In surrey we've just had a cracking road de-nationalised see story below. It was a brilliant bit of road, yes there were accidents but a large majority of country lane accidents end seriously due to trees tractors etc, shame though loved the Pirbright bends http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/speed-limit-reduced-pirbright-bends-4721151
I would appreciate a 20mph limit past my house........a 3.0m wide carriageway where on a Sunday, gridlock is three horses and a combine harvester..........but most of the time I can record traffic at speeds of up to 80mph, because there are no passing points............they try to get to one end of the straight before another vehicles comes from the opposite direction. IRIOTS
Sadly they don't. Not judging by the hundreds of BMW riders I have to undertake every sodding morning on my commute up the A3 cos the wankers will not move out of the way
The trouble with a 40mph limit is that no-one driving at 40mph is actually paying attention to what is going on around them... Their attention drifts and then, when something happens that requires action, it actually takes longer for them to react than it would if they were doing 60mph... Counter-productive.
I would like someone, some day, to set out clearly what they imagine society in the UK should be. Do they really want a risk-free society, where everyone tows the line, commutes to work, works long hours, heats up a ready meal in the evening and settles down to watch TV? At the weekend, they may be permitted to take their hatchback out to the country, after a few hours of jams, for a safe ramble before driving back home. That is, just so long as they have spent the requisite time in a shopping centre buying Chinese goods. Because, that is the impression that I get increasingly of the UK. Ban any excitement that doesn't happen in front of a screen. That way it should be risk-free. It's got to be about time for another punk revolution.
The problem with the ratcheting down of speed limits is that it is, potentially, never ending. Having conned the general populace into believing that speed is the root cause of all accidents there are two possibilities - if accident rates fall, the authorities say "look, it's working, we need to lower the limits further to save more lives" ; if the accident rates don't fall, they just say "we haven't lowered the limits enough, we need to lower them further to save lives". It's all bollox !
The problem comes from leaving the decision to local councils rather than a committee of specialists. The councils will always lower the speed limits because it is a cheap and visible way of showing their 'commitment to road safety', regardless of what the stats actually say.
The current state of the roads in Oxfordshire (especially the rural roads) makes it difficult to exceed 40 mph.
Because I have been physically limited in where I travel, I can't comment on roads in other counties, but in Essex and Suffolk (the former, particularly) they are diabolical......... ........in fact the potholes don't need repairing, but the majority of roads need planing and resurfacing completely......and it needs doing properly, not with the sh*te method of tar spray and chippings.
They have been resurfacing 'properly' in Guildford in recent years, but the work is being done badly and the new surface keeps breaking away, leaving 2" potholes everywhere. Something is going wrong somewhere.
40mph! my tractor goes faster than that. Getting done for speeding on a tractor is quite achievement but very wrong. I'm too busy looking over peoples garden fences and into their houses to have to watch the speedo aswell!!!!.
The same seems to be true in Berkshire. Although the general approach sems to be to fill pothles in, but only when they have been reported, and then only badly, I have seen several stretches that were apparently planed and resurfaced where increasing amounts of the surface are simply stripping off - I wonder whether in some cases the contractors did not really plane deep enough, or leave a rough enough surface? Or perhaps they used some tar which was not adhesive enough? I'm sure the local authority will blame weather conditions, but you don't see roads like these in Germany and they have plenty of rain and ice there.
