To ask that you speed up a little.

[Dawndonna]

I live in a rural area. I have to go about my daily business, appointments, shopping etc. So, if you're visiting and admiring the scenery, please pull over. Do not drive at 20mph on a sixty mile an hour road upon which overtaking is either bloody dangerous or impossible.
Drives me fucking mental

thebody

Do you ever find yourself at the head of a queue?

'Of course drivers need to drive to the road conditions but personally I never drive over 50 unless on a motorway.'

Please stop driving before you cause an accident.

I don't think driving fast happens because of being in a hurry, it just feels nice. Moving at speed is pleasurable isn't it? On a horse, a bike, even on foot. Am rarely in a hurry but love the sort of nearly feeling of flying that comes from going fast, especially round corners.

thebody - "personally I never drive over 50 unless on a motorway"

What, never? Not even on an empty dual carriageway that's got a 70 mph speed limit? Or on a stretch of single carriageway with a 60 mph limit that's straight, smooth, and wide enough for 3 cars to go side by side?

My MIL never goes over 50 EVER. Dual carriageway, motorway. Nothing. Drives me batshit.

We always get stuck behind a horsebox or tractor. So it's not us. DH always whining as if to say tractors have no business on roads next to fields. Some people.

So, I'm not sure if I'm being reasonable or not on this one.

We have two villages, about a mile apart, both of which are 30mph zones.

The road between them is dead straight and is national speed limit.

I tend not to go at 60mph for that mile, because by the time you've accelerated, you're then having to slow down, plus I know there's a sharp bend coming up with an old people's home opposite a bus stop on the far side of it. But last time I was driving along there, a couple of cars overtook me. (Mind you, they then went through the village at speed, so they might have been tossers or in some kind of serious situation.) AIBU not to go at the limit?

Is it Australia that has a rule about moving over to let people past if there are more that 5 or 6 vehicles behind you? If we could implement that it would stop a lot of the risky overtaking manoeuvres that you see on single carriageway roads. Mind you, what's the chance that the flat-cap wearer would notice the queue behind them?

The A48, a dual carriageway in Cardiff has different speed limits, eastbound it is 70 for a car then 50 because of a bus lane then 70. Westbound it starts at 70 then 50, for the bus lane, then 40 with a speed camera opposite the 70 bit, why don't they make it 40 all the way !

okay, I'm going to mentally picture (and tell you all about it) the road I used to travel every day into town (before I moved)

It's NSL the entire 5 miles, except for the last bit where you get into the town.

Leave home. turn left onto "main" road - straight road where I can go flat out (60mph)until the hill before the junction.
slow right down, turn right.
go at about 30ish until the trees, slow right down again, and stay slow even though road widens out because school is just there.
then go even slower as road narrows (interestingly, there is a SLOW written on the road, but it faces in the opposite direction from the narrow bit - it's aimed at the school, not the narrowness)
then drive considerately (25-30ish) through the village until the church.
slow to 15.
speed up again after the bungalow, and stay fastish until after the farm (because it's the motorway bridge and the road is really wide and straight)
slow down past the pub (narrow again) until after the farmhouse.
speed up a bit.
hill (where after a rainy night, it's v-e-r-y s-l-o-w because the road floods)
slow.
round bend, down hill, slow
valley, drive at 30ish, long road, but with slight bend like a ( all the way down.
round to the quarry, speed up.
then slow down going into the trees because a man was knocked down at twilight on this stretch.
stay slow to the top of the hill, where the road becomes a massive blind bend (the bend >>> arrows have been knocked down)
go past the farm, bit faster, but not much (say 30 again) until the junction, which has changed priority and is a bit weird.
30mph zone.

So, I've just driven almost 5 miles along roads that are NSL, but I have done less than 30 for most of it, apart from about (total 600 yards at 60, and about another 1000 yards at 40mph.

My husbands car has cruise control, you set a limit and until you brake it will stay on the same speed as long as you are driving, it saves you keeping your foot on the accelerator pedal. As he has knee problems it saves him moving his leg and it means that he is not speeding up, slowly down all the time.
He doesn't do 40 in a 20 zone.

i live in a beautiful place that gets flooded by holiday makers and bird watchers every year and lets not talk about families on bikes with kiddies on a major road weaving about !!! Sometimes its even necessary to drive with your hazards on so you wont get overtaken and a huge accident ensues.

Its the price you pay for where you live (i say this tongue in cheek) you and i both know that in the winter it takes no time at all to run errands but in the summer add an extra hour.

holiday makers are oblivious we just got to learn to live with it or move (crosses fingers behind my back)

What I forgot to say about the A48, the part I am talking about is less than ten miles long, we call it the speed up, brake, speed up road and that's without the traffic !

GrendelsMum, I'd say YANBU to not go at the limit in the circumstances described, given the hazards and short length of NSL road.

It's not always safe or reasonable to do 60 mph, just because the road is NSL.

What is unreasonable, is someone doing say 40 mph on a stretch of single carriageway road with a 60 mph limit that's wide enough to allow easy overtaking of cyclists without driving on the wrong side of the road, has good forwards visibility i.e. no sharp bends, not many junctions and no schools / old peoples homes / other public buildings near the road.

Someone in a normal car (i.e. not a tractor) driving slowly on that kind of road is annoying at best.

I think it's much less of a problem if someone is driving at, say, 40 in a 60 zone if they are driving sensibly, not looking at the scenery, but simply think it's the right speed for the road. Of course someone else behind they might disagree but that doesn't matter.

OTOH, saying you never drive over 50mph suggests you're not fit to be driving. It's suggesting you can't adapt to conditions, and is almost as dangerous as consistently driving at 35 in a 30 zone IMO.

Of course drivers need to drive to the road conditions but personally I never drive over 50 unless on a motorway.
Then you will be arrested at some point. This is becoming more common, the police accept that it is just as dangerous to drive slowly on a fast moving road as it is to drive too fast on a slower road.

What pisses me off is when I am riding and a tourist drives too close and some even beep their horn. My old horse once kicked a car at the traffic lights (my horse was a character) that beeped when going past at 60 and the owner tried to sue me for the damage to their car. The police were very quick to issue tickets after they found out what had happened and the driver ended up infront of a magistrate.

Crikey! A car passed your horse at 60 and all he did was kick?! He must be a saint.

I really do hate people who don't realize horses need space just like cars or bikes. Admittedly some people are awful with horses (the people who let their children out on barely-trained ponies alone because 'what's the harm?' come to mind ...), but that is no excuse to take it out on a defenseless animal. And no horse should have to put up with being overtaken at 60.

YABU, I'd rather people driver slower in general. I live in a rural area and regularly annoy the hell out of people just by sticking to 30 in a 30 limit. Also I live just off a road where the limit is 60mph, but you'd only go more than 20 mph if you want a head on collision or to end up in a hedge.

am lucky my horses don't mind fast moving cars, loud motorcycles, lorries, any sort of traffic - they are both as bomb proof on the road as it is possible to be without being actual police horses

but what some drivers don't seem to understand is that horses will sometimes spring away, into the path of the overtaking or oncoming traffic, when startled by something on the verge (like a bit of cow parsley nodding in the breeze, or some litter that wasn't there earlier) so a wide berth is much more important than crawling past at 3mph (although really appreciate it when drivers are super careful, as most of them seem to be round here)

Drivers that slow down to go past a horse going in the opposite direction, and then go VRRRRRRRRMMMMM immediately behind it as they speed up again.

I don't think well-trained horses 'spring' exactly -but we are probably describing the same thing, a slight shy when they are spooked?

There is a big difference between that sort of natural reaction and a horse that is out of control. It annoys me when people (drivers and riders) blur those differences.

Someone I know recently managed to maim a horse by deciding the best thing to do with a reasonably well-trained retired hunter was to let a ten-year-old ride him on the road unsupervised. He tried to jump the hedge and the child had nasty fall, while the horse ripped his leg open on barbed wire. I could cheerfully shake people who do that sort of thing until they rattle - imagine if it'd been a car he tried to jump on.

surely no child should be overhorsed on a road, or anywhere really

well I have one that springs anyway, it's rare because usually he will stop and look or pass it cautiously with his eyes bulging at whatever the scary thing is but sometimes it is sudden all four feet off the ground type thing don't think this is wildly unusual?

I would say that's maybe similar to, say, a bike wobbling or a car swerving - it's not ideal but it happens. It is very different from someone who is totally out of control, surely?

I don't think everyone knows what a child can control - I know people who say 'oh, but he's such a nice animal, he'll be so nice' - well, maybe, but that is no good if you let a child ride him who cannot control him! I think it is cruel to the horse as well as the rider, because the horse must feel so scared.