Seven people overtook me in the space of 20 minutes

[Tankersome]

AIBU to be so bloody annoyed by how easily some people find it to speed?

I live rurally with lots of windy, pot-holed single track roads. I commute into the town every day. The rural roads are all NSL but I drive them around 35mph max - and always pull over on the rare times a car is behind me to let them pass if they like.

When i finally get onto the main road that takes me into town, i get myself up to 60mph and switch on cruise control. It's a lovely straight single-carriageway with no pot-holes so I feel comfortable doing this.

But despite going the speed limit, I'm always overtaken. This morning it was a new record with seven people overtaking me in the space of the 20 minutes I'm on that particular road (it was five last night on the drive home).

They don't just speed to overtake either - they continue along at 70-80mph until they're out of my sight. It's not a busy or congested road whatsoever, and there aren't any pavements. So they probably feel safe going at that speed but it's illegal. I've never once seen a speed camera van parked at the roadside either so there is no incentive for these people to drive within the speed limit.

It just really annoys me. Yes, we all have places to be. But why do some people feel so at ease with speeding like that? And the annoying thing is, it makes me feel like I'm the one in the wrong because it's as though I'm holding people up despite going the fastest speed allowed on the road.

@whatsthecomingoverthehill

some stats are now out of date - but recent stats suggest that while numbers have changed the overall %s have not changed hugely...

here is a report on earlier stats:
www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motoring/errors-cause-most-uk-accidents

speed as a cause in 11% (but that could still be below the speed limit)
Exceeding the speed limit is a contributory factor in five per cent of all accidents;
driving too fast for conditions accounts for nine per cent. (that could be even 10 mph on ice)

The DfT stats attribute 68 per cent of all road accidents to a failure to look

I know I have seen more recent stats that support the same rough split of cause...

The IAM analysed c. 700,000 accidents across the 2007-2009 period:
www.iamroadsmart.com/docs/default-source/research-reports/report_licensed-to-skill-v2.pdf?sfvrsn=da60e750_4
with their Licensed to Skill report

they report exceeding the speed limit as a contributory factor (so not necessarily the main cause) in 13+% of fatalities - but in only 5.2% of accidents

as mentioned before, you can cut statistics lots of ways - but what is clear is that:

• perception is that speed is our biggest issue on the roads
• the actual figures show that they are not - failure to look is the biggest issue...

so let's focus on getting people to observe properly and worry less about speed...

I don't disagree on driving for the conditions and that we should be concentrating on being better drivers. I also agree that speed is often focused on because it is easy to measure whereas not paying attention for example is not as easy to quantify. But the issue I have is that a significant proportion of the people who speed are generally terrible drivers, as that RoSPa report makes clear. People often think they know better when they don't. So they try to justify driving illegally on the grounds that it's still 'safe', but really they are dangerous drivers.

Agree with you - but shouldn't we therefore be dealing with the fact that they are dangerous drivers, not the speed? Otherwise it is rather like giving paracetamol to a cancer patient and when their headache goes, we say they are cured - we should be dealing with root causes, not symptoms - even though it is undoubtedly more challenging...

@crunchy

Fair enough if the law changes but at the moment it is 70mph so drivers shouldn’t exceed that...

I drive to work on NSL roads everyday. They're all rural country lanes where you'd be stupid to go more than 40mph. Blind bends, tractors, sheep on the roads, potholes and numerous places where you can't fit more than one vehicle at a time.

Every week I see crashes where people have been going at the speed limit, hit a sharp bend and carried on going into a wall or a field or a river. It's always in the same spots but people just don't seem to learn and keep doing it.

NSL is the maximum, it's not the advised speed!

People are making me laugh at it being dangerous to drive as 'slowly' as 35mph on rural roads with NSL. There's a hilarious one near where my DH used to live. 30mph where there were houses on a lovely wide paved clear view road. NSL sign as you leave the village and you actually have to slow down because the high banks, overhanging trees, narrow track and pot holed road mean doing as much as 30 mph is impossible

OP I don't think some posters have the perspective that you have of how treacherous some rural roads can be no matter how many times you use them (and often because of your familiarity you're more cautious)

theyre idiots op and i also dont speed on rural roads even a bit wider than your 2nd pic

peopel are just so impatient

Everyone who overtakes you is obviously driving like an idiot and everyone in front of you that drives slower than you is obviously a decrepit old sod who needs to think about giving up his license.

This is fact.

Just worry about your own driving.

People do realise that NSL is set for all roads unless a local authority decides to lower it - or there are street lights. It is not set because anyone thinks 60 mph is a safe speed. Just that there haven't been enough accidents or deaths to cause someone to lower the speed.

After reading some of these posts I'm beginning to understand why per mile drivers are twice as likely to be killed on rural roads as urban roads. I hope none of you who think 35mph is too slow to drive on a single-track winding country lane live near me. Apart from buses (ok not many of those, but they do take up a lot of space) farm vehicles, Chelsea tractors, pot holes, flooded roads .... there's the wildlife. Kamikazi pheasants (possibly the stupidest birds alive) are a mild annoyance, but if a fully grown red deer jumps out in front of you at 60 or even 50mph you are in deep shit. They don't announce their presence and are very well camouflaged .....

Yes akkak, speed as a contribution to all accidents is less than speed as a contribution to the most serious accidents. But you said less than 5% of deaths as due to speeding. I'm not sure where autocar got their stats, but I strongly suspect it is these same contributory factors.

'Failure to look' by a vehicle driver in the most recent STATS19 data is recorded for 42% of accidents. But this will be is combined with other factors in lots of cases. They also don't give a 'main cause', and I have not seen a proper analysis which tries to identify main causes, but I have seen plenty of dodgy reporting which doesn't understand what contributory factors are.

Most accidents, in particular the most serious ones will be a combination of different factors. If a car pulls out in front of someone doing 100mph, what is the cause? The person pulling out not looking, or the person going too fast not having time to react? And if there is an accident, increased speed will make the consequences far worse. So you might argue that the person pulling out should have looked, and there could still have been an accident if the other car was going at a slower speed, but they might not have died in the slower speed collision.

Yes we should be dealing with dangerous drivers, and I wish there was a lot more emphasis on things like tailgating on the motorway, overtaking on blind bends etc. But, I'm wary of people trying to justify speeding. In the vast majority of circumstances there is no need to speed. There is a difference between making excuses for speeding, which, to be honest, some of your posts appear to be doing, and encouraging all round safe driving and enforcement.

OP, you've had views here from either spectacularly bad drivers or those who have never driven down a country lane. There are rural roads near me where driving above 30 would be suicidal and I'd never do it, despite having driven them regularly for 40 years. Speed limits aren't targets, you drive for the conditions. Or at least if you've got more than half a brain.

Indeed, lots of sheltered city kitties on here. The limit is 60mph outside my house. On a 90 degree bend after a steep narrow section.

Fortunately no one has yet been quite so stupid as to try it at anything over 30, with one exception who very nearly ended up inverted.

@whatsthecomingoverthehill

There is a difference between making excuses for speeding, which, to be honest, some of your posts appear to be doing, and encouraging all round safe driving and enforcement.

I have no need to make excuses - I am simply saying that the one size fits all - 'ooh they have gone above the speed limit - they / everyone will now die' attitude is so flawed as to be something we should get rid of...

Speed isn't something to be excused or championed, nor is it something to be criticised - it is simply a figure on a speedo... It is only once we put it in context that it becomes something to celebrate (world land speed records / F1 / etc.) or criticised (20mph past a school in a 30mph as much as 70mph around a blind bend - and both, more so than 70mph on a clear road in a 60mph)

The problem is that as soon as we except the underlying logic which is that you have to see the speed in the context of the road / conditions / etc. then we have to accept that there are times when it is safe to go above the legal limit and that opens up a whole can of worms and is not politically correct...

Far too many arguments against specific speeds are emotionally not logically based, and that is not how we should run our country (though it is going that way) - there are plenty of examples of speed camera vans sitting where they know they will generate revenue, not where they will aid safety - equally, I know roads where the speed limit is not reduced, despite being dangerous - and roads where it is reduced un-necessarily because of lobbying...

If speed kills, then why do we not all die when we get on an aeroplane? We don't because it doesn't.
Inappropriate speed can kill - but then it is the wrong choice that causes that... i.e. driver error...

Let us never forget that there are a lot of dreadful drivers around - no-one is arguing that just because they are macho and have fast cars that they are right - but that is bad driving not speed per se... It is quite possible to have one corner on one day and the same conditions, and have one driver come off into the ditch at 50mph and another go around safely, happily and with contingency in hand at 70mph...

So, let's not be lazy and demonise speed - it is bad driving we should be tackling...
So I make no excuses for speed - none are needed - if a driver is driving safely, then I don't care what speed they are doing, it becomes a random number - it is the safety that matters... and that will mean that at times they could drive above a speed limit - and other times they should drive well below it...

akkakk

If speed kills, then why do we not all die when we get on an aeroplane? We don't because it doesn't

😂😂😂😂😂.

I hope you are better at driving than arguing your point (whatever it is) for all our sakes.

Speed limits are set for the masses not the individual. I'm quite safe crossing a road from traffic island to traffic island irrespective of whetehr the green man is showing. But an unaccompanied 10 year old may not be. So if there are children around, accompanied or not, I wait for the green man.

Similarly, speed limits are hopefully set as an average maximum. Some people may be capable of driving safely at a higher speed - but if they do so, other people will start doing the same even if they aren't as capable.

There was a time when we trusted the individual to decide whether they were capable of driving after a few drinks.

If speed kills, then why do we not all die when we get on an aeroplane?

Because it is a better slogan than "Speed kills when you bash into something". No one thinks they are the one who will crash.

I turn off a almost motorway standard A road onto a country lane NSL road, it involves a sharp 90 degree bend - lots of people every year don't make it, and you see their car poking out of the ditch opposite. A brand new Merc was there for a few months last year. No one has died yet,

^ do you realise how arrogant you sound?!

That was for meredinto

If speed kills, then why do we not all die when we get on an aeroplane?

Are you really so dim?

If speed kills, then why do we not all die when we get on an aeroplane?

It's the abrupt conversion of kinetic energy into some other form which does the damage, obviously. E=0.5m V squared. Do the maths. Then remember the OP was worried about people overtaking on a single carriageway road, with the added possibility of head on collisions. Exactly the sort of road where the most loss of life and limb occurs.

^ do you realise how arrogant you sound?! Why? I'm not saying I'm a super driver capable of driving in excess of the speed limit. All I've said is that I'm better at crossing a road than a 10 year old. That's not much of a claim.

If we're bringing aeroplanes into this, try this scenario - big hunk of ice falls off plane and lands in road. Can't be foreseen however fabulous a driver you are. If you're going at 100 mph, you've got a lot less time to take evasive action than if you're travelling at 60 mph. Far-fetched I know, but my reasoning for generally sticking to the speed limit is that if something does go wrong I've got more time to react.

Also, you might think that you're too good a driver to ever have an accident that isn't someone else's fault ... I bet Lewis Hamilton thought that before he ran into a couple of stationery cars in Monte Carlo too.

If we're bringing aeroplanes into this, try this scenario - big hunk of ice falls off plane and lands in road. Can't be foreseen however fabulous a driver you are. If you're going at 100 mph, you've got a lot less time to take evasive action than if you're travelling at 60 mph. Far-fetched I know, but my reasoning for generally sticking to the speed limit is that if something does go wrong I've got more time to react.

you do know what that 'ice' from aeroplanes is generally?! :)

of course, statistically you are less likely to be hit or in the section of road coming up to where it lands at 100mph, as you spend less time crossing each metre of tarmac... however the down side is that if you are in the wrong place it is a more painful collision!

intriguingly, I know of an accident where:

• a pedestrian ran out between two stationary lanes of traffic
• hit a car in the third lane of traffic (three lanes one side of a dual carriageway)
• 50mph speed limit in an urban environment
• Signs of potential pedestrian activity and awareness that visibility with stationary traffic was not good meant that the car the pedestrian hit was travelling at a reduced speed of under 25mph - cautious driving
• reported comment from policeman to driver was "shame you weren't driving at nearer to the speed limit - you would have been down the road and gone - no accident"
• so the accident was not caused by the driving choosing that lower speed, but had they chosen a higher speed the accident would not have happened - in that scenario... (of course, had they been slightly later along the road and going faster it would have happened and might have been fatal rather than a big headache), so the lower speed was still the right decision...

So, the reality is that accidents can happen - at any speed, lower or higher than the speed limit - the speed limit itself doesn't define danger / risk either side of it - speed relative to conditions defines risk...

Akkakk - I have no points and adhere to speed limits. Just because I don't speed doesn't mean I'm not alert and paying attention. It just means I believe the law is the law.

Akkakk - I have no points and adhere to speed limits. Just because I don't speed doesn't mean I'm not alert and paying attention. It just means I believe the law is the law.

That is fine - and I respect that - but equally I am sure that you will agree that it is being alert and paying attention that makes you safe, not observing the law...

if you drive at 61mph in a NSL you might break the law, but are you really any less safe than choosing to drive at 60mph?

I respect the law - but safety is the priority, and as long as someone is a safe driver I am not going to be all that bothered by whether they have observed the law or not...

I think I was probably one of those seven people OP.

35mph MAX on a NSL road is really bloody annoying where I live. (Windy roads through fields where you can see what's coming but can't really overtake).