A tragic day

[dollywobbler]

OK, but why?

Why can they legally do 70 but have a restrictor?

 

And on that subject, putting aside the age-old topic of lorries being limited to 56mph and the resulting snail-races, why are more and more vans, and even car-derived vans being limited to 60, 55 or even less?

I saw a 7.5t truck with a sticker on saying how it was limited to 50, and then a bloody Vauxhall Combo with a 60 sticker on it. How is deliberately getting in the way helping?

 

If you can't trust your drivers to drive their small van at 70, then allow them enough time to get to their destination using minor roads.

 

Why, I have no idea. Same as trucks can legally do 60, but are restricted to 56. Other limiters are either management not trusting their drivers, so blindly thinking that speed limiters will make them drive nicely, or marketing twats thinking it looks good to 'send and environmental message' by driving the company's drivers absolutely mental with hideous restrictions. Tesco trucks are limited to 52mph I think, which no doubt earned some manager twat a huge bonus for saving x amount of diesel over less restricted trucks. 

[Craig the Princess]

The lower limits are EU ones, the higher is Uk law IIRC.

[forddeliveryboy]

Why, when the legal limit is 70mph, isn't there a speed restrictor placed on every car to cut in progressively over 75mph so that there's no more power available by 80?

 

Not saying I'd agree with that, but in a nanny state who seems to want to control every aspect of people's lives (and with dubious success - look at soaring mental and physcial health problems) isn't not doing accepting that the law is there to be broken?

[Pillock]

Because of the logistics of retro fitting such a device to every car is (thankfully) prohibitive?

 

Or because the revenue from speed cameras is quite nice..... A limited would stop that.

 

(See also banning smoking vs increasing the tax on tobacco year on year)

[Mr Lobster]

I'd have to argue that fitting speed limiters to cars would probably make them more dangerous tbh. Everyone would regard the accelerator an an on / off switch and just sit foot flat to the boards at a restrained 70 or whatever. End result is drivers paying even less attention to what's going on ahead I suspect.

[catsinthewelder]

We've got a minibus at work that's restricted to 62 and it's a right pain on the motorway.  When it's busy it's far less stressful to find someone else who's doing 60 and follow them than end up snail racing people who were driving at 55 but speed up to 60+ when they spot a big Transit heading past.  The problem then is the passengers moaning that you're going too slowly.

[New POD]

Have to say that this morning in the dark and the pissing down rain, the usual knobheaded fuckwittery that I usually witness on the M6 southbound, was pleasantly absent. Lots of people giving lots of distance between them and the cars in front, a reasonable amount of lane discipline, plenty of indicators way before changing lanes.

 

I'm guessing that this morning lots of wife's said to their husbands "Billy, don't be a hero, don't drive like the twat you usually are"

[Pete-M]

The Transits limited to 68 mph are bloody annoying to drive. In 4th they go well from say 50 to 68 and then instantly run out of puff. In 5th or 6th they just get into their stride then are just out of the juicy bit of the power band as soon as they hit a hill which means changing down to 4th to get the revs back up, then it clatters back into the speed limiter again. 75 mph they'll romp up anything in 6th.

[cms206]

We've got a minibus at work that's restricted to 62 and it's a right pain on the motorway. When it's busy it's far less stressful to find someone else who's doing 60 and follow them than end up snail racing people who were driving at 55 but speed up to 60+ when they spot a big Transit heading past. The problem then is the passengers moaning that you're going too slowly.

I've got an F-reg Volvo B10M in my place which had been turned up at the fuelpump and had the timing advanced before we got it. It's derestricted and will hit about 73mph in fifth; it's six speed. Interestingly although a limiter has to be fitted, it doesn't have to work; as long as it's broken and not just tampered with it'll pass an MOT. Also bizarrely on a bus or coach the only gauges which must be servicable and backlit for MOT are the air gauges.

 

My colleague and I were stopped at 70mph on the M74 and it took a phonecall to VOSA by the traffic plod to confirm that the limit for coaches was 70mph and not 62mph before they'd let us go.

[Inspector Morose]

It's the stupidity of the law that coaches are legally allowed to do 70 as that law was brought out first. The other law came in in the late 80s that every coach must be fitted from new with a limiter set to 100kph (not the EU normal maximum for coaches, that's 90KPH but mostly relaxed to 100 if you vehicle is on an approved list). Later it was brought in that coaches built after 1983 should also be retrofitted.

So coaches are in a strange position as rarely being done for speeding on motorways but being done instead for having a defective speed limiter.

 

One thing with saying that new cars can stop quicker than before. This is undeniably true but the overall stopping distance is not just made up of this. In the same number of years, your reaction time (aka your thinking time) has stayed the same as humans haven't got any quicker at reacting over time and that measurement was just an average of all ages reaction times anyway so on the whole it will be slower than you think it will.

 

Let me explain that last point. When was the last time you had to do an emergency stop from speed where you knew when you were going to start braking? It's a piece of piss to stop very quickly when there's a line on the road to tell you when to start braking. Now remove the line, don't tell the driver when or where or if they'll need to brake, maybe throw in a bangin' tune on the radio and pretty scenery. Possibly get them to wonder what to have for tea later on and maybe a packet of crisps on the....

BANG. STOP.

How long did it take then? Still shorter than cars of old but the difference is much reduced.

[Cavcraft]

When I was a van/7.5 tonner driver, I drove like a wanker because I could, not because I had to. Sometimes I had to, most times I didn't.