More speed cameras

[rossybee]

I'd put money on most of the nasty accidents having happened at the Laurencekirk junction having seen a few there over the years. So instead of putting in a flyover we get average speed cameras on the entire road. It appears to be popular with the muggles as this highly scientific courier poll shows - https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/lo ... tonehaven/

They keep drawing comparisons to the A9 and talk about improved journey times, reliability etc. They do realise that the A90 has an extra lane and no single carriage way sections.

The majority of accidents have been at junctions so the cameras are a cheap way of addressing the road safety issue rather than re-grading the problem areas just whack a bunch of cameras at it.

Exactly this.

I drive Dundee to Aberdeen and back with reasonable regularity and I'd say every single accident aftermath I've been held up by or witnessed has not been down to excessive speed. Also, few people speed on this road now, mainly due to the gatsos. The new average speed cameras will have little effect on my journeys as I'm one of the "stick cruise on at an indicated 75 and have a relaxing journey". The only changes will be as already mentioned, the nuggets who brake right in front of you to 60 and obviously don't know what average actually means and the self-righteous dickheads who sit at 68 in the right hand lane. I'll just saunter up their insides at 72 and give them a wee smile as i pass

Life really is too short.

[c8rkh]

Well if we as a country vote for idiots

Should we be surprised when they do something idiotic?

Eh, so who should we vote for? I don't see any Einsteins looking to be in charge.

And that's quite a telling statement in its own right..... The clever people realise that politics is for mugs and worse and so they leave them to it.

[Corranga]

I don't often venture up to Aberdeen, but when I do, I? stick to 75 max due to the gatsos (and that's despite knowing where they all are anyway) it's just not worth it.

Introducing average speed cameras however... hmm. I absolutely hate driving the A9 stretch from Perth south now. If the road is anything over deserted, my stress levels increase with the average speed cameras. As someone who pays attention on the road, I find my brain telling me to be more and more cautious of idiots pulling out in front of me due to the much lower speed differences. Then there is people pulling out in front and braking for a camera, and then the ones that sit on your bumper until you pull in, but then they don't really make any progress and you spend the rest of your journey wondering what that aggressive twat will do next.

I'd much rather that the government put money into different road safety ventures that might actually make some difference, like banning cars from the proximity of a school, and stopping people who do 40 in a 30..

On a similar note, I got home last night to find a traffic car and a boy racer Fabia VRS on my drive way. I went out 20 minutes later to move my car onto the drive and heard a woman shouting and a car door slamming. 30 minutes later, I looked out and saw the police car was gone, so walked down to the car but hadn't realised that there was now a low loader and the traffic car was blocking a lane of the road. I guess someone's car was impounded then!

[c8rkh]

A concerted programme of public service information cartoons, films etc to be shown every day would really help to start to hammer home some simple messages around road safety - use of phone, use of ipads, speeding, drink/drug driving, middle lane / outside lane hogging, tailgating, SPECS (to stop people speeding then breaking right before them, or not speeding then breaking right before them anyway...) etc.

We used to see these types of things 30 or 40 years ago as we used to have a public service broadcaster called the BBC. Sadly that institution died a many years ago....

[JohnStewart]

I drive this road a lot, as my son is studying in Dundee. I generally put the cruise control on at 75 and sit there all the way. The average speed cameras on their own won't make much difference to overall journey time - maybe 5 minutes extra which isn't anything to worry about.

However, experience of the 40 miles of average speed cameras the A1M roadworks lead me to think that the journey times will be significantly slower at busy times due to the numpties that don't know the meaning of "Average Speed". Quite often you get long tailbacks of traffic in both lanes, as one car slowly passes the vehicles on the inside at maybe 0.5mph faster. Both both lanes doing maybe 5 - 6mph below the speed limit, and maybe 10mph below what the cameras will trigger at. The closely bunched cars often brake as not everyone's cruise control is synchronised which leads to clusters going even slower and often coming close to a standstill further back in the pack. When the lead car does eventually pull over, it takes an eternity for the cars behind it to pass what was the lead car and eventually pull in themselves. People don't seem to realise that if you have been going 10mph slower than the limit for 5 minutes, you can then go 10mph faster than the limit for 5 minutes (gaps between cameras dependent of course). But no, they continue on at 0.5mph faster than the car they were following and it ends up taking 20-30 miles to pass a group of maybe 10 cars ahead of you.

The end result is a highly stressful journey of closely bunched cars that is maybe 20 - 30 minutes longer than it should have been.

[111Robin]

Nail on the head. "Average" seems to be far too complex for most people to figure out. A classic is when a lorry pulls out to overtake another, doing around 60, takes a couple of minutes for it to pass on a hill maybe. However when he eventually pulls in folk just sit at 65-70 and the queue that's built up takes forever to pass. Do they not realise that their average has dropped and therefore they can accelerate beyond 70 to clear the glut ?. I know it isn't an exact science but accelerating to an indicated 75 for 30 seconds must obviously be ok, or am I expecting too much ?.

[neil]

or am I expecting too much ?

Yes

Looks like the politicians have finally found a way to "speed up" the Aberdeen-Edinburgh railway.

[c8rkh]

Average speed camera's now. Driverless "lorry trains" tomorrow. The future's looking bleak, thank god we have loads of lovely jubbely back roads