Free Traffic Legal Advice

Additionally ICE Engines are not as efficient at 100mph. So it is more expensive to drive faster.  The driver may be happy to offset the cost against convenience, but it is only a zero sum game for the driver.  For everyone else there is more pollution, more noise and more risk. 

I wouldn't be averse to the speed limit being 100 mph for EVs only, and 70 mph remaining the limit for ICE. Would give me a good reason to invest in an EV.

I drove at 125 a few weeks ago, perfectly legally. Nobody died.

So?

That's an anecdote. Not an argument, or evidence.

Plenty of drunk drivers have driven home, when nobody died.   

My journey was seconds shorter.

So no real benefit then.

Arguments against raising the speed limit on motorways don’t hold much water.

That's just an assertion.

It's for the proposer of changes to argue the benefits, if any.       

Given that the source of the "news" is GB News, I'd take it with a pinch of salt. I live near ashford Kent and have to use the M20 regularly. when they installed the brexit barriers and contra-flow systems over the last few years between j9 and j 8 with single line traffic, the limit was lowered fro 70 to 50. In practice because of the dawdlers, traffic rarely reached 45. I forget my exact calculations but it took about 7 minutes longer to cover that section. 7 minutes x 2 for the 2 of us in the car, x number of time a year we have to use that section of road meant something like an additional 48 hours travelling over the course of a year.

I also drive on the continent fairly regularly where the motorway speeds are higher than in the UK. I occasionally see the aftermath of an RTC, I have witnessed a couple actually happen. Over there the authorities are much quicker at clearing up, the idea being to deal with the casualties first, then get the road open and traffic flowing again. In the UK the road is often closed for hours while police make their investigations purely for Home Office statistics. Abroad the policy seems to be "it's an insurance matter", clear the mess and let them deal with it.


Could the average UK driver deal with increased speeds? I doubt it, one only has to see how long it takes a UK driver to adopt to the higher speeds in France and Belgium on the motorway from Calais. It's not until I get to Lille that the UK plated cars seem to dissipate from dawdling along at 65 mph and lane discipline is restored.

As for fuel consumption, my Range Rover TDV8 was giving 31 mpg on my usual run to work until last week when the engine failed, probably due to old age! At under 65 it was doing about 27 mpg. The average speed shown on the trip meter for the last 6 months has been around 35mph, quite high according to my local Land Rover garage.

But back to the OP, on my "slow" journeys to work that extra 7 minutes it took from j9 to j8 could make the difference between avoiding an incident at the Dartford Crossing and a long wait. As for road casualties, the death rate is about 1800 per year on UK roads and has been fairly static for the last 5years. The majority of thos deaths have been on NSL country lanes, the rest on "normal" roads with very few in 30 and slower limits. I forget the exact amount but posted them on Pepipoo a few weeks ago.

In principle, and as an IAM member, I find the idea of higher speed limits for drivers who have passed an appropriate advanced driving test to be appealing. However, unless/until we have cars that require a personalised key and biometrics to drive (at which point they will be self-driving and this discussion will be moot), there would appear to be significant hurdles to effective and efficient enforcement of such a scheme.

I realise that this is apples to oranges, as "push bikes" don't have VRMs or RK's and therefore are harder to monetise enforcement of, but the availability of exempt electrically assisted pushbikes has resulted in a vast number of illegal electric motorcycles that are indistinguishable from the legal assisted pushbikes (until they whizz past you at 40mph, uphill, without peddling, at night without lights, or any other legal or safety requirement). Riding a conventional mostly road legal motorcycle with a small number plate, you stand a fair chance of getting pulled for your crime. Riding a completely illegal electric motorcycle that looks like a road legal assisted bike (there are probably at least 2 in the country that are road legal), chances of getting pulled are next to zero.

If some drivers are allowed to do 100mph, and a car is observed doing 96, how do you ascertain whether the driver of that vehicle on that occasion is allowed to do 100? Not as a one off, but as widespread enforcement. There are many, many potential ways to do this, some far less flawed than others.


edit: Obviously we are all missing the real point - the country's richest Roland Rat impersonator needs to do or say something to appeal to the man in the street who voted Tory last time after Labour told him (as a key part of their election campaign) that he voted for Brexit because he was variously stupid and/or racist.

You could even introduce an online account so that if you've lent your car to a normal licence holder you can pause the high-speed registration of the car, and make it an offence to fail to do so unless your friend also has a high-speed licence which you've taken a photo of.

There must be lots of families and couples who share cars, or just one car. Do they need to do this if they swap drivers during a long journey, or when the husband/wife is using the car?

Together with the requirement for variable speed limits on all motorways, it looks like a lot of extra infrastructure and bureaucracy to benefit a relatively few drivers who do over 50,000 miles per year on motorways at night.

As one who frequently drives on the continent (or did until the B word put paid to my work abroad), I didn't have a problem with driving with what I considered a comfortable cruising speed of 85-90 mph. The standards of driving do vary between the Benelux countries as indeed they do in France and Germany, where learner drivers aren't allowed to drive on a public road until they've had tuition on private roads. There's no 20 minute drive to see if you can make a car go forwards (don't bother with reverse these days), and 20 minutes how to use a satnav.
A friend moved to Stuttgart about 20 years ago and his daily commute into town was done at 120 mph. In the UK you'd be lucky to commute at 20 mph!!
Also the European police and authorities don't have the same fetish about exceeding the speed limit as the UK does.

we are edging back to the old argument that "speed doesntkills"
idiots and poor driving kills. and as we know speed cameras aren't very clever at detecting poor driving alone. and the chances of more plod on motorways isn't likely, hopefully more will contribute to operation snap to eradicate to$$ers from our roads. then higher speeds on motorways will be achievable.