There have been many reports of motorists using the lack of traffic on the roads during the Covid19 lockdown to flout the speed limits and now with more traffic back on the roads there is a danger that some may continue to drive at excessive speeds even after things are back to ‘normal’.
Behavioural Science in transportation (understanding the behaviour and motivations of transport users such as motorists and rail commuters etc) is a fascinating subject which plays a big part in the engineering and design of roads and their ‘furniture’ in an attempt to gently persuade drivers to modify their driving behaviour to something more appropriate.
There are many such psychological tactics in place to combat speeding but could we be doing more? What other engineering solutions could be implemented to stop excessive speeding? How do different countries tackle speeding on their roads? What could we learn from them?
Problem is, that in the UK we see it as our right to speed if we want to (again, on the grounds that "everyone else is a bad driver whereas I'm brilliant" ? ). The attitude that "camera traps are just a money making scam" that was around for many years (possibly still is) was always interesting. I used to try suggesting to people that if they wanted to rebel against camera traps the best way would be not to speed, so that the cameras then became financially unviable, but no-one has ever seemed keen to take that idea up...
I think the laws themselves are quite clear enough, but there is little public support in the UK for them to be enforced.
This is drifting off the original topic, but there's an interesting point there, although more in the Human Factors field than ours. As I understand it (and I'm prepared to be corrected by people with wider experience if I'm wrong) there is much closer observance of the - lower and hence much more inconvenient - speed limits in the US than in the UK, which is interesting given that generally there is even more of a culture of individual freedom over there than there is here. Anyone got any idea why? (Maybe somebody will combine the words "police" and "guns", but I don't think that's the point - our police could enforce our laws perfectly effectively if there was a stronger - or indeed any - public will for them to do so.)
Problem is, that in the UK we see it as our right to speed if we want to (again, on the grounds that "everyone else is a bad driver whereas I'm brilliant" ? ). The attitude that "camera traps are just a money making scam" that was around for many years (possibly still is) was always interesting. I used to try suggesting to people that if they wanted to rebel against camera traps the best way would be not to speed, so that the cameras then became financially unviable, but no-one has ever seemed keen to take that idea up...
I think the laws themselves are quite clear enough, but there is little public support in the UK for them to be enforced.
This is drifting off the original topic, but there's an interesting point there, although more in the Human Factors field than ours. As I understand it (and I'm prepared to be corrected by people with wider experience if I'm wrong) there is much closer observance of the - lower and hence much more inconvenient - speed limits in the US than in the UK, which is interesting given that generally there is even more of a culture of individual freedom over there than there is here. Anyone got any idea why? (Maybe somebody will combine the words "police" and "guns", but I don't think that's the point - our police could enforce our laws perfectly effectively if there was a stronger - or indeed any - public will for them to do so.)
