Motorway should be 100mph these days. The 70mph limit was introduced when brakes were about as useful as a chocolate teapot. The fines and points should be higher then they are now if you get caught speeding in 30 zones though imo.
been banned 3 times as a young man and since 2009 and ive done 9 courses. once got stopped for overtaking on double whites and the copper put me on a course that was aimed at mobile phone users. the lecturer wanted to send me out of the class cos it wasnt applicable to my offence. spot the gorilla? got done for mobile phones myself a year later and that was just a week before i was up at court for 100 in a 60. wide open road in the middle of the countryside clear visibility no turn offs i know the road well. i was actually doing 150 at times. 6 points big fine no ban. same thing happened 5 yrs later. 111mph motorway 6 points big fine no ban. in urban areas in my van i am the guy whos doing 28mph in a 30 slowing everyone down. and i stick to 44mph down the new hedon road. everyone else flying past. set the cruise control to 80 on motorways in the car. a far cry from the old days of driving to city away games before cameras were widespread. but out on 2 wheels on stretches of deserted roads you know well, its hard to keep to 60. been to brough preston road barton and the last 3 have been done at home via teams? first one was speeding during covid. but the last two have been for dash cam footage sent in by concerned citizens. leaning to one side off camera to take a swig of the old proverbial is nice. the stopping distances they show you is the thing that really hits you. its almost mental how much just a few mph faster can make it so much more dangerous. but most of my offences are on motorbikes where stopping isnt really a thing. i cant believe that manufacturers nowadays arent forced to limit their vehicles to say 75mph. i mean who needs a car that is capable of 90mph or more?
25 yrs ago in a car you could do outskirts of london - stanmore in just under 2 hours. its taken me longer than that to get to just past newark hitting traffic at the wrong time.
im not 100 percent on exactly how to use the cruise control in the wifes car. but i love to use it and use the 5mph decrements to slow down without braking. but what i hate is flicking it on in a 30 to save being nicked but 85mph comes on the dash and the car takes off like on a drag strip while you are flicking down down down madly 5mph at a time and by the time you get it to 30 the cars doing 45. honest officer.
if there was the same volume of traffic as in the 70's then i would say yes 100mph is fine. but there isnt. motorways are saturated with idiot dangerous drivers and on the verge of being racist i do think driving standards in some countries must be abysmally low judging by some of the stunts being pulled. its like prinny ave on ff. so for me 70 is fast enough. as long as idiots move out of the middle lane.
A long time ago they just bulldozed crash wreckage off the road even if it was a flock of sheep. If a foreigner was involved in an accident it was automatically your fault and very hard to prove otherwise no matter the circumstances. Driving at night was entertaining, when you saw a headlight coming towards you it was impossible to tell how far away it was. You could wait minutes for it to reach you, then the next time thinking it was miles away it would be there in seconds.
right, here is some info i've been holding back on, but it may be useful for some, most likely those in a hurry and with good mental arithmetic skills. ages ago, a friend had demonstrated that his car speedometer and his new satnav were not in agreement about his speed. and several years ago (maybe ten, not sure), it occurred to me to look at the regulations for the calibration of vehicle speedometers. the gist is this: all vehicle speedometers have to display a reading that is between 100% and 110% of the actual speed the vehicle is travelling at. what that means is that when the speedo says 70, depending on how the speedo was set up,the car might be doing 70mph but it might be going as slowly as 70x (100/110) = 63.63. the real speed will probably be somewhere inbetween. if it says 60 it might be 54.55 if it says 50 it might be 45.45 if it says 40 it might be 36.36 if it says 30 it might be 27.27 if it says 20 it might be 18.18 in most cases it should be possible to work out how far out the speedo reading is. my previous car gave a reading that was too high by 1/16 of what it said. if it said 64, i was doing 60. if it said 48, i was doing 45. if it said 32, I was doing 30, etc. but if i wanted to do 30, it had to say 32, so i added 1/15 on. etc. if i wanted to do 60, it had to say 64. if i wanted to do 75, it had to say 80. so if i wanted to do 70, i needed to add something between 4 (60/15) and 5 (75/15). so 74 and a bit. the way i've used to work out the discrepancy for a vehicle is this. you need a passenger with pen and paper and a mobile phone with a gps speed app on it. you drive at a variety of speeds (ideally setting speeds on the flat using cruise control). you tell your passenger what the speedo says when your speed is steady. your passenger writes down the speed you've said along with the speed the phone app says. do this for a range of speeds. ideally, the ratios of the speeds should all be more or less the same. (note: if you do try this and have bother with the sums, either add them to the thread or pm them to me and i'll see what i can get from them). my current car, being of the french persuasion, is unable to give me a consistent ratio. in the past i've worked out what the maximum safe speedometer speed is for each of the road limits. with the car that read too high by 1/16 of what it said, i knew that going 10% over in a 70 meant not only was i safe if it said 77, but i could add 1/15 of that, which was another 5.13, but i'd still got the plus one or two as well, and with plus 2 it was going to be 84.27. (70+10%+2 all times 16/15). in practice, i never drove with the speedo saying that much. where the limit was 50 or less, i would push it to the recalculated maximum if it was safe to do so. i never got a ticket using that system. a few years back, with the climate change stuff at its maddest (early 2022), petrol prices rocketed pointlessly and needlessly. petrol was around £1.90 a litre. the knock-on effects on, in particular, food (delivery costs) stlll hasn't entirely worn off. but these insane price increases let me to a change. i finally managed to allow more time for journeys and set off in plenty of time. it was more relaxing. i didn't need to drive like fangio, doing 10%+1 or 2 all the time. and then i found that i could get more miles per gallon. the yorkshire in me clicked in. i'll still do the limit if it's 50 or less, but tend to do less if it's a 70. less speed meant that car was capable of more than 34mpg. i even managed 46mpg - more than 10 miles per litre! - at times. the current wagon is a diesel. that means sometimes it's less than 9p per mile. with petrol i used to get 14p-16p per mile in recent years. this stuff was useful for me, so might be for someone else.
Ha, if you've got a BMW R75 bike you've never got any idea what speed you're going, worst speedo's on earth
Whilst I value your reply and info this forum especially transfers and the embargo must have driven you to this !! That’s also why I read every word
I'm on 9 now. Driving around like an old lady spending more time watching my speedometer than looking at my phone now.
I've gauged mine using those things that flash up telling you what speed you're going as well as a phone with a sat navigation app. 36 is 33 and 85 is 76. They're the two speeds I need to remember most when going past cameras. Clearly not well enough given the fact I've had those two tickets in the last few weeks!!!
As Ernie said (I think) I also have the problem that I even though I know how to work the Cruise Control in mine and Mrs Tash’s car, I sometimes forget in mine that it isn’t Adaptive like hers, particularly after driving hers for a few days if were away in it. So I merrily barrel along the Motorway in mine until I’m rapidly approaching another car and remember that mine won’t automatically slow down to the speed of the traffic in front like hers does!
I've used my adaptive cruise control once and won't be doing so again, I like to feel that I'm in control of the car, not the other way around. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
I like to have a little nap and wake up when I’m closer to where I’m going… Seriously I like it when traffic is heavy so it auto adjusts, particularly motorways.
I didn't think you could drive more than 3 to 4 hours without falling asleep... Don't get lifts with Den, or if you do insist on being sat in the passenger seat, to scream to wake him the moment before death...
