If you see it as your job to control the speed of traffic and you're not in a police car...

[BumpowderSneezeonAndSnot]

...why do you do it? Why do you sit 300 car lengths behind the one in front in heavy traffic? Why do you go 10mph under the speed limit in the overtaking lane on a clear road? Why so you sit at 40mph regardless of the speed limit? Why do you pootle down the slip road towards an A or M road at 30mph?

Why do you see it as your job to control traffic?

I only drive as quickly as I feel safe - often slower than the limit on unfamiliar country lanes. People are welcome to overtake, but just because I can go at 60mph I don’t think it’s sensible on windy roads or in poor weather.

There's a road on my way to work that is 40mph. This morning as I am doing 40, some gent pulled out of a side road in front of me. He should have waited - he saw me coming and there was nothing behind me. As a consequence I had to brake quite hard to drop down to about 20mph. I ended up quite close to him and apparently that was cause for him to make hand gestures to me through the rear window as if to say "What?!"

You're meant to wait until there is a gap big enough to allow you to join the flow of traffic - not slow everyone else down!

Reddington if you don’t understand why driving at 100mph is dangerous then perhaps look at the physics of what will happen if a car crashes at 100 mph and then compare it to a crash at 60mph

Yes I understand the physics just fine thanks. My point was not that everybody should be doing 100mph just that picking random speeds and saying it’s dangerous is no good without context. What about 80mph? Thats going to make more of mess than traveling at 60mph - is that dangerous?

I regularly drive a 1950s car at 70mph and I can tell you that is much, much more dangerous than a new big German saloon at 100mph+. Context is everything.

It wasn’t even specifically aimed at you nannyogg, I hadn’t even read that you’d said it on this thread, it gets said every time these threads come up.

It always gets trotted out by idiots who think it’s their job to police the speed limit.

My Mum used to do it on a dual carriageway down to the coast and would have a long line of traffic behind her and feel completely in the right because she thought she was forcing them to a safe speed. And she enjoyed the power.

People who do this are just as bad as people who sit up other drivers arses trying to make them move. Worry about keeping your own driving safe, don’t try and police the driving of others.

I drive 4 times a day up and down a countryside B road.

The Amount of times a lorry has almost taken the front drivers side part of my car out is ridiculous.
The road is wide enough on both sides so why do they feel the need to come over slightly to my lane and almost kill us?

30 in 60 (also same road) drives me up the wall, there is no need to go that slow.

Or @mightymucks by people who have lost loved loved ones in accident caused by people speeding. Perhaps think before you make such vile assumptions.

Speed kills. I find people who defend speeding repulsive because they are defending pure selfishness.

@NannyOggsKnickers I also call people driving below the speed limit or just at the speed limit in overtaking lanes (or in the middle of the road, just because they can) total twats.
People who can't drive properly and drive 60m/h on an 80m/h are as dangerous as twats driving too fast where it's dangerous. You see the long queue of cars behind them and you just know that sooner or later someone will lose their nerves and start overtaking, even if it's not the safest. And I'm not surprised in the slightest, having been in those queues few times and wishing for the moron to cop on and either take the bus or drive normally. 60 in an 80 zone isn't normal, it's too slow.
Of course, heavy rain, snow, high winds etc. are a different story. But normal weather and someone just plodding along like driving a horse cart, well, that's idiotic.

I wasn’t talking to you Clandestino

I’ll agree that driving too slowly is annoying. But slow drivers are not responsible for the decision of the driver behind to do a risky over taking manoeuvre. We all live with our own choices. The over confidence of some drivers is far more worrying than the under confidence of the nervous ones. And it kills people too

Hit some at 20mph are they are likely to survive. Hit them at 40mph and they likely won’t.

Nanny, slow driving isn't only annoying, it's also dangerous and against the rules of the road in most civilised countries.
The under-confidence of nervous drivers is one of the reasons for accidents. They don't know how to react properly, they panic easily and they delay the traffic, causing others to display dangerous behaviour.
One of my pet peeves is people on the main road, being over-polite and letting not only one but a whole bunch of drivers from the secondary road drive first. Bonus points is when they stop suddenly, either not knowing what they are doing, that they are on a main road or thinking this is the bus and the old lady in the car should go first.
Less experienced drivers should take more lessons and have someone experienced beside them for some period. Also, they shouldn't be driving long journeys and avoid main roads at the very beginning. Yet you see very young drivers with an R or N on their cars, cheerfully driving their mates to another town, on a motorway or a main road, looking either scared shitless or over-confident (and on their mobile phone, whatsapping or snapchatting their latest adventure).

Better to be ten minutes late in this life than ten years early in the next.

Speeding is selfish and destroys lives, quite often not that of the driver who was speeding. Racing is for track days. Get off the public roads.

Mightymucks wasn't saying its ok to drive faster than the speed limit - but at least try and get up to the speed limit.
Which I am in agreement with. It annoys me when I am behind someone who refuses to go faster than 25 and I can't get my car out of 3rd gear on a road that is 30mph or more.

The whole "Its a limit not a target" argument is questionable also, as I do think its dangerous to cause queues of traffic behind you and to refuse to try to keep up with the flow of traffic. Keeping your speed so far under the limit that it winds other drivers up is not safe driving.

Speed kills

Not as much as you’d think. 20/30 limits, speed makes a massive difference to the survival of a pedestrian being hit by a car (Not sure how many fatalities in those limits involve speeding). Overall though nearly 90% of UK road deaths don’t involve speeding so whatever’s killing people on our roads it’s not speeding (Obviously it is a bit, but you get my point). Perhaps it’s time the government started a different campaign on driver safety? Of course it’s easy and profitable to target drivers doing 85 on the motorway but how much safer is that actually making things?

Nanny, people are trying to explain to you that we are not defending speeding here.
We are talking about drivers who drive too slow. 60m/h on an 80m/h for example. This is way too slow and unfortunately you see it too often.
Or arrogant drivers hogging the overtaking lane at the speed limit while the rules tell you that you can overtake there and then need to go back to the normal lane.
A driver who is driving at the speed limit is not speeding. Drivers driving too slow, below the speed limit are twats. I always dread driving during bank holidays such as Easter or Christmas or on Sunday because you always get the drivers who normally don't drive, maybe locally to the shops but otherwise stick to their homes.
So they are on a motorway or a main road, driving way too slow, death in their eyes because OMG Mary, did you see that awful man overtaking us, can't he see I am scared to drive faster than 40m/h!!!

@Clandestino - "People who can't drive properly and drive 60m/h on an 80m/h are as dangerous as twats driving too fast where it's dangerous. You see the long queue of cars behind them and you just know that sooner or later someone will lose their nerves and start overtaking, even if it's not the safest. And I'm not surprised in the slightest, having been in those queues few times and wishing for the moron to cop on and either take the bus or drive normally. 60 in an 80 zone isn't normal, it's too slow"

Whilst I share your annoyance at needlessly slow drivers there is no such thing as an "80 zone" in the U.K.

National speed limit is 70 in a dual carriageway or 60 in a single carriageway. Perhaps you need to "cop on" and read the high way code.

@Stirner, that was an example.
I could just as well say 50m/h in a 70m/h zone and it would be the same.
Let's also not forget the slight fact you seem to overlook that this forum is visited from all over the world. There are actually countries where 80m/h (that's roughly 130km/h but I'm trying to translating it to people who don't do well with the metric system) is the speed limit on motorways. You can actually google it so you don't feel like I just made it up.
But if you persist, for your convenience and peace of mind I will apologise to all present UK drivers who I offended with an incorrect speed and will correct my example.
Please whoever reads my posts, I deeply apologise. I realise this discussion should only be about UK facts. So for 60m/h read 50m/h and for 80m/h read 70m/h.

To those going 70 in the overtaking lane (fast lane) why not move if someone wants to overtake you? I don't get it.

What I’m finding irritating is the tone of the debate in which those not comfortable at the speed limit are somehow more reckless than those over the speed limit.

Slow drivers are annoying, especially the really slow. But it is often in the eye of the beholder. I would say 55 in a 60 does not make someone too slow. But to those with no regard for the speed limit it is obviously a red rag to a bull.

It says more about you than the other driver if you are so enraged by going slower than the limit that you find it acceptable to do reckless manoeuvres or insult people.

Living in the countryside I see a lot of accidents where people who are utterly selfish cause accidents because they think they have the god given right to over take on blind bends, often to then break the speed limit.

Yes, where is this 80m/h zone ?? It has been 70moh for over 50 years - I admit that before there were speed and NPR cameras everywhere 80 was a pretty common speed on the more uncluttered motorways but keep treating the outside lane as an unofficial 80 + now and a little letter will drop in through your door at some point.

I wasn’t even advocating speeding. But I’m sensible enough to realise that some people do and the dickheads that try and slow them down only make it more dangerous for the rest of us.

You end up with some dickhead doing 60mph in the overtaking lane, then another dickhead behind him who wants to do 120mph sitting right up his arse and the dickhead in front refusing to move to the inside lane so it is BOTH those drivers fault and if there is an accident they stand a high chance of involving all of the drivers stuck behind the pair of arseholes.

And Ogg you are coming across exactly the sort of sanctimonious person who would do this. And it IS the slow driver in the overtaking lane who creates and continues the hazard. You cannot control how other people drive. All you can do is drive safely and sensibly yourself.

It says more about you than the other driver if you are so enraged by going slower than the limit that you find it acceptable to do reckless manoeuvres or insult people

This.

It shocks me that people really think this way, believing that they are entitled to go at 50mph because the limit is 50mph. You're not. People should drive at a speed that is safe for the conditions, and that is it. Someone in front of you doing 40 in a 50 might annoy you, but they are not driving dangerously. When you drive up their arse, flashing them to speed up, you are the problem. Get a grip.

EasterBunBun

I suggest you use Google. There are few countries (I actually happen to come from one of them which have 130km/h limit. That's roughly 80m/h limit.
This might help you, just would like to point out that the limits are in km/h so you might want to use Google to help you translating this to miles. For your information, 1 mile is roughly 1.6km. Use the calculator if you can't use the google to help you with the maths.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_by_country

Once again, I didn't realise that this post is only for people in the UK and foreigners are not allowed to share their experience.

@Clandestino - no need to be defensive cos you're wrong

Clandestino

You are just being ridiculous, now. You quoted m/h but now mention that you were translating this from k/h because that it what you are basing your argument on ? ? If you had said k/h in the first place it would have been obvious that you are talking about another country’s driving laws. If your driving is as all over the place as your writing skills, then I am glad I am not on the same roads as you !

@EasterBunBun - This! And why go to the trouble of converting KM to miles and then give figures that just confuse people?