There is consultation ongoing in Scotland that proposes to increase HGV limits in single carriageway NSL (from a ridiculous 40mph to 50mph), and also to REDUCE car/motorbike limits in single carriageway NSL from 60mph to 50mph.
Please have your say!
You have to provide your name and email Address for your inputs to be considered. edit: you are not asked to provide your address. Presumably because this question affects those who drive in Scotland in addition to those who live in Scotland.
Will make it impossible to overtake incompetent drivers who do 35mph everywhere, leading to dangerous attempts
Speeding will increase massively, as if 60 is speeding then people will think you might as well do 70
Speeding will increase in towns along nsl routes- people already fail to slow enough from 60 to 30, so at an already lower speed they just won’t slow at all- how many slow drivers do 40 in a nsl and just continue at that speed through the villages?
All the options where you have improves a lot, improves a little etc need an option that says “won’t make a blind bit of difference” except irritating people to no end
Plenty of areas of England have done this already - Warwickshire switched pretty much all of its NSL to 50 limit quite a few years ago, maybe over a decade.
I don’t think it works for Scotland (I’m not sure it works for Warwickshire either but it isn’t going to change). Warwickshire is a much smaller area so journeys are likely to be shorter; Scotland’s population centres are much further apart and slowing everyone down by 17% is just going to waste people’s time. Economically that can’t be a good thing.
ETA: crikey, the Warwickshire scheme was first announced in 2008!
I just happened to catch this on the late news last night - would otherwise have been unaware.
Several John & Jane Q Citizens interviewed for the news article appeared to believe that reducing NSL from 60 to 50 would address people that they believe grossly exceed the 60 limit, completely failing to understand that's an enforcement issue as opposed to a limit issue.
There are a few free text sections in the survey where I asked that they stop fixating on speed and get Traffic Policing back to a level where they can address poor/dangerous driving.
The 50mph trial on the A9 has resulted in a reduction in risky overtaking with a resultant improvement in safety, backed up by a decade of data from roads in England and Wales. “The extension of a 50mph limit across all Scottish single-carriageway A-roads should be expected to yield similar results.
Anyone who has even driven that road knows this is utter horseshit. A long irritating trudge, characterised by long trains of 40mph dawdlers and insane overtaking between the Specs sections when people get pissed off.
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough"
Some of the driving up here is absolutely insane and the roads are now carrying way more traffic than they were designed-to, especially seasonally with the NC500. Daily I see people doing overtakes I wouldn't consider in my car, I'd love to know what those drivers are thinking. It's the same on the A9.
A lower speed limit wouldn't fix any of these things I see every day...
Tailgating...
Tailgating leaving no room for people to overtake one or two cars at a time safely...
People who don't know how to overtake...
People who underestimate how long it takes to overtake...
People who overestimate how fast their car is...
People who seem to have a deathwish and will overtake on bends, blind crests etc...
People who can't drive at any sort of reasonable speed on single carriageway roads...
Bends?! What are bends. EMERGENCY STOP time...
People who drive at 40mph in a 60... and in the 30 and in a 20....
Most of that comes down to poor standards of driving and dangerous driving, but the only traffic policing I see up here is speed enforcement so nothing will change.
Last edited by Ascender on Thu Nov 28, 2024 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ascender wrote: ↑Thu Nov 28, 2024 3:49 pm
Some of the driving up here is absolutely insane and the roads are now carrying way more traffic than they were designed-to, especially seasonally with the NC500. Daily I see people doing overtakes I wouldn't consider in my car, I'd love to know what those drivers are thinking. It's the same on the A9.
A lower speed limit wouldn't fix any of these things I see every day...
Tailgating...
Tailgating leaving no room for people to overtake one or two cars at a time safely...
People who don't know how to overtake...
People who underestimate how long it takes to overtake...
People who overestimate how fast their car is...
People who seem to have a deathwish and will overtake on blends, blind crests etc...
People who can't drive at any sort of reasonable speed on single carriageway roads...
Bends?! What are bends. EMERGENCY STOP time...
People who drive at 40mph in a 60... and in the 30 and in a 20....
Most of that comes down to poor standards of driving and dangerous driving, but the only traffic policing I see up here is speed enforcement so nothing will change.
All of that - the 20mph limits have been universally ignored. When teaching the boy to drive IME all it does is promote rage for anyone that does the limit.
@Ascender@scotta all of that, unfortunately. Awareness, perception and anticipation skills seem to be at an all time low.
I'm nervous that with the creation of this consultation, it's already a done deal. The relentless messaging around speed already appears to have convinced the majority that slower always has to be better.
At least there's freeform text boxes to put some stuff in which will no doubt be ignored.
I like how there's no option to select "won't make a difference" when they ask about what you think the impact of reducing limits will be. I guess "unsure" is as close to that as we'll get.
Done. Not well worded at all, with the way it has been worded and laid out. Clearly we are all meant to start ticking how impactful speed is and suddenly give this bloosy stupid idea a thumns up.
The biggest problem is the demographic this kind of thing appeals to
People who enjoy driving, who see this as the shitshow it is will be a small percentage of those who reply
The people who are your normal drivers who don’t know what’s going on past the end of their bonnet won’t care enough to fill it out
The people who are militant anti speed who believe cars should have a man with a flag walking infront of it will reply in their droves and make it seem like “this is what the people want”
Done. It's interesting the choice of words used for the questions and allowed responses as they can put a slant on the received surveys which will show a support in their plans.
Anyway, like @jamcg says, not enough people will fill this in to make a difference.
Does seem like another bit of smoke and mirrors to detract from their failure to do things like the dualing of the A9 and we all know how evil cars are.
