Anybody want a speeding ticket?

Ok, I haven't just got a speeding ticket and haven't for some years. It's getting quite hard to avoid them given the explosion in speed cameras and the reduction of speed limits on our roads so there is a good chance that many of us who consider ourselves safe drivers will get collared. There is however one consolation... if you look closely enough you may just find a loophole that, if you're willing to persue it, might just get you off the same way as some of the people you read about in the papers!

Let me say at this stage that I'm not encouraging people to drive dangerously, either inside or outside of the law. This piece is here merely to point out how so many people get let off of something that should be quite simple to prosecute.

Ok, so here's the assumption. I don't know how this works in other countries, but one would have to assume that (providing the authorities complete the correct paperwork) that if somebody puts up a sign then that's that, speed limit set. That's not exactly true and this is where the problem occurs; British laws are well known for being un-necessarily complex. I'm no lawyer and I've no doubt that some of what I'm about to write could be proven to be wrong... but it's my interpretation of the law as it stands today and is based on my reading of various traffic laws alongside information from organisations such as SafeSpeed and the Association of British Drivers. So here goes.

First of all, each different type of road in Britain has a speed limit which applies if there are no signs. These are quite easy to follow:

• Dual Carriageway road divided by a physical central reservation, regardless of number of lanes - 70mph.
  
• Single carriageway road with no physical central divider - 60mph.
• "Restricted" road road with a system of streetlights where the streetlights are no more than 183 metres apart (or 185 metres in Scotland) - 30 mph
• The above limits vary if you are towing a trailer/caravan or are driving an HGV or PSV.
  

This is where the first piece of confusion occurs. The third item differs slightly in Scotland, but for what reason I do not know. Also, the street lights MUST be on the road - pedestrian lighting doesn't count. Oh, and finally this rule doesn't apply on motorways. Also, you cannot put repeater signs on "restricted" roads (repeaters will be explained shortly). So, if you are driving on an un-lit dual carriageway with no signs you can do 70 mph... but if the local council have deemed it fit to light a section and not put up any signs then the speed limit becomes 30 mph!

So, now we look at signs. If you want to change the speed limit on a particular piece of road you have to put up signs. This starts with terminators - this means you have to put up two identical signs, one each side of the road. If the road is a trunk road and it is lit (the definition of "trunk road" is sketchy at best) then the signs MUST be illuminated. I'm sure from what I've read that the method of lighting must be the same, which means you can't have one with a light inside and one outside... but I have seen many places where this is the case!

Once you have the terminators, you then have repeaters. These are smaller signs and must be displayed at regular intervals within the speed limit. However the "regular interval" is not codified in law so you could have a 5 mile stretch of road with only 1 repeater... is this legal? Also, you cannot put repeaters on a "restricted" road.?

The signs themselves are also important. The current fad is to put the sign on some sort of backing-board, often bright yellow, the reason being to improve visibility of the sign. However some local authorities have cut this backing board into nice shapes, sometimes round to match the speed limit sign, sometimes round over the top to look nice with the village name underneath it. Both of these are illegal and so are not actually loopholes, but would most likely get you off of that speeding ticket!

I have also seen some signs in the West Midlands which not only have an illegal backing board, but also use different colours - the bit around the number which is supposed to be red is actually green... I am shocked that this hasn't yet been picked up either by the local authority or some poor motorist's lawyer!

Then there are the white lines on the road. There is no law that forces the painting of white lines on the road, but where they are painted they must be correct. Specifically, if the speed limit is 40 mph or below the total length of one white line and the gap to the next line must be 6 metres, if the speed limit is over 40 mph then the length must be 9 metres. I've seen a lot of cases where local authorities have reduced speed limits from 50, 60 and even 70 mph to 40 mph or below and they don't bother re-painting the white lines which makes the speed limit illegal.

Then there is the other current fad... the "roundell", this is the practice of painting the speed limit on the road (as if we don't already have too many signs and road markings to take our eyes off the road!). These cannot be used instead of terminator signs, but be carefull... this is done in the New Forest where they didn't want to ruin the landscape with too many road signs but is actually legal in this case as they had a law drawn up specifically for this!

This is just the pick of the bunch and I'm sure there is stuff that I've missed, but the essence of this piece is to show that people aren't getting off on "loopholes", they're getting off because of unnecessarily complex laws that even the authorities can't understand!

So, whats the answer? Well, scrap current speed limit laws and make it simple as follows:

• Scrap the National Speed Limit sign (the white circle with a black line through it) like they have in Ireland. If a road has a specific speed limit, put up a sign and tell us. Don't make us guess!
• Scrap the "restricted road" law. When I see street lights I'm not going to get out of my car with a measuring tape to check how far apart they are! You can't even use your speedo to check because the figure after the decimal point is 1/10 of a mile which in itself doesn't correspond to any sensible distance!
• Set a maximum and minimum placement distance for repeater signs. This would ensure a constant reminder of the current speed limit in force - again without having to guess when you've just pulled out of a petrol station and can't remember what the speed limit was when you drove in.

These three simple steps would make our roads safer, we wouldn't have to "pick a number" when road conditions change; we could look at a sign, set our speed and then think about more important matters such as safe driving!

It would also be helpful if, at the same time, we could get accurate speedometers by law (like they do in North America) and switch to metric so that our European neighbours who visit also know how fast to drive (and we would get it right on their roads too!)

Ok, so it's time to stop daydreaming and come back to the reallity which is 19th centrury Britain!