"Andrew P Smith" wrote in message
...
In article , Colin McKenzie
writes

And for one of the other responders to my comment, the argument about
setting appropriate speed limits is completely separate from the
argument about enforcing the limits set.

No it isn't. The 2 go hand in hand. The straight bit of road through
Penn near where I live has virtually no houses on it. Just a pub and a
couple of mansions. The limit is 30MPH.

The stretch of road before that has a 40MPH limit and is all twists and
turns and has 'Ice' warning signs present in the winter. It's not
possible to get up to 40MPH on that bit of road without leaving the
carriageway but the straight and clear road has a lower limit.

Precisely: there are some speed limits, like the one that you describe, that
are less worthy of being enforced than others. Sadly, reducing speed limits
is seen as the easy no-brainer solution to accidents, somewhat akin to a
schoolteacher keeping everyone in detention because someone has written a
"naughty" word on the toilet wall. A better solution is one that targets the
specific offenders without penalising everyone.

It is not speed that kills - it is the inappropriate use of speed for the
circumstances as they exist at the precise time. In other words, a road that
carries a 40 mph speed limit may require drivers to slow down to 20 mph or
less if there is a mother and child walking along the pavement and the child
is pulling away from its mother to look at "that nice little doggy" on the
other side of the road. Likewise if the road is icy or visibility is reduced
by fog.

It is a great shame that the IAM seems content to abide by whatever speed
limit or other restriction has been set, rather than campaigning to get
absurd limits raised or excessively restricting junctions re-designed. As an
IAM member myself, I sometimes despair of their hands-off
we-don't-want-to-get-involved attitude.

When I was preparing for my IAM test, my "observer" (instructor) criticised
me for indicating too much, on the grounds that if I indicated at junctions
where there was no-one to see my signal, it showed that I hadn't read the
road correctly. He seemed to be incapable of appreciating the concept of
"fail-safe" - get into the habit of always doing it and you are less likely
to forget when it *does* matter. Sometimes a pedestrian or another car will
be able to see me (and my indicator) long before I can see him, and the
earlier he knows my intentions, the better prepared he is. If I delay
signalling until I eventually see the other car, it may be too late. Like
many experts, you need to decide which bits of their advice to accept and
which to quietly ignore.