Blanket 50mph speed limit proposal on SE roads

[alicrozier]

The end of the road run?

Have your say:
https://www.transport.gov.scot/consulta ... sultation/

[campbell]

Wondering if there is any point.

[robin]

It's inevitable that they will install some form of speed monitoring on all the roads that get used regularly by HGVs.

If you look at the data in the appendix of the linked report on the A9 pre-2014 the speeding rates were 40% (split evenly in the 60-70 and 70-80 buckets). Since the introduction of whatever camera system in 2014 the speeding rates dropped to around 10% and they more or less stay there - possibly a slight downward trend.

So they have data for the A9 - people aren't really speeding, there are still collisions - what causes them? That's not shown.

My guess is that active enforcement is the only way to deliver a change in speed (people will ignore the speed limit if they can - as they did on the A9 pre-2014). But the A9 speeds are already low - so will making them even lower help? I doubt it ...

It's cheaper than improving the infrastructure though.

[alicrozier]

There is a pretty good case for upping the HGV limits, it would at least allow them to be legal at the speed the majority already do.

"In April 2015 in England, the speed limits for goods vehicles over 7.5 tonnes was increased from:

40mph to 50mph on single carriageways
50mph to 60mph on dual carriageways
The evaluation of this policy reported that on single carriageway and dual carriageways that average goods vehicles over 7.5 tonne speeds increased by 1.6mph and 0.6mph respectively."

Maybe there is some argument for a blanket 50 limit to ease traffic flow on a few extremely busy routes (at certain times of day?). Basically when everyone is trundling along nose to tail anyway but it would still prevent motorbikes etc from making safe progress. No mention of the relative stopping distance of an HGV vs Car though so is it really about safety?

On the other 95% of rural or quiet routes it effectively makes legally overtaking a slow moving HGV (or other vehicle) more difficult and potentially dangerous.

There is no mention of driver education or driving safely to the conditions...
Another case of money making (saving) and/or legislating for the lowest common denominator.

[robin]

It definitely has the feel of how to do something whilst spending not very much money

The right thing to do with the major roads is to make them into dual carriageways wherever possible, but that costs £millions and the budgets aren't there.