A tougher line on speeding?

[Cyril Haearn]

Exceeding the maximum speed limit over several miles or km shows an awful lot of criminal energy

[thirdcrank]

No matter what are Mr Bangham's views, IMO the reality is that it's time that highway authorities were empowered to use speed cameras without any police involvement. Police priorities, budgets, resources and all the rest of it should have no influence on this. It's about twenty years since, with other cycling campaigners in Leeds, I met the Highway Agency's newly designated cycling officer for their Northern region. I think he was just one of their people who had drawn the short straw. He certainly wasn't enthusiastic about cycling. In fact, there's not much trunk road mileage in Leeds - the area we were interested in - so it's not surprising that he took a wider view of the region. On the question of speed limits, he explained that the HA had proposed a safety scheme for the A65 (which for anybody unfamiliar with it twists and winds over the Dales) which would have involved speed limits enforced by camera. The police input had been from a sergeant in the North Yorkshire Police traffic department who had announced something on the lines of "Do as you like, we won't be enforcing it."

FWIW, North Yorkshire seems to be one of the few forces which has beefed up its traffic enforcement more recently, but that's beside the point.

[pete75]

If the authorities really wanted to stop speeding they would. Our car shows the speed limit in the instrument panel. It doesn't use GPS for this but actually reads the speed limit signs. If Mercedes can fit this technology then so can every other manufacturer. It would then be a trivial matter to link this to the engine management system, speedometer and/or the car's GPS system to keep vehicle speed within the limit.

[Vorpal]

If the authorities really wanted to stop speeding they would. Our car shows the speed limit in the instrument panel. It doesn't use GPS for this but actually reads the speed limit signs. If Mercedes can fit this technology then so can every other manufacturer. It would then be a trivial matter to link this to the engine management system, speedometer and/or the car's GPS system to keep vehicle speed within the limit.

Speed limit signs are not always well-maintained. I used to see a number of them that were faded almost to unreadability. They were all at the gates to villages.

I think it would also require a database of speed limits, kept up to date for the GPS system.

[Cyril Haearn]

I understand that a stop sign hidden by vegetation must be obeyed
In Germany the yellow Ortseingansschilder (builtupareaentrysigns) generally denote max 50 kmh

[pete75]

If the authorities really wanted to stop speeding they would. Our car shows the speed limit in the instrument panel. It doesn't use GPS for this but actually reads the speed limit signs. If Mercedes can fit this technology then so can every other manufacturer. It would then be a trivial matter to link this to the engine management system, speedometer and/or the car's GPS system to keep vehicle speed within the limit.

Speed limit signs are not always well-maintained. I used to see a number of them that were faded almost to unreadability. They were all at the gates to villages.

I think it would also require a database of speed limits, kept up to date for the GPS system.

If the sign has faded almost to unreadability then other than a 30mph limit with street lights the speed limit is not legal. I don't think the glass bead stuff they use here for modern signs does fade to any extent though. I'm guessing the signs you saw weren't in the UK as very few villages here have gates.
The GPS system seems to know where speed limits are as well - it's the same system fitted to models without the sign reading technology and they show limits.

[Vorpal]

If the sign has faded almost to unreadability then the speed limit is likely not legal. The GPS system seems to know where speed limits are as well - it's the same system fitted to models without the sign reading technology and they show limits as well.

The speed limit may not be legal if the sign isn't readable, but that doens't mean it is safe to go at 60 mph into a village.

As for the GPS system, that depends on a database being kept up to date. I've used various systems, and some companies are much better than others at updating their databases. The GPS on my Nokia was quite good that way. The one on my company iPhone quite often has the wrong speed limit. I've had it register speed limits that changed 5 years ago.

[pwa]

If the authorities really wanted to stop speeding they would. Our car shows the speed limit in the instrument panel. It doesn't use GPS for this but actually reads the speed limit signs. If Mercedes can fit this technology then so can every other manufacturer. It would then be a trivial matter to link this to the engine management system, speedometer and/or the car's GPS system to keep vehicle speed within the limit.

Speed limit signs are not always well-maintained. I used to see a number of them that were faded almost to unreadability. They were all at the gates to villages.

I think it would also require a database of speed limits, kept up to date for the GPS system.

If the sign has faded almost to unreadability then the speed limit is likely not legal. The GPS system seems to know where speed limits are as well - it's the same system fitted to models without the sign reading technology and they show limits as well.

Speaking as a driver who sometimes gets it wrong (as we all do) I hope the GPS satnav people can get a bit sharper at updating speed limits as they change, so we know where we stand. And around here there are speed limit signs that, every summer, become overwhelmed by hedges to the point where they are literally not visible to road users. If we want people to make good choices we have to give them the information they need.

But yes, technology can take the controversy out of this issue.

[pete75]

If the sign has faded almost to unreadability then the speed limit is likely not legal. The GPS system seems to know where speed limits are as well - it's the same system fitted to models without the sign reading technology and they show limits as well.

The speed limit may not be legal if the sign isn't readable, but that doens't mean it is safe to go at 60 mph into a village.

As for the GPS system, that depends on a database being kept up to date. I've used various systems, and some companies are much better than others at updating their databases. The GPS on my Nokia was quite good that way. The one on my company iPhone quite often has the wrong speed limit. I've had it register speed limits that changed 5 years ago.

If it's not an online navigation system it will rely on the user updating the maps and these are rarely produced more than quarterly and then a lot probably don't bother anyway.
Equipment to read the signs is more reliable and always up to date - it even recognises temporary speed limits for roadworks. The problems you and pwa describe are ones of highway maintenance not vehicle technology.

[Vorpal]

If it's not an online navigation system it will rely on the user updating the maps and these are rarely produced more than quarterly and then a lot probably don't bother anyway.
Equipment to read the signs is more reliable and always up to date - it even recognises temporary speed limits for roadworks. The problems you and pwa describe are ones of highway maintenance not vehicle technology.

The best thing is for sign recognition to work in conjunction with other technology. Neither is perfect, and it would minimise error.

I wasn't trying to suggest that the challenges were insurmountable; only that they exist. Anyway, you don't think they are suddenly going to find more money for updating signs, trimming hedges, etc?

[pwa]

I was a bit disappointed a few weeks back when I updated a Garmin satnav only to find that "new" housing estates that have been part of the road network for a couple of years are still not on there, a 30mph that I regularly drive though is still coming up as 60 even though that limit must have been changed about five years ago. Interestingly, it also now advises me to divert off main roads and onto the parallel older courses of those roads where lorries park. I did wonder if I had inadvertently put it on a "dogging" setting!

[reohn2]

I'd be a lot happier if speed limit signs were more prominent,maintained,and more regularly placed,that leave me in no doubt about the speed limit on any given stretch of road.Instead of me needing me to keep asking myself "am I in a 30 or a 40 zone" defaulting to 30mph only to see a small roundel on the 29th lampost I'm passing telling me it's a 40
Along with constant changing of speed limits in short distances,there a few road around here I live where the speed limit changes from 30 to 40 to 50and back to 30 again in the space of a mile or two when it would be much better to remain at 30mph if only from a fuel saving and therefore pollution perspective.

[Vorpal]

Where I live, has had 3 different address arrangements. From the time our small housing estate was built (1920s), the addresses were on the old main road just north of the estate. In the late 70s, a new main road was built. The addresses were changed to the new main road, except for the houses that face the old main road. Then, around 1990, the housing estate was given it's own street name for address purposes.

The Google van has never been in the housing estate, and many map databases have never been updated with the new street name. The national mapping service, Kartverket, (like OS) includes and recognises it, but few companies pay to use their database. So, there are almost no GPS systems that recognise my address. This is complicated by the fact that our 'street' looks like a driveway going between houses (from either end).

We have work-arounds. The most common is to tell people to use the local school as their destination and call us when they get there. We also sometimes tell people the address of one of the houses that face the old main road, because those are correct in GPS systems. But we still need to either give additional directions, or tell people to call us when they have arrived because they cannot see our house from there, and are likely to think our street is a driveway.

The advantage of this, though, is that only people who live there, or are familiar with the area, drive in/through. As much trouble as it can be when we are trying to get something delivered, I'm not really interested in all the GPS databases recognising our street.

[thirdcrank]

It's the case around here that 40mph repeaters are prominent by their absence. However, there are some derestricted roads where there's a derestriction repeater on every lamp standard.

[reohn2]

It's the case around here that 40mph repeaters are prominent by their absence. However, there are some derestricted roads where there's a derestriction repeater on every lamp standard.

Incredible innit?
If speed limits are there to aid road safety,it follows they should be regular,prominent,well maintained and not obscured by vegetation or faded to unreadability,otherwise their effect with regards to safety are grossly diminished.