It really is about time this happened … but don't get all excited that the Cleggerons have suddenly seen the light. The 80mph limit just happens to coincide with the most common motorway limit on the continent – 130kph – which means that we are just being brought into line with EU practice.

And I wish The Mail would climb down and join the real world. Motorists are quite often prosecuted for driving 80 on a motorway – but not during the day in free-flow conditions. You can do 90mph and above without interference from the plod, as it is too dangerous for them to cut in and carve out speeders.

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The truly great thing about this, if true, is that Caroline Lucas (plus a few of her cohort) will have apoplexy - thus helping with the coming world-wide shortage of piano wire!

Mpg goes down with the square of the speed. If you drive 40% faster, say 100mph rather than 70mph, then your mpg has halved and your petrol used doubled.
At current rates of petrol tax the government earns more from a 'speeding' car on the motorway than it would from speeding fines.

Auberon Waugh supported the EU because he judged that we would be better off being governed by Belgian ticket inspectors than by the bunch of morons who run this country. Maybe he had a point.

Spain has recently reduced its speed limit to 100kph for whatever reason...everybody has a reason, however unreasonable.

btw........there is no EU speed-limit harmony.

Yes, I know ... I'm just being mischievous.

I thought 87 mph was the imperial equivalent of the continental limit. That's a deduction of almost 10%. Trust the British government to rick us again!

"....What these "speed kills" cretins rather fail to understand is that the purpose of speed is to get you from point A to point B as quickly as possible..."


If "Speed Killed" then aircraft would start down the runway with a full complement of live passengers and arrive at their destination with a load of corpses....

All accidents are 'speed related' only in the sense that if nobody was moving then the accident would not take place. If you discount this pointless definition, and look for accidents where the key factor was 'excessive speed for the conditions' (that is, an alert drive who nevertheless chose to drive too fast) the percentage drops to a surprisingly small figure. I seem to remember that 'inattention' and 'incorrect appreciation of road conditions' are the largest single causes...

But speed is easy to measure, and to apply fines against. Attention and driving skill are far harder to regulate.

Motorways are the safest roads. The reason is the absence of crossroads, their long sinuous curves instead of sharp turns and the reduction as far as possible of roadside distractions. Jaywalking pedestrians are the greatest hazard to road safety. Motorways are designed to permit safe driving for long distances at high speed (the design speed is much higher than 80 mph btw).
The 70 mph motorway speed limit was introduced in 1965 because of a spate of pile-ups caused by inexperienced drivers in crap cars that were not safe at speeds higher than 70mph (in comparison to today's vastly more reliable and much better engineered cars).

Do you want trucks speed limit increased as well ? (on motorways it is nominally 60 mph)

Do you want their speed limiters taken out , or reset to a higher speed . (Currently set at 56 mph, to match the continents 90 kph )

What about coaches ?

Brian:

I had thought that the 70mph speed limit was imposed because Jaguar had taken to road testing E Types at 100+mph in the small hours. Maybe it's an urban myth, but I like it. Most cars in 1965 were gasping for breath when, or if, they reached 70, the limit is one of those anomalies which stick because they suit the Man.

Trucks are limited to 56mph ... which just happens to be 90kph ... as required by EU law. As it is an EU competence, the question of increasing the speed does not arise. Our masters got there first.

I saw this item originally in the Daily Mail

However the Mail article referred to the police 'more strictly enforcing' an 80mph speed limit than they currently enforce the 70mph limits. Most Plod's use the ACPO speed limit system for deciding whether to prosecute or not. Under the ACPO guidelines there is no allowance in 20mph limit areas you can be done for doing 21 mph in those areas. For other speed limits the allowance is : speed limit x 1.1 + 2mph. So at 70 you will not normally be prosecuted unless you exceed 77 + 2 = 79mph. If an 80mph limit comes in then you are actually talking about 88 + 2 = 90mph.

Or are they going to remove any 'allowance' for 80mph limit areas (like 20mph limit areas) in which case the 'increase' in limit in real terms is 1mph : the difference between 70mph with ACPO allowances and 80mph strictly enforced !

John FSK:

Alas, an urban myth, but, coming from the home of the cat it would indeed be nice to be true. And I'm sure no Jaguar works driver would ever have dillydallied at a mere ton + (so infra-dig) when the finest design of Malcolm Sayer was capable of 150mph + . Another urban myth is that the 70 mph limit was introduced by Barbara Castle and not Tom Fraser.
Talking of the Man, there are still no speed limits on rural roads on the Isle of.

And if we pull out of the EU (or it disintegrates ) ?