Speed camera detectors

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Kowalski
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Post by Kowalski »

Wet wooden blocks?
I driver over a bridge which has a wooden deck every day. When the bridge is wet (and covered in wet leaves) the car doesn't have a lot of grip. The older Xantia I have (without ABS) stops more quickly on the bridge than the later one with ABS. The newer one stops more quickly if you lock the front wheels with the handbrake than if you try to stop it with just the pedal, a combination of locked brakes on the front and ABS on the back seems optimal on wet wood, because the front tyres squeegee the deck dry so that the rear wheels have something to grip on. Wet wood is slippery stuff there's generally better grip when it's iced over than when its plainly wet.
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Post by Homer »

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Kowalski</i>

Cars capabilities have improved since 1967 but drivers eyesight hasn't improved nor has driver reaction times either and I'm sure that drivers have not improved in their attitude to safety.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
On the contrary. When the 70 limit was introduced drivers had very little experience of motorways at all.
Indeed a good proportion of the population had never sat inside a car at all.
Now everyone (well, almost everyone) is used to higher speeds. Imagine if we still had derestricted A roads and motorways, if that little black diagonal still meant "use your own judgement", and someone suggested limiting us all to 70mph. It would be laughable.
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Post by bxbodger »

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">When the 70 limit was introduced drivers had very little experience of motorways at all<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
And they still don't. I commute daily by motorway and am used to driving on them at their busiest times, but huge swathes of the country (East Anglia past Cambridge, The West Country, Scotland, etc) don't have Motorways and the vast majority of people in this country don't regularly drive on them.
Some people may think 70 may be a bit too slow, but the law is the law and most of Europe isn't much faster, usually 80 at most. The problem with putting up the limit would be that speed differentials between the fastest and slowest moving vehicles would increase, and I suggest make it more dangerous, not less.
In the days of deristricted 2 lane autobahns, it was truly terrifying to pull out at 80ish to pass a slow moving truck or caravan, and then to have some ubermenscher Merc barrel up behind flashing its lights at 120!!! I notice that the Germans now have a restricted max speed on a lot of these roads- I wonder why......
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Kowalski
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Post by Kowalski »

Northumberland doesn't have a single mile of motorway. Newcastle has a little bit but it's urban and not really much different to dual carriageway (no hard shoulder).
I pretty much all of my driving is done on dual carriageway, at times stop start (Team Valley is fun during rush hour) but I have relatively little experience of motorway driving. I can't see how different a motorway is to a 3 lane dual carriageway....
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Post by FrenchLeave »

Er, I drive regularly up and down the A1 and A1(M). When you leave the motorway section it is quite disconcerting to come suddenly upon a tractor - or even a cyclist or pedestrian!
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Kowalski
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Post by Kowalski »

So what you're saying is the driving on Motorway is EASIER than driving on dual carriageway....
I'd have to admit that mopeds and cyclists do make 70 mph on a dual carriageway fun at times. You see that for some reason the line of traffic in the slow lane all rushes into the right had lane for no apparent reason, then when you catch up with the bike you do the same thing too.
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Post by FrenchLeave »

Yes, much easier. Incidentally, I forgot to mention the guy (gal?) legitimately stopped in the overtaking lane waiting to turn right through the gap.
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Post by Forth »

"Mobile vans are allowed to park on motorway bridges and target vehicles on the motorway. Happens on the M6 in Cumbria when they don't have enough tourists to pick on and the M62 in West Yorkshire. (and others)"
True.... and they do it other side of the border as well; on Tuesday one of them was busy at its usual attempted extortion racket when an RAF jet blasted overhead along the path of the road at way below the proper minimum altitude... hardly conducive to road safety? ... bet Tony's brylcream boys won't getting a ticket in the post though!
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