with speed limits - don't you?
Rod
now that is an even wider discussion - but in principle, no I don't.
I believe in training people and sorting out the core issue - i.e. quality of driving and teaching people how to understand what is appropriate in any situation - admittedly a higher skill than is currently taught for the test...
there is a clear danger with speed limits - highlighted by the case you quote where they state that a safe speed would have been 15mph - not the 20mph limit.
Therefore our current system makes a mockery of safe driving as there is a belief that you can be legal and safe up to the limit - when it is clear that at times this is not so
as such speed limits are a false guidance - the correct answer is no speed limit, but you must always drive safely and at a speed appropriate to the conditions... if you changed the speed limits to speed guidance overnight, but put more onus on being safe then you would have a better match to good driving - the only reason we don't is because it is easy to measure being under / over the speed limit - it is not easy to measure safe driving... Therefore we have a system based on our lack of metrics to measure - not based on what is correct...
if we could guarantee that under the speed limit was always safe, then it would be an acceptable compromise, but as the case you quote shows this is not the case, so a speed limit is surely not the correct solution...
as I mention above - at a logic level moving a speed limit down from 30 to 20 is a total waste of time - if there are any times when it is safe to do 30, then I should legally be allowed to do that - the onus on me is still to drive at a slower speed when necessary - and the 20 limit in the case you quote made no difference if a safe speed was 15
it is like giving an asprin to a cancer patient - you look as though you are doing something and you treat a symptom, but it makes no difference to the cancer causing the issues...
If you can unequivocally prove that setting limits to 20 is a better approach than training people to drive properly I would be impressed - but it is not possible - in the case you quote a limit of 20 was still too much, but someone driving properly would have gone slower and there would have been no issue...
the answer should be train people correctly - not mess around with deckchairs on sinking ships the problem with lowering speed limits is that to apply the logic fully we are back to someone with a red flag in front of the motor car - it is quite frankly ridiculous - and the more you remove responsibility from the driver to the state and speed metrics, the more you dis-associate the driver from responsibility and the worse the driver becomes.
Alasdair
our posts crossed...
