Outraged over average-speed cameras

August 22nd, 2008 - 22:19 | 2 comments

Overheard this afternoon:

They want to put cameras up between the motorway junctions, so if your average speed is over the limit you’ll get fined. Isn’t it outrageous! There are so many more things they could be doing. I’ll just stop at the services and have a cup of tea.

It’s curious that the laws the police apparently needn’t enforce happen to be those this man wants to break.

I’ve previously blogged my opinions on anti-speed-camera campaigners (I find them pathetic) and won’t rehash them here. But the above is particularly amusing, because average-speed cameras wipe out many of the common whinings - they wouldn’t cause ‘emergency braking’, for example - yet campaigners are still opposed to them. How very transparent.

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2 Responses to “Outraged over average-speed cameras”

1 Paroxysm Aug 23rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm

Residential streets should be limited, motorways unlimited. Most people I see driving on the motorway every day go faster than 70mph given the chance, that’s a majority vote. It’s true that at slower speeds we’d be safer but then why not make motorways limited to 50mph? Or even 40! 30!, wait why do we have them? I’ve learnt a lot from being on the motorways of this country; for example, Tony Blair’s limosine battering past me on the M1 at around 95mph while on his way down to London to see in the new term. It was wonderful, I’d just listened to a piece on radio 4 about road safety and toll charges etc. then heard from the correspondent that Tony was making his way past such and such a junction…vrrroooooommm!!! I was laughing all the way to London.
2 Spyderman Aug 26th, 2008 at 9:49 am

Whilst I completely agree that it is safe to do 80mph or more on the motorway in some circumstances (i.e. on empty roads), much of the time it is not safe as it does bring higher speed differentials which are not safe when passing vehicles that are limited to 56mph!
also, on average, at 80mph you produce 27% more CO2 than at 60mph. and 15% more CO2 than at 70mph, so enforcing the speed limit on motorways would actually significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the average british motorist!

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