Nanny laws
On Friday last, the Powers That Be introduced a 30Km speed limit in Dublin city centre.
Now personally I couldn’t care less if they introduced a 1Km limit as I avoid that city like the plague and haven’t driven in it for a decade or two anyway. However it’s the principle of the move that annoys me.
All these limits, be they speed or alcohol or whatever, are based on a highly flawed assumption that less is better. The principle works along the lines that if everyone drove at 140Km through city streets that there would be carnage – a fair assumption? – and that if everyone drove at 0Km there would be no deaths, injuries or even accidents which is also a fair assumption as nothing would be moving. The logic therefore goes that the slower the speed, the less accidents there would be.
Now that logic sounds pretty reasonable, but there are flaws within.
Suppose they did introduce a 140Km limit in the city centre, they would assume that everyone would drive at that speed which is beyond nonsense. From my recollection of driving in Dublin you would be damned lucky to hit 40Km because of the congestion. Every road has its own natural speed limit which is based on visibility, road conditions, driver ability and experience, the capability of the car and the geography of the road itself. Go over that limit and there are dangers, while below that limit there is just extra congestion.
Seeing as some drivers misjudge their natural abilities, there are of course accidents, so while I dislike limits I can see a certain logic, but imposing a blanket limit at such a slow speed will just cause frustration which is the enemy of safe driving. It is also a nice little earner for those Powers That Be as they can fine people for driving at a perfectly safe speed of 50Km on a road where otherwise conditions are right for such a speed.
These unrealistic limits are just another form of tax gathering and a sop to those campaigners who have lost family members. They are fuck all to do with “saving lives” because they don’t. How many deaths have there been in Dublin City Centre down purely to speeding and not carelessness? Probably none.
Frankly that speed limit is just another reason why I will never drive in that city again.
Properly synchronised traffic lights might help motorised traffic to move more efficiently in central Dublin. Some collisions between motorists and Luas trams have been due to failure of motorists to observe traffic lights. The basic problem is not about speed limits.
I can guarantee that the greatest number of accidents in the city centre are caused either by impatience or frustration or a combination of both. Further restrictions wil only exacerbate the problem.
I would contend the greatest number of motoring accidents anywhere is due to people believing they are ‘good’ or ‘better than average good’ drivers.
YOU AREN’T. Nearly everyone on the road- I’m talking 99.5% of drivers- are crappy drivers. ‘Safe-ish’ is about as good as it gets. I’ve known maybe a handful of really good drivers in my time so far, one of them a rally driver (I still have nightmares about the journey to work with him, yet when it required he stopped with what only can be explained by precognition -when a child stepped out infront of us at speeds where i know for a fact that the braking distance was the far side of the village etc), the other a transsexual who found she could no longer reverse park post op (apparently it’s a real tranny ‘thing’, something about the loss of nuts and spatial awareness).
Me. I am a crap driver. I remind myself of that every time I get behind the wheel. I am reminded of that every mistake I make. Funnily enough it helps me with the Road Rage -and I drive in the part of the UK , Norfolk,where even visiting Italians pull over ashen faced and shaking. You should hear Mr Steven Fry on the subject of Norfolk drivers.
Actually that might make a good piece for The Readers Digest or Christian Scientist “How I tore down the B123456789 through Northern Germany, driven by a stoned, Cat Stevens listening, Christian East Friesian rally driver and found God….along with my stomach contents”
ps. That emphatic ‘You aren’t’ wasn’t aimed at Grandad specifically -for I know he might be Best Driver Killkennfuckole Of The Year 1925. It was aimed at all those ‘good’, ‘experienced’, ‘b-b-b-ut I haven’t made an insurance claim since 1959 and even then it wasn’t really my fault!’ drivers reading.
I thought the reasoning behind such moves was the occasionally touted ‘fact’ (I say ‘fact’ because I have no idea whether it is true or not) that a child struck by a car doing 50kmh is dead, the same child struck with 30kmh will probably do the car more damage than it (can you say ‘crumple zone is a money spinner’? And it would be a hella unlucky child to have been hit twice of a morning…although I can think of some what deserves it.
Of course in a perfect world where every other driver wasn’t a complete fucking homicidal fucking maniac with the IQ of a guppy, a world where everyone ALWAYS drove ‘according to the prevailing conditions in a defensive manner, with courtesy ‘ or however it is phrased, then there would be no need for speed limits but in the case of urban areas and assuming the 30kmh/50kmh child-car-impact thingy is true then I personally think it is probably a good idea (the 30kmh rule).
What however would be an even better idea would be RESURRECT THE FUCKING ‘TUFTY CLUB! Mind you they’d probably have to censor out Willy Weasel getting spanked for running across the road...
For those what didn’t have a Brit 70s childhood: the Tufty Club was a weekly schooling session for kiddy winkies with -surely one of the first-with tie in TV progs and comics AND BADGES! Yes I wore my Tufty badge with PRIDE (especially because from an early age I have been incapable of distinguishing left from right). Here one of the films : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Ry9tiz9_c&ytbChannel=Jim%20Ramsay
Even better still would be to resurrect the Tufty club in the XXL version for FUCKING DIPSHIT PARENTS! (when did reins for toddlers become ‘child abuse’? Granddaughter2 grizzled about the reins being uncomfortable until I threatened, in German, to staple gun them on).
If I see one more , usually heavily pregnant, Mom pushing a buggy and letting their 3 or 4 year old run ahead while she yaks on her cell to her ‘bestie’ about which freak-sperm she has just dined on- I may very well be forced to give her my bestes Paddington BEAR STARE in passing!
Totally agree about the Tufty Club or, if the PTB don’t like that, then there was always its later manifestation – the Green Cross Code – which could be re-invented with a suitably Buzz Lightyear-esque green-cross-tee-shirted digital hero. But of course, that’d be asking children to actually take some responsibility for themselves, wouldn’t it? And we can’t have that, can we? Children must be allowed to “express themselves” and run about freely – even if that means running straight into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Anything else is surely an abuse of their human rights, innit?
And ultra-low speed limits are just a distraction for drivers, which surely can’t be a good thing. All the time you’re looking at your speedo wavering between 18 and 22 mph (or whatever the kph equivalent is) – which is just about the speed which demands constant changes up and down from second to third gear and back again, with the resulting changes in speed – then you can’t be looking at the road, too, can you? That surely can’t be a good recipe for avoiding accidents. There may be less chance that you’d kill a pedestrian if you were unlucky enough to hit one at a low speed, but surely having your eyes on the road at a slightly higher (but still sensible – I’m not talking about breakneck speeds, here) speed is an even better way of avoiding pedestrians in the first place?
18 and 22 mph (or whatever the kph equivalent is)
Which is about twice as fast as one can go in most cities IME. Hell, most places just being in motion at all is a win. But joking aside, I wasn’t joking about being a ‘crap driver’, I am. But I don’t have much trouble driving at those speeds yet keeping my eyes on the road…and more importantly the pavement for kamikaze-kids.And I really wasn’t joking about being a crap driver who has no ‘feel’ for speed. So I would tentatively, humbly, suggest any driver who finds keeping to ‘ultra low’ speeds distracting might like to invest in a Sat Nav…or some kinda of ‘heads up’ speed display thingy ‘cos I find personally having my speed at windscreen height, not having to look down, helps no end -although I agree the audible warning tone on most Sat Navs that warns one one is speeding are AS IRRITATING AS FUCK (mine never gets turned on). Or maybe a speed-regulator/auto piloty thingy?
I reckon that the real problem is that you have these killer-meters. ‘Course it’s going to end badly. Maybe if you went back to miles it would avoid all this and innocent children would be saved.
I’m a bit jaundiced on the subject of speed limits having just been nicked for doing 2 – yes TWO – mph over a 30mph speed limit in Norfolk.
Fair cop, but just a tad officious IMHO…
Surely there is a margin for error? It’s usually around the 10% mark which would place you within that margin?
Where traffic control is concerned, it’s definitely a case of ‘less is more’. A few years ago a town in Holland somewhere decided to go against the flow, and removed all the traffic lights from all the intersections. The result was less accidents and faster traffic flow. Give control back to the drivers, and they do a better job.
A couple of years ago, I was in Hanoi, Vietnam, and I took a short video of a busy, uncontrolled junction with five roads connecting. It was mesmerising to watch how it worked – and work it did!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kJw-uGwr2Y
I still enjoy watching it now; the way everything seems so chaotic, and yet so graceful and efficient.
I remember seeing an article about some village in the UK [somewhere]. There was a set of traffic lights in the village centre that caused horrendous tailback until they removed them altogether and left traffic to its own devices.