Average speed cameras on M1 - less than half abide

m33r4

I drive to and from London from Derbyshire every month and it's a common occurrence that I get tailgated, flashed and hooted at for doing 50mph in the average speed limit areas! Lorries are the worse culprits! I tend to stick in the nearside lane and I get lorries overtaking me while hooting!

Some motorists do the 50mph then speed up slowly thinking that it's ok to go faster and faster!

So many do this that I am beginning to doubt whether these average speed cameras work at all!? If people were getting speeding tickets, less people would be breaking the limit right?

forgotmyname

Maybe your speedo is underreading too much at 50mph?

Or the limit is not applicable at that time? Not been up that way for a while.

dacouch

forgotmyname wrote: »

Maybe your speedo is underreading too much at 50mph?

Or the limit is not applicable at that time? Not been up that way for a while.

I agree, I find there are plenty of motorists along this stretch, who go by their speedometers. They see 50mph on their speedos and happily drive along at this speed, whereas in reality they are probably doing circa 45 / 46 mph.

It's more annoying when they sit in the outside lane when there is space to move into the inside lane so they make everyone else do 45 / 46 mph

Kilty_2

I had a car that did more like 40 (maybe even less) at an indicated 50 - I'd suggest using a sat-nav to check the performance of your speedo in case there's something up with it.

Never had any trouble on that stretch of the M1 in that car, when using the sat nav.

Anacrusis

It'd be better if drivers didn't get so irate about someone going 45 @ a 50 zone - they might be having car trouble or feeling ill, be a new driver, not know their speedo is low (I didn't know that till I got my sat nav) whatever stressing them out won't help!

I've just hurt my back and suddenly found I had trouble with changing the gears (hurting my back). I was only in a 30 zone, but had to go 20-25 iles an hour to be on the safe side, for about 3 minutes till I could get home. You'd think people would look ahead and give people space if they're going slow but I had someone right at the back of me, what good they thought they might do I don't know!!

Kilty_2

Anacrusis wrote: »

I've just hurt my back and suddenly found I had trouble with changing the gears (hurting my back). I was only in a 30 zone, but had to go 20-25 iles an hour to be on the safe side,

I know what you're saying however if you are unfit to drive than you do not drive.

Hintza

My car under reads by 5 mph. So I just go through at 55mph (or 50mph as per SatNav)

kingstreet

On the basis that most cars' speedos can be expected to over-read by around 5% and most camera partnerships don't prosecute until the ACPO guideline limit is reached, I'm happy to set my cruise control at 57 through a SPECS system.

It hasn't failed yet.

Hintza

kingstreet wrote: »

, I'm happy to set my cruise control .

Yes this is probably what most of us do now in roadworks. So when you come across someone travelling well below 50mph it can be a bit annoying.

ridethelightning

Personally, I set my cruise control to 50, I wouldnt want to risk getting points for the sake of a few mph, however I would stay in the LH lane so if anyone wanted to go faster then they are free to. I suppose if I was regularly traveling through an average speed camera area I might drive differently, but wouldnt get annoyed at people going slower so long as it was in the left lane and not preventing others going faster.

davetrousers

forgotmyname wrote: »

Maybe your speedo is underreading too much at 50mph?

It's more like that it over reads (eg. shows 50mph when you're doing 46mph).