Slow (car) drivers

[Barn]

The worst drivers in the country are those that drive at 40mph no matter what - 40mph on wide empty national speed limit A-roads and then continuing at 40mph through villages when the limit drops to 30mph.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

A mimimum speed limit in a 60mph area may be one solution.

I'm not sure cyclists would appreciate that

(Though it could make for an interesting form of exercise... If you don't work those leg muscles fast enough, expect a chat with the local bobby....)

 

[dquebec]

Out of interest, why do we use NSL signage instead of a fixed speed?

Arguably, people could surely be more responsive to a fixed number?

 

[Barn]

The NSL adjusts from 60 to 70 on dual carriageway sections. Except in Scotland, this change doesn't need to be signed.

It also is different for different vehicle types (but this might be true for fixed speeds too?)

I think there's also the point that many NSL roads are certainly not suitable for 60mph and it's too much trouble to impose bespoke speed limits on them all.

 

[455driver]

If a lower speed was necessary, the local authority risk assessment would see them impose a signed lower speed other than the NSL 60.

So howcome the A303 through the Blackdown hills is 40 (or is it 50, I haven't been over there for a while) but the tiny little lanes off it all have the GLF sign?
I wouldn't do more than 20 down any of them, especially as I might meet somebody with your attitude coming the other way!

You are merely showing how little you know about driving and the regulations.

 

[krus_aragon]

Out of interest, why do we use NSL signage instead of a fixed speed?

On the A55, between Llanddulas and Conwy, actual '70' signs are used.

(Anorak explanation warning)

This portion of the A55 is a Special Road. In the early days of motorway planning, it was realised that the automatic “right of way” for pedestrians, livestock etc on every public highway wouldn't mix well with fast motor cars, so the Special Roads Act (1949) introduced the idea of a road where access was restricted to all traffic, unless specifically permitted. Later legislation created the regulations for motorways as we know them today: blue signage, hard shoulder, etc.

Motorways had no national speed limit in the early days. A formal speed limit was introduced in 1964 after outrage in the press when somebody drove a Cobra GT at 180mph or so down the M1. This new limit was applied to motorways rather than special roads.

Thus, for the small subset of special roads that aren't also motorways, unless a particular speed limit is specified, there is no speed limit!

 

[carriageline]

It annoys me when I go to take my 450bhp car out for a "bloody good thrashing", and everyone gets in my way!!!



I don't mind slow drivers, aslong as they accept they will be overtaken when the conditions are right. I've been flashed for overtaking on perfectly straight roads, people "speed up" to not let you pass, even cross the central line to stop you passing.

I can get wound up with people not making good progress and keeping up with the flow of traffic, and doing 30-40 on NSL roads, where the NSL can safely be reached. More often than not, it's people of the elderly persuasion. But, I would rather them driver slower and more "within their ability" than foot down and causing an accident .

Or even worse, making good progress, your the only car around and someone still feels the need to pull out in front of you and do half the speed limit!!


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I find MDMA/ ecstasy help keep me alert when driving. Cocaine is not recommended for longer journeys as it wears off too quickly

Brilliant lol!

 

[Busaholic]

So howcome the A303 through the Blackdown hills is 40 (or is it 50, I haven't been over there for a while) but the tiny little lanes off it all have the GLF sign?
I wouldn't do more than 20 down any of them, especially as I might meet somebody with your attitude coming the other way!

You are merely showing how little you know about driving and the regulations.

Not often I'm in full agreement with you, but I am on this one. 60 mph speed limit is madness on what are, in effect, lanes built for the horse and cart. I travel on them all the time, each and every day, and they can be lethal, particularly for pedestrians. I've driven at least 600,000 miles in total, one accident about two months after I passed my test (a minor shunt) and, in case anyone thinks I'm an unnecessarily slow driver, I did at one time have 9 points on my licence for 3 separate speed camera offences (I'm not proud of them, taught me a lesson). How many times I've been dangerously overtaken by a driver only to find they've pulled over a minute or two later t6 go into their house! A lot of the problem is someone in a BMW, say, who thinks it is their right and duty to get past me in a Clio.

 

[fergusjbend]

I live in a rural area in Kent. Local residents understand the need to keep their speed to 25-30mph on single-track roads, which have blind bends and are frequently muddy. Delivery drivers in white vans who have impossible schedules do not understand this and are a real menace. Tragically, they sometimes realise their mistake when they find themselves crushed under on on-coming tractor. The national speed limit on single-track rural roads should be 25mph.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Again, is it safe to do 60mph? NSL does not indicate in any way that 60mph is safe. I can think of a short stretch of NSL road where I travel below 30mph (going slower than in the 30mph zone on either side) because it's very narrow and windy with poor visibility.

Speed limits are neither targets, nor are they advisories. They are limits that should be adhered to. Overall, it is the conditions of the road that will determine the safe speed, and not a sign.

Indeed, and here, from Google Streetview is a perfect illustration of this point:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.6...4!1sOnrwgD9B1HmfO-fVPZQ6AA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

The sign you see marks the end of a 30mph zone. It is, however, instantly obvious that attempting to go even at 30mph past this NSL sign would be an inappropriately high speed with "interesting" consequences... Having both driven and walked that road I can tell you it is even tighter and shorter in real than it looks in the image.

 

[Bald Rick]

The annoyance, surely, is not driving to the conditions. On a good road with good visibility and light traffic there is little excuse not to be at or near the speed limit*

In my view, the number of people driving unnecessarily slowly has increased in the last 5-10 years. Why is this? Have driving lessons changed? Are people less confident? Is it the effect of technology, eg sat nav and mobile phones?


* noting that most speed limits were set when car braking performance was very much worse than it is today. Yet plenty of non-urban roads have had their speed limit reduced in the last decade or so. Has anyone got examples of a road where the speed limit has increased (without any works) in the last 10 years?

 

[Bevan Price]

The ones I hate are those who slow to about 5 mph over every single road hump or raised junction.. I just stick to the local speed limit and do not reduce speed for humps. Elsewhere, the only slow drivers I dislike are those who use the middle or outside lanes of motorways (or dual carriageways) when the inside lane is nearly empty.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

The ones I hate are those who slow to about 5 mph over every single road hump or raised junction.. I just stick to the local speed limit and do not reduce speed for humps.

Have you got any suspension left?!

 

[Bertie the bus]

Anyone else fed up of those drivers going 20-30mph below the speed limit?

For the past 3 days, I've been driving on rural country roads where the national speed limit (60mph) applies - yet I've come stuck behind at least 10 drivers who are only doing 30-40mph on roads which are easily safe for 50-60mph if you pay attention to what you're doing. You can't even overtake them because the roads are narrow and busy in both directions. One of my trips was almost 15 miles stuck behind one of these dangerously slow drivers.

I have every sympathy for you.

As for some of the comments regarding how slow drivers are safe here are a few of my observations. As I’ve always driven powerful cars I regularly overtake these “careful” drivers doing between 30 and 40 on 60 limit roads and I’ve lost count of the number of times when after overtaking perfectly safely I’ve had obscene gestures, furious headlight flashing or on some occasions the “careful” driver deliberately speeding up whilst I’m overtaking to try to make it dangerous. They’re not safe drivers; they’re selfish, self-righteous idiots.

I have also lost count of the number of times I’ve been stuck behind one of these drivers and then when we have entered a 30 mph zone they have continued at their current 35-40 mph speed and zoomed off into the distance after I’ve reduced my speed to the 30 mph limit, or where I had previously overtaken them and they catch up whilst speeding in the 30 mph zone. Very safe.

 

[Zoidberg]

The annoyance, surely, is not driving to the conditions. On a good road with good visibility and light traffic there is little excuse not to be at or near the speed limit*

In my view, the number of people driving unnecessarily slowly has increased in the last 5-10 years. Why is this? Have driving lessons changed? Are people less confident? Is it the effect of technology, eg sat nav and mobile phones?


* noting that most speed limits were set when car braking performance was very much worse than it is today. Yet plenty of non-urban roads have had their speed limit reduced in the last decade or so. Has anyone got examples of a road where the speed limit has increased (without any works) in the last 10 years?

This! Very much, this!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I live in a rural area in Kent. Local residents understand the need to keep their speed to 25-30mph on single-track roads, which have blind bends and are frequently muddy. Delivery drivers in white vans who have impossible schedules do not understand this and are a real menace. Tragically, they sometimes realise their mistake when they find themselves crushed under on on-coming tractor. The national speed limit on single-track rural roads should be 25mph.

(my bolding)

I imagine that would be almost impossible to implement in practice. How do you decide what counts as a single-track road? Well you could decide a road is single-track if there are no centre-line road markings - but then you'd have to go to the vast expense of painting markings on thousands of double-track country lanes that don't currently have them. If you don't want to do that, then you'd presumably have to define a road as single-track based its exact width. But that's no good because most drivers would not be able to tell if a road is two inches narrower than the definition (speed limit 25mph) or two inches wider (speed limit 60mph for cars). So then you'd have to put up lots of signs to tell drivers - another vast expense and arguably a bit of an eyesore in many rural areas too.

And then - what about motorcycles? A straight road with good visibility might be single-track from the point of view of a car, but be amply wide enough to go faster from the point of a motorcycle... Do you want to force all motorcyclists to also go at 25mph on roads where they could safely go faster, just because the road isn't wide enough for a car to go faster?

All in all, you end up with lots more bureaucracy and more rules, but you still haven't solved the fundamental problem: That too many drivers go too fast because they don't read the road conditions properly. Indeed, if you start making more different speed limits, you could make that problem worse, because some drivers may become even more inclined to think along the lines of '25mph speed limit. Therefore I must do always do exactly 25mph on this road'.

It seems to me we'd be far better off focusing more on training drivers to read the road conditions properly and adjust their speed accordingly rather than make the speed limit rules more complicated.

Once you understand that the fact that a road is 'national speed limit' tells you nothing about whether the road is suitable to drive on at that speed - it simply means that you are expected to judge the appropriate speed yourself (up to the limit) - then there shouldn't be any problems with the national speed limit existing on country lanes, surely?

 

[Bletchleyite]

People speeding up during an overtake, as mentioned upthread, is a particular bugbear of mine. It is incredibly dangerous. If the overtake has woken you up that you were going slowly (!), allow it to be completed then re-overtake when safe.


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[DarloRich]

Anyone else fed up of those drivers going 20-30mph below the speed limit?

For the past 3 days, I've been driving on rural country roads where the national speed limit (60mph) applies - yet I've come stuck behind at least 10 drivers who are only doing 30-40mph on roads which are easily safe for 50-60mph if you pay attention to what you're doing. You can't even overtake them because the roads are narrow and busy in both directions. One of my trips was almost 15 miles stuck behind one of these dangerously slow drivers.

Nearly every one of the "slow" drivers has been an "older" driver, definitely 70+, driving their little 10 year old Vauxhall Corsa.


#rant over!!

How awful that must be for a clearly important and terribly busy chap like you - I realise you have places to be and deals to do and that having to share the roads with other people must be terribly trying for you

However do try to remember that, unlike you, other people do not always possess the confidence, skill,reaction time or experience of someone who so clealry should (if not already is) be driving a formula one car for a living

 

[Bletchleyite]

It seems to me we'd be far better off focusing more on training drivers to read the road conditions properly and adjust their speed accordingly rather than make the speed limit rules more complicated.

Once you understand that the fact that a road is 'national speed limit' tells you nothing about whether the road is suitable to drive on at that speed - it simply means that you are expected to judge the appropriate speed yourself (up to the limit) - then there shouldn't be any problems with the national speed limit existing on country lanes, surely?

Quite, it's a limit, not a target.

The problem probably occurs because of two things.

1. Limits elsewhere are increasingly unreasonably low, such that on many roads it is safe to proceed at (or arguably over) the limit for very long stretches, and where there is known danger it is reduced accordingly (not to mention French motorways where signage indicates the correct braking curve!). Therefore culture is shifting towards the idea that the number in a red circle is a safe speed for that road, not just an upper limit which may be relatively arbitrary.

2. Sat-navs etc encourage people who are not familiar with country lanes onto them.

 

[carriageline]

I was once taught "drive as if it's you driving towards you/it's you coming round the next bend"

I am by no means a slow driver, but if I'm coming to a blind bend, I will always ease off. The amount of times I've come around a blind bend and there's pedestrians/horse riders/a lorry pulled over etc, it could of been hairy if I held my speed through it and then came across that!

Expect the unexpected.




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How awful that must be for a clearly important and terribly busy chap like you - I realise you have places to be and deals to do and that having to share the roads with other people must be terribly trying for you



However do try to remember that, unlike you, other people do not always possess the confidence, skill,reaction time or experience of someone who so clealry should (if not already is) be driving a formula one car for a living

Whilst I completely agree, I would rather nervous/slower people to be driving slower and more cautiously, but some of these drivers we talk of shouldn't be on the road at all! I was once behind an old dear proceeding at 30 mph through a NSL road, fair enough. But we then got to a cross roads which we had a red traffic light, (road speed now down to 30) but she felt she wanted to carry on at 30 without stopping or even looking to give away, and straight over she goes through the red, luck was on her side that day. Despite plenty of signage to tell her otherwise. She was oblivious, and quite aggressive when she was challenged on what she had just done.

People like these should have their licenses taken away for the rest of their lives, with no option to get it back.

Out of the overly cautious (aka "slow") drivers I've seen, I would say around half of them go on to make a very bad judgement call, or a very bad oversight/mistake.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Talking of Dual Carriageways - I am absolutely shocked at how many people don't know that the NSL is 70mph!!

I'm disappointed at how many think that it is 70 on a dual carriageway when they drive a vehicle whose classification carries a lower limit.

 

[Bevan Price]

Have you got any suspension left?!

Yes - no damage at all. Indeed, the "bounce" is often worse when I am forced to slow down behind one of the "5mph crawlers". Probably helps that car is fairly small, and annual mileage is now quite low - car is mostly used only when public transport is unavailable, or for monthly trips to supermarket.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

1. Limits elsewhere are increasingly unreasonably low, such that on many roads it is safe to proceed at (or arguably over) the limit for very long stretches, and where there is known danger it is reduced accordingly (not to mention French motorways where signage indicates the correct braking curve!). Therefore culture is shifting towards the idea that the number in a red circle is a safe speed for that road, not just an upper limit which may be relatively arbitrary.

Possibly worth pointing out that safety isn't the only reason for speed limits. In some cases, lower speed limits may be put in place to make roads less unpleasant/noisy/intimidating for residents, or pedestrians or cyclists (This is more likely to be justified in urban areas). There are probably also a few areas where lower speed limits are in place because of hazards (such as hidden driveways) that difficult to see and may therefore be missed even by experienced, observant drivers. Obviously, the very fact that such hazards are hard to see probably means many drivers will not see them and therefore incorrectly think that the speed limit should be higher. There may also be cases where lower speed limits improve traffic flow.

That's not to say that there are no roads where the speed limit could reasonably be higher. But I would suspect that in many cases, speed limits that many drivers complain about are actually there for some good reason.

 

[antharro]

I have every sympathy for you.

As for some of the comments regarding how slow drivers are safe here are a few of my observations. As I’ve always driven powerful cars I regularly overtake these “careful” drivers doing between 30 and 40 on 60 limit roads and I’ve lost count of the number of times when after overtaking perfectly safely I’ve had obscene gestures, furious headlight flashing or on some occasions the “careful” driver deliberately speeding up whilst I’m overtaking to try to make it dangerous. They’re not safe drivers; they’re selfish, self-righteous idiots.

I have also lost count of the number of times I’ve been stuck behind one of these drivers and then when we have entered a 30 mph zone they have continued at their current 35-40 mph speed and zoomed off into the distance after I’ve reduced my speed to the 30 mph limit, or where I had previously overtaken them and they catch up whilst speeding in the 30 mph zone. Very safe.

This. If someone chooses to do 30 in a NSL 60, then that's their prerogative. But if an opportunity for me to safely overtake them arises then I will probably take it and I think that's something the slower driver should accept. Sometimes I've had people pull over a little as I've gone past, however I have also experienced what Bertie has described - lights, gestures, and worst case, the other driver accelerating as I overtake, turning what started out as a safe overtake into a dangerous manoeuvre. One occasion when having a few extra hp can be beneficial.

Otherwise, as has been mentioned already, the 40mph crowd can be dangerous. 40mph regardless of what the road's limit is. 20mph zone? No problem, 40mph straight through. 30mph town centre? 40mph until traffic forces the speed down. 50mph zone? Still 40mph! NSL dual carriageway? 40mph. I even followed one idiot onto a NSL dual carriageway where they proceeded to drive at 30mph, accelerating very slowly to 35mph. I took the first available opportunity to overtake and glanced in my rear view mirror to see others in that lane bunching up behind the slow driver while everyone tried to get over to overtake. Quite dangerous.

Personally, if it's safe to do so then I will do as close to the limit as possible, taking road conditions into account. Having been stuck behind people doing silly slow speeds on NSL roads, I have no desire to be the person holding everyone up.

Sometimes I do wonder if some of these drivers are mis-reading their speedometer and looking at the KPH speed instead of the MPH...

 

[neilb62]

Years ago I remember a friend failing their test due to 'failure to make good progress' i.e. Driving too slowly for the conditions. I also remember it being talked about when I did my advanced. Is it still an offense? I've lost touch a bit these days....


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[antharro]

@neilb62 I'm pretty sure there is, but only in certain circumstances. Like doing 30 on a motorway.

 

[DaleCooper]

Years ago I remember a friend failing their test due to 'failure to make good progress' i.e. Driving too slowly for the conditions. I also remember it being talked about when I did my advanced. Is it still an offense? I've lost touch a bit these days....


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There's a difference between an offence and an error which results in failing the test.

 

[me123]

Out of the overly cautious (aka "slow") drivers I've seen, I would say around half of them go on to make a very bad judgement call, or a very bad oversight/mistake.

This sums up my view quite well (although half may be a bit higher than my experience). I don't have a problem with people driving slowly per se. It's not necessarily unsafe, unless you are on a motorway. However (as with my elderly neighbour I've mentioned before), driving slowly is often a symptom of poor driving in general.

 

[neilb62]

There's a difference between an offence and an error which results in failing the test.

Having checked up with a mate I used to teach with it seems it still is an offence.

 

[DaleCooper]

Having checked up with a mate I used to teach with it seems it still is an offence.

So how many points do you get for "failure to make good progress"?