Speed limits - please explain

[wherestheaircon]

You're driving through the country roads. You're in a 30mph zone going through a school - fair dos - best not to risk any kids running into the road so let's stick to the limit. HOWEVER. You drive another mile or so and pass a clearly labelled "40"mph but you carry on doing 30 - sometimes you even dip down to 25, and break randomly with no reasoning (to add, I'm keeping a very reasonable and safe distance between our vehicles). The roads aren't that busy - couple of cars here and there but it's definitely safe to go up to 40mph otherwise they wouldn't put that restriction on.

So why in the world are you STILL doing 30 when you've entered a 40 zone??!!! You even drive through a 60mph zone and creep up to 40mph but no further than that. I am being so genuine when I ask that, if this sounds like you, why? I'm sure if there's a reasonable explanation I will be ok...

My pet peeve is being on a 50 mph or even 60mph road and seeing a 30mph limit coming up. If you are at the speed.limit there is almost never enough time to actually get to 30mph from the higher speed without braking quite hard.

If I know about these I will often drive nearer 40 in a 50 area as I know that a 30 is coming up and I want to slow down gradually and not have to brake to hit 30mph by the time I pass the sign.

wertuio you’re one of those drivers aren’t you why else would anyone feel it was ok for someone to drive at 25 in a 40?

It would piss off even the most patient of people.

If you are behind me, it's because my moped won't go any faster.... I will pull in whenever I can though to let you get past.

Perhaps they're lost?
Not familiar with the road so want to take their time?
Drunk?
Trying to prevent global warming by reducing their emissions?

Is they are lost they shoudl pull over and look at a map.

If they are unfamiliar with the road, ditto.

If drunk - well, words fail me

And driving at 30mph causes more pollution than driving at 50 does.

My pet peeve is being on a 50 mph or even 60mph road and seeing a 30mph limit coming up. If you are at the speed.limit there is almost never enough time to actually get to 30mph from the higher speed without braking quite hard

In parts of Scotland (and I think somewhere in England too but I can't remember where now, not in Hampshire where i live) they have count down markers - they should be everywhere. However, you do not need to brake sharply, just take your foot off the gas when you see the 30 limit sign and you will gradually slow down - its not the end of the world if you are still doing 35 when you enter the 30 zone but are still slowing down. This assumes you are not going down a steep hill when you see the sign!

The only explanation I can think of is that maybe some drivers don't know the speed limit for that stretch of road

I do think this is true at times. There's a road near me with a 60 limit on it but I am fairly sure some drivers think it's a 40.

Why should it be a race to the bottom? Why should all the competent, able and confident drivers have to be happy tootling along at 25 or 30 because that's all the crappy drivers can manage?

In the ideal world the crappy, slow and unconfident drivers wouldn't be on the road. Or at the very least, recognise their limitations, use their rear view mirror and pull over to let the 55 cars which have built up behind them get past.

I've seen tractors and commercial drivers do this often. They are professional drivers who are aware and know that they are slower than 90% of traffic on the road so will often help you overtake by indicating left when they can see (from their better vantage point) that you're clear to go.

It's the wee old ladies in their Nissan Micra where they can't find fourth gear never mind fifth or the people who only ever drive on the school run or back and forward to Tesco who are the issue. Or townies who never leave the city and have zero experience of rural roads.

It probably held you up for less time than it has taken you to write your laborious description of the whole thing.

Just accept that the person in front of you is driving at what they consider to be an appropriate speed and adjust your own to suit the circumstances. There aren’t many roads in the UK where this is a problem for long.

I once was stuck for 24 miles behind someone driving very slowly and sometimes stopping to look at the view! That was in the UK - in
It was a single track road with plenty of passing places - as in places you use to let someone else pass or overtake.

At first I flashed my lights in case they hadn’t noticed me. I flashed my lights when I knew a passing place was coming up. I sounded my horn a couple of time when a passing place was coming up. No response - not any acknowledgement that I was behind them.

I decided they were fucking clueless, probably thought that that there would be a motorway just out of sight for those who ended to drive from A to B at a normal speed, and that this was a special, quaint little road for tourists to crawl along!

24 miles later, they drew into a hotel car park and I followed. I was very calm and very polite. I asked if they had noticed me. Yes, they had. Why hadn’t they let me past. Blank stare. I explained that they should have used the passing places to let me past and that while they clearly had all the time to travel slowly, others we’re driving with the aim of getting somewhere and that could be to a hospital appointment, work, taking children to school etc. For all they knew I could have been the local teacher, doctor etc. Blank look.

In Assynt.

And after it became clear they were fuckwits I stopped flashing and peeping, because if they’d noticed me at all they must have thought I was harassing them for no reason, because obviously there was no reason I would want to drive faster than their dead slow and stop!

Having had to drive miles on country A roads over the last few weeks I can confirm that this sort of driving is definitely not the preserve of any particular demographic.

I have been checking. Same with middle lane-ing.

The ageism and sexism here is pretty stark.

Confirmation bias runs deep.

Knowmydisrespect

Well you obviously weren't in a rush or you'd not have had time to confront strangers in a hotel car park...

I'm currently learning to drive. There's quite a few very bendy 60mph roads where I live and I get told to slow down if I'm going 45mph.
I don't understand why they're 60mph if it's not actually safe to do so.

60% of all fatalities in the UK happen on rural roads, having national speed limits on all of them is frankly ridiculous. If you set a 60mph speed limit (only 10 less than a 3 lane motorway and sometimes more than a nice big A road) you are saying it’s safe to do 60, and frankly it’s not, you also often get horses, walkers and cyclists popping up around blind corners.

www.gov.uk/government/news/country-roads-deadlier-than-you-think

I think all single track country roads should have a 30 limit anyway.

OP if you are meaning roads where there is sufficient space for 2 way traffic, you have a point.

My Mum does this and it infuriates me, I think a lot of it is done subconsciously through lack of confidence, she seems to concentrate on her driving quite intently on what's going on outside the car and not keep an eye on her speed dropping.

She does recognise it happening when she's a passenger in her friends car though and often tells me how she's felt embarrassed at doing 20 in a 40 zone.

And mine...

Sometimes the car you are tailgating, flashing at, waving your fists at is behind a small moped that you cannot see! I kept my distance behind one a few weeks ago, round twisty roads with a fair few hills. It was not safe to overtake, it never is on that particualr road and the idiot behind me kept on and on and on, dropping back and then speeding up to my bumper, 10 miles at about 29 miles an hour in a 30 - 50 set of speed limits, almost constant stream of commuter traffic coming the other way. . Annoying but nothing I could do about it.

We got to traffic lights at a large junction and the rider of the moped turned to me and smiled and waved, shouted thank you. Just as Mr Impatient tried to pull alongside me and realised that there was another vehicle in the road... the look on his face was priceless, more so when both the moped driver and I flipped him the bird!

I wondered after that how many times that moped rider has made that journey with numerous Mr Impatients riding her down, scaring the shit out of her.

its not the end of the world if you are still doing 35 when you enter the 30 zone but are still slowing down

it's illegal and it's still speeding. It makes no difference if you are doing 35 when entering the zone or in the middle of it.

Knowmydisrespect

flashing your lights and horns? I would have slowed down to a crawl if I had been stuck in front of such a maniacal driver like you.

@MonkeyToesOfDoom

After 24 miles of driving behind someone who was going at speeds which varied between 0 mph to take photos or admire the view and a max of maybe 15 mph, I was already hopelessly late so a few minutes more to give them advice about how to drive on single track roads was neither here nor there, tbh.

I am not exaggerating how slowly they were driving. It is a challenging road to drive and even those who know it well would only occasionally be able to go at more than about 50mph, but they were driving without any thought or consideration for others.

Knowmydisrespect

That is plain bad driving.

You, not them.

I was stuck behind a typical middle lane hogger the other day - except that there were only two lanes and he was hogging the outside one doing mainly 55 mph. This was a major dual carriageway, the conditions were excellent, and there was not much traffic. The car directly behind him tailgated for a while, then undertook when there was nothing in the inside lane. I decided to undertake too and 5 cars behind me did the same. Obviously we shouldn't have done, but it would have been silly to have a long queue of cars doing 55 in the outside lane and a completely empty inside lane.

One of my daughters failed her first driving test for driving too slowly (she was too cautious about overtaking a cyclist and ended up with a huge queue of traffic behind her)!

Several reasons, potholes, cyclists, pedestrians and also looking for somewhere specific on an unfamiliar road.

The Highway Code, section 133:

Single-track roads. These roads are only wide enough for one vehicle. They have special passing places. If you see a vehicle coming towards you, or the driver behind wants to overtake, pull into a passing place on your left, or wait opposite a passing place on your right.

I had a name change fail, but I did say I’d stop trying to get their attention because it soon became obvious that they weren’t going to let me past and that they would feel harassed and intimidated. I kept my distance and had no choice but the stay behind them.

I see I’ve now got 3 people on this thread who don’t understand how single track roads with passing places work.

If there’s someone behind you, you use a passing place to let them past!

Totally sympathise OP.

I live in the Lakes and unfortunately work in the tourist areas - driving to and from work in the summer is a nightmare. I was stuck behind someone doing 20mph the other day - couldn't overtake because the road was windy/too narrow but there was absolutely no reason for them to drive that slowly. They were totally oblivious to the fact that they were holding 8/9 cars up behind them. That's not nervous driving, it's dangerous. They slammed on their brakes every time they saw another car coming, on every corner and every 30 seconds for no reason. They also passed numerous passing places and didn't pull over. Erratic driving like that is dangerous no matter what speed you are going.

It seems to be when people are on holiday, they forget that some people aren't, and have jobs and lives to get to. We can't all afford to potter along at 30mph - we have jobs! It's so frustrating.

The roads I drive to work are NSL A roads. Some places are windy and you need to drop your speed a bit but there's no reason to go at 30 and ignore the passing places. I do appreciate not everyone knows the roads, but surely when you notice a queue of traffic in your rear-view mirror, you pull over!