AIBU - If you want to drive below the speed limit you should pull over at regular intervals

[TheCumbrian]

'It's a speed limit not a target' etc

But equally, on a good road in good conditions theres no reason why a competent driver shouldn't be able to drive somewhere close to the speed limit (sharp bends, single track national speed limit C roads etc excluded) and make reasonable progress without holding up other road users.

If you can't, you should pull over, when safe to do so, once you have 5 or more vehicles trundling behind you.

It's quite funny when you catch up with the impatient risk taking overtaker at the next roundabout/set of lights.

Bold failure
18 Use of Speed - You should make safe, reasonable progress along the road bearing in mind the road, traffic and weather conditions and the road signs and speed limits. Make sure that you can stop safely, well within the distance you can see to be clear
20 Maintain progress
In order to pass your test you must show that you can drive at a realistic speed
appropriate to the road and traffic conditions. You should approach all hazards at a safe, controlled speed, without being over cautious or interfering with the progress of other traffic. Always be ready to move away from junctions as soon
as it is safe and correct to do so. Driving excessively slowly can create dangers
for yourself and other drivers.

If you don’t drive to the maximum speed limit when road conditions are favourable you will fail your driving test

Wrong. You would fail for driving too far under, but you don't have to nail the limit. You would also fail your test for changing the radio station whilst driving, sticking your elbow out of the open window, adjusting the heating whilst driving, and a whole load of other things people do all the time once they've passed.

I wont drive speed limit on rural roads that are bendy. I wouldnt feel safe unless I was used to the road.
Saying that, if someone was tailgating me and there was space to let them pass, I probably would.
Great deal of fatal accidents on rural roads though. Maybe leave more time so you dont need to drive so fast

Bet that peeping told 'em.

You should make safe, reasonable progress along the road bearing in mind the road, traffic and weather conditions and the road signs and speed limits. Make sure that you can stop safely, well within the distance you can see to be clear

With all due respect, that's a wooly definition. Like I said, I am quite happy doing 50mph in a 60 mph. I am well capable of doing 60..or even more, but I found after 2 weeks of having to do this speed that it was great for fuel consumption, felt safer and has made little difference back here as all you are doing is not speeding up just to get caught at junctions.

Most people would fail the driving test because they can't maintain a safe gap.

I was behind a cyclist in town the other day (flat straight road) i could have overtaken except i was about to turn left into the petrol station so thought rather than cut up the cyclist i would wait. Car behind was too impatient, overtook and then immediately had to stop behind a queue of cars at the traffic lights. He literally saved about 5 seconds and didnt even gain one place forward in the queue as i had gone to the petrol station!

All the 'I drive slower because' people

That's fine, you drive slower than what is normal for that road for your reasons. I get people don't know the road, are nervous, don't want points etc. Fine.

That's not my AIBU though is it.

If you want to drive slower, pull over every now and then. It's just a few minutes extra on your journey after all isn't it. chill.

The thing is life that people can potentially go two ways when passing their test. One is to be cocky and overconfident to the point of doing risky manoeuvres. The other is to become over cautious, hinder the progress of other drivers whilst smugly deciding that they're oh so safe and better than everyone else (as shown by people who hold up traffic saying how hilarious it is to see a car who overtook them at a later set of lights).
Meanwhile most people are quite content making reasonable progress for the conditions and find both categories above to be a pain.

Saying that, if someone was tailgating me and there was space to let them pass, I probably would

I do that - I don't want a dangerous driver behind me.

Some roads shouldn’t be NSP at all, it’s actually dangerous.

Much better to have the dangerous tailgating driver in front of you than behind I agree.

With all due respect, that's a wooly definition. Like I said, I am quite happy doing 50mph in a 60 mph
With all due respect that's what is given out for the driving test so it's kinda neither here nor there whether people who want to hinder other people like it or not.
It also says:
You should approach all hazards at a safe, controlled speed, without being over cautious or interfering with the progress of other traffic.
Someone deciding they want to hold everyone else up is interfering with the progress of other traffic. If they want to drive at 50mph rather than 60mph because time isn't important and they want to save £5 fuel (it isn't that much saved because I tried it on long distances working away trips after hearing about this argument, the difference between 60/65 in the left lane Vs 70 wasn't much at all), then it's not too much to ask to let people past.

With all due respect that's what is given out for the driving test so it's kinda neither here nor there whether people who want to hinder other people like it or not

I know that's what it says in the driving test. But it's a wooly definition. Subjective

You should make safe, reasonable progress - very subjective

without being over cautious or interfering with the progress of other traffic - subjective

Wondering how much slower than the limit is too slow?

I agree if you are stuck behind someone doing a 30 in a 60 but anything above 40 doesn't bother me. In my experience tractors and very slow vehicles do pull over once a queue has formed behind them.

chom certainly on the roads I’ve known it isn’t that 60 is a dangerous speed. The speed related accidents tend to be people who view them as unpoliced motorways, and assume that they can go a lot faster than 60, until they hit a difficult spot and crash. So by lowering the limit those who speed don’t view the road in the same light.

We have one corner locally that gets crashed into so often I’m surprised they bother rebuilding the wall. With familiarity and a suitable car you can manage 30 safely in peak conditions. 15 is the average and entirely reasonable. Less in bad conditions/ new drivers. But people tend to drive in, shit themselves and whack on the brakes and get in trouble. If you’ve approached it at 60 because you were doing 80 on the straight, you’re dead.

In short it isn’t the limit being 60 that causes accidents, it’s the failure to understand that it isn’t a city centre dual carriageway where barring other vehicles you can safely expect to drive steadily at the limit for the full stretch. So again, incompetent drivers.

Yabu - if it's safe to drive at the speed limit then it's safe to overtake a slower vehicle. If you can't safely overtake the slower vehicle (due to bendy roads, narrow width, heavy traffic in the other direction) then it isn't good road conditions and the driver is quite right to slow down. The kinds of single carriage roads where it's generally safe to go at the speed limit are generally very easy to overtake safely on because even though there is only one lane in each direction there's enough width for an extra vehicle in the middle.

chomalungma
Your posts highlight that the problem with common sense is that it is not very common.

No policy document is going to have a table of speeds for every road feature on every road type in every area.

You're dismissing perfectly reasonable guidelines that most people with an ounce of common sense can understand purely to argue that whatever speed someone chooses to do is totally and utterly reasonable because the idea of being over cautious is subjective and interesting with progress of other traffic is subjective.

But that's unsurprising coming from a driver who openly drives 10mph under the speed limit knowing fine well they're holding others up when it is safe and reasonable for people to want to drive at the limit.

knowing fine well they're holding others up when it is safe and reasonable for people to want to drive at the limit

The thing is - is that I'm not. Because my journey has lots of busy roundabouts on it - so basically all I would be doing is getting to a queue faster. Speeding up to 60mph only to slow down quite soon.

What's the point?

I make a point of doing 30 [in a 60] and won’t pull over for someone to speed off and kill a cyclist/deer/child.

So arrogant to decide to police other drivers.

In the county lanes round here, your approach would have the opposite effect. It would result in frustrated drivers trying to make up time once they’d got past the smug road hogger.

if it's safe to drive at the speed limit then it's safe to overtake a slower vehicle. If you can't safely overtake the slower vehicle (due to bendy roads, narrow width, heavy traffic in the other direction) then it isn't good road conditions and the driver is quite right to slow down
It's not about nailing the speed limit for the whole journey. It's about making reasonable progress along a stretch of road.

A country road near me is national speed limit. Reasonable safe speed depending on condition and which part of the road you're at is 45-55mph. It's perfectly safe to drive at that speed. It's not a road with many safe overtaking spots so if you're stuck between someone doing 35mph and whacking their brakes on at every corner (because they can't seem to drive round a corner properly managing their speed) then you're stuck. Lack of overtaking space doesn't mean the person at 35mph is right to slow down. Driving at 35mph and poor driving round corners makes them a driver who probably doesn't have the skills to be on the road.

But, some narrow roads really, really shouldn't have a 60 speed limit....

I regularly use one, and just in the last two days, I've had to slam on my brakes because of people coming around corners very quickly, and widely. Just 2 days ago if I had been doing 60, I would have come around the corner and killed the elderly man who was jogging...
And then there's the time I was doing 40, the -jerk- person behind was aggressively tailgating, but hadn't seen the deer that had jumped out in front of me... ( it was that time of night, and a stretch of road that often had deer).

And then last week my daughter, who is learning to drive, but doing very well, had to slam her brakes, because someone pulled out from their drive without looking.

Some of those roads really shouldn't have a 60 limit!

Surely driving for the road conditions is the very definition of competent?

What's the point?
That it's not your role to drive in a way that polices other people's driving.
Maybe they are doing a different journey to you (probably), maybe getting through a couple of junctions a little earlier gets them onto the next stretch of their journey which is clearer.

There's a junction on my old commute that had a nice 10min window of clear traffic, but miss that and you'd be stuck for a while. Naturally you leave some time, but I'd be irritated if I missed that window and had a 15/20minute delay because I had the misfortune of being stuck behind someone like you who has decided to police everyone's speed to earlier junctions because you've decided there is no point driving more than 10mph below the limit.

So arrogant to decide to police other drivers
I feel the same.
If people wish to drive like idiots then I think more fool them and they're bad drivers.
But people who drive to police others driving and are arrogant enough to think they're doing the world and other drivers a favour are also poor drivers because they fail to see beyond their own tiny worldview.

If you are by yourself on the road travel whayever fucking speed you like

If there's 5 cars building up behind you, it's a hint your traveling too slow. If you can't possibly face going the same speed all the other drivers are then a)yes you are incompetent because you can't drive at a reasonable speed
And b) pull over so that you aren't holding people up

I'm on holiday atm and it's really clear some people just cannot drive rurally. I live somewhere rural but it's not a holiday destination so people know what they're doing. Here, it's a 2 lane A road, easy to do 60 and people are doing 40 and breaking to 30 for minor bends, it's a similar strsightness/wideness of lane to a motorway. But it's rural so 40!

On the single track roads often cars just stop in the middle of the road, no attempt to pull over or find a passing space. Its ridiculous.

There are plenty of roads it's not safe to travel 60, but generally if lots of cars are catching you up, or having to overtake you are going to slowly. It's really not rocket science

Drivers who are clearly incompetent make me anxious. Someone traveling at 40 when it's safe and easy to travel 60 does not scream safe driver and I get a bit wary of them, if I overtake will they speed up? (Potentially happens a fair bit) will they swerve into me? (Probably as slowing to 30 for simple bends suggests poor control) I just have no trust in them.

@TheCumbrian YANBU. On B roads and A roads, (and any decent road, that is not a one car wide country lane with multiple bends,) anyone who drives at more than 10 mph below the speed limit should be fined. I am fucked off with being stuck behind some fucking turd driving at 37 mph in a 60 mph zone., or 26 mph in a 50 mph zone.

Seriously, it happens like once or twice a week to me. Sometimes for 5 miles or so, on a road where there are very few opportunities to overtake.

If you can be fined for speeding, and for going only one or two miles over the limit, then I fail to see why a law cannot be implemented that chastises and fines drivers going too fucking SLOW.

I was stuck behind one arsehole the other week, doing 25-27 mph in a FIFTY zone, (on a main B road,) and I shit you not, around FORTY vehicles were behind him by the time 2 miles of dual carriageway came, so we could overtake. Absolute batshit. How he could have such little self awareness just elude me!