Marc Brett wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:43:33 +0100, Matt B
> <"matt.bourke"@nospam.london.com> wrote:
>
>> Marc Brett wrote:
>>> On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 11:06:02 GMT, "David Lloyd"
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> One would like to think that the speed limits applied to roads truely
>>>> reflect the hazards present on those roads.
>>> They reflect more than immediately visible hazards.
>> Except they don't even reflect "immediately visible hazards". They are
>> blanket numbers, with the urban limits in particular, covering wide
>> areas of constantly varying "immediately visible hazards".
>
> So?
Did you, or did you not, write that speed limits "reflect more than
immediately visible hazards"? I was pointing out that they can't
possibly e expected to pint /even/ those out. Thus nullifying your point.
>>> They may also
>>> reflect residents' concern about air and noise pollution,
>> How can speed limits reflect those factors? Air pollution is
>> proportional to fuel consumption, which is not so much proportional to
>> speed, as to load and to engine speed. So it also depends what gear you
>> are in.
>
> "Occifer, I was speeding because my Ferrari didn't have a low enough
> gear for the road!"
You said they also reflect those things - now you see they can't do
both, as they conflict with each other. You are making a very good case
against speed limits without much help. ;-)
> What, now, you want to legislate for a particular
> gear?
I'd settle for the removal of farcical and ill-conceived legislation.
> Better to legislate for fuel consumption meters in every car and
> let the driver choose a gear which minimises wastefulness.
How about rationing fossil fuel - the Ferrari driver could then choose
how he splits the use of his allocation between fuelling his house and
fuelling his car. Today fuelling your house not only creates more
emissions than fuelling your car, but it attracts NO "fuel duty", and a
much reduced rate of VAT. If pollution is a perceived problem then why
is it only emissions from cars that attract attention?
> This would
> work for all gears, all speeds and all speed limits.
It wouldn't affect total emissions much though would it - as the
majority of emissions are non generated by car..
>>> and their fear
>>> of using the footpaths and roads safely.
>> A blunt tool indeed.
>
> But cost effective.
Are you sure? Have you read RCGB recently? The downward trend has
stopped since speed limits became the central plank of road safety policies.
>>> A car driver is not equipped
>>> to judge these factors.
>> I think you'll find that there are better ways to controll all of those
>> factors than blanket, arbitrary, speed limits.
>
> At what cost?
What value would you put on significantly reducing the annual road
carnage we currently suffer, and on liberating our roads and streets
from car dominance?
> A sign costs a teeny tiny fraction of what a Mondrian
> utopia retrofit costs.
You get what you pay for though, im terms of returned benefit - remember
RCGB?
>>>> Road and weather conditions
>>>> should also feed-back into a driver's choice of appropriate speed. For a
>>>> conversation on speeding, it would be helpful to classify a speeding
>>>> motorist as one that travels at a speed greater than appropriate for the
>>>> conditions, regardless of what the signs say.
>>> It would be most unhelpful; a speed limit sign IS one of the conditions
>>> for which a motorist has to adjust his speed.
>> Yet you support speeding as a measure of "dangerousness"? It is, of
>> course, the only thing that speed cameras have any chance of measuring
>> too. Driving at the limit is probably inappropriate more times than it
>> is appropriate.
>
> So drive below the limit. Is that so hard?
So what did you say the limits were for again?
> A robot camera, and even a wetware plod, hasn't a hope of judging
> appropriate speed below the limit to a degree which would hold up in
> court, unless a RTA occurs.
"Appropriate speed" for cars should only need to be enforced on the
streets to the same extent as it is for pedestrians in shopping malls.
Inappropriate speed is a sign of inappropriate streets.
> So a legal limit, blunt a tool as you may
> find it, is the only legal remedy for excessive speed.
No. As we've already seen, there is no way that a speed limit can be
used to enforce "appropriate" speed, because speed limits are
hard-coded, and do not know what the appropriate speed may be for a
given vehicle and a given driver on a given road at a given time.
> Administer it by
> plods, which generates hostility against the constabulary, or by robots,
> which merely generates cries of "not fair!"
You can probably guess the answer to that one by now. ;-)
--
Matt B
