AIBU to think th speed limit is not a target.

[EmmaLL25]

Driving home, busy cobbled street, bus coming towards me I need to slow down for to let pass, lots of pedestrians and children about, traffic lights at end of road.

It's a 30mph zone, I'm doing about 15mph due to all of above and some old guy behind me starts beeping and flapping his arms.

Within 30 secs he has to wait in the same set of lights as me. He then drives sbout 100 yards more and stops to park.

I'm really wondering if the minute he thought he'd gain by harassing me was worth it.

I'm a cautious driver I know but I do think he was being a prick.

Just needed a moan.

limited

Average speed cameras note the time it takes you to travel between one speed camera and the next, and then calculate what your average speed would have been to travel the distance in that time. Theoretically this means that in, say, a 60mph zone with average speed cameras you could speed up to 65mph to overtake but then drop down to 58mph for the rest of the time and your average speed would still be less than 60mph. That said, the maths involved in figuring out how long you need to go at a lower speed in order to make up for speeding briefly is a bit complex to do whilst driving so in general it's best to stay below the speed limit throughout! However, slowing down immediately before the cameras (which is what people who treat average speed cameras as if they were ordinary cameras) is totally useless as if you've been doing 70mph since the last camera, slowing down to the speed limit for a few seconds before you hit the next camera will not bring your average speed down by enough.

I initially misunderstood them and thought that they took an average of your different speeds at different cameras, but it's about the time between cameras.

x-posted!

On the A9 they have average speed cameras and I get quite annoyed at people who don't seem to understand the rules r.e. the definition of a single/dual carriageway and how that affects NSL. In some stretches the A9 has an 'overtaking lane' on one side of the road - although one side of the road gets a second lane this is not a dual carriageway (because there's no central reservation), so the speed limit is still 60mph. Of course the people who've been doing 50mph all the way speed up at this point to 65mph so you can't legally overtake them at the places specifically designed for you to do so!

I get it. So it's pointless trying to beat them.

My road used to be technically 40mph (as it's an A road) but recently it was reduce to 20mph along with the entire borough.

It's a busy road, so only complete arseholes ever drove at 40mph. There are lots of clubs and bars (and the area is known for it) so there are people walking around at 2am most nights, often drunk. Driving for the conditions would never have meant driving at 40mph except maybe on Christmas Day at 3am or something, and not just if you were Father Christmas.

So they changed the limit to reflect the reality of safe driving on that road.

The speed limit really is a limit in good conditions, for that road, isn't it? A typical two-lane suburban road flanked by residential properties and some shops, that has a mostly straight thoroughfare, no very steep hills, some parked cars taking up space that significantly narrows the road at some points, and a school, might be fine at 30mph at 9pm, or 10am, 1pm, anything but peak driving times, but stupid at 9am, or 9pm if it's really snowy, etc.

30mph would be the aim for the good driving conditions, not the difficult ones.

I get quite annoyed at people who don't seem to understand the rules r.e. the definition of a single/dual carriageway and how that affects NSL. In some stretches the A9 has an 'overtaking lane' on one side of the road - although one side of the road gets a second lane this is not a dual carriageway (because there's no central reservation)

99% of drivers (including most of the know it all driving gods on MN) have not a clue what a dual carriageway is. They think it's to do with the number of lanes in each direction, which is nonsense. It's all about physical separation between the 2 directions of traffic.

I know of a dual carriageway with 1 lane in each direction, and a single carriageway with 3 lanes in each direction.

Actually OP I have been taught (by different trainers during advanced motorcycle training) that the speed limit IS a target and that we should be riding at or just under the limit UNLESS CONDITIONS DICTATE THAT THIS IS UNSAFE.

There may be many reasons why conditions may be unsafe - busy, narrow, twisty, kids knocking around, built up, poor weather, poor road surface etc. in which case you ride/drive accordingly. One of the commonest failures on a bike test is actually for 'not making progress when conditions are safe'. People are too cautious!

I thought about this thread while I was driving this afternoon.

I was travelling, at about 50mph, along a rural NS road when a van pulled out of a side turning in front of me. I was the only car on the road, the van could have waited until I had passed to pull out but instead forced me to brake.

The van then travelled along the NS roads at between 20 and 30mph for MILES. There was no opportunity for me to overtake, beside which the van was straddling the centre of the road, so I was stuck travelling at half the speed I could have otherwise been. There were however, field entrances he could have pulled into to let me pass.

While I was stuck behind the van I watched as the driver and passenger threw the remains of their lunch out of their windows into the hedgerows, including drinks cans.

When we drove through a village with a 30mph limit the van sped up to 40mph.

Eventually we arrived at a motorway. The van joined the motorway at 35mph, forcing me to do the same, which is positively dangerous.

This van driver is a good example of when travelling at significantly below the speed limit is rude, obstructive and dangerous.

While I was stuck behind the van I watched as the driver and passenger threw the remains of their lunch out of their windows into the hedgerows, including drinks cans.

Oh to have a dashcam !

LOL! Yes! Everything else annoyed me but that made me angry!