When I learned to drive my instructor’s constant refrain was “stop malingering” (which used to bug me because he meant “lingering”), but what he was trying to get me to do was to keep to the speed limit. If you are hovering below the limit for no reason you can fail your driving test. Keeping the pace up (unless there is an obvious reason not to; bad weather, spillage on the road or it’s heavy traffic) helps to keep the traffic moving properly.
And in case people think that speed limits aren’t necessary - it would appear that some drivers are just unable to judge their own abilities - yes, that sort of driver.
This driver drove themselves into a crash barrier in canton Luzern. No one else was involved.
If you read my post properly, you’d realise that I wrote that if someone is unable to control their car according to the speed limit, they should slow down a bit.
Are you suggesting they shouldn’t be driving at all? Or something else?
Anything with wheels triggers something in our brains and we go beyond the limits of tire grip and driving/riding abilities.
No one is saying speed limits aren’t necessary but there are some stretches of roads where the speed limit changes constantly with a speed camera set up somewhere along the way. I’d rather see the speed limit stay at 60 then change from 60 to 80 to 60 to 80 all within a kilometer.
Repeat speed limit signs would be useful in case you missed the first one, sometimes they can be obscured by rampant vegetation or another vehicle.
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant with regards to the road between Neuchâtel and Bienne.
It flips between 60 and 80 all the time and there are always idiots who come hurtling up behind when it goes to 80 only to end up practically stuck to my rear bumper when it goes back to 60 again after a couple of hundred meters. In my opinion it would be better and safer if they were to make the road 60 all the way along.
There are 11 cameras on that stretch of road and there are hardly ever any accidents so it’s hard not to assume they’re not there to make money really.
This is another thing which is cropping up now, which is confusing:
The sign on the left means the town zone, with the 50Km/h zone is finishing and the national speed limit applies, which on these roads would be 80km/h.
The sign on the right shows that the new speed limit is 60Km/h.
This catches people out who only see the left-hand sign (or who’s onboard system only sees the left sign).
Well I was responding to the notion that the speed limit “is a limit not a target”, by pointing out that failure to keep up with the posted speed limits for no reason can result in a fail when you take your driving test, was all. I wasn’t suggesting anything about whether people should or shouldn’t be driving.
To be fair to those involved, there is zero context in that picture. There are any number of scenarios which could have caused the driver to hit the barrier ranging from something oily on the road, another driver coming flying around in the opposite direction then straying onto his/her side or the driver having a medical emergency. Yes, misjudged speed could have been a factor and, for some, it’s always a bit of schadenfreude when it’s a BMW driver but without any further context or information, who are we to judge?
Generally speaking, according to TCS:
In 2021, inappropriate speed was the main cause of 5,103 accidents. Of these, 1,916 were fatal accidents, an increase of 23% compared to 2020 (4,134 accidents). Source: ASTRA publication Standard statistics on road traffic accidents 2021.
Adapting your speed to the road conditions is essential. In 70% of serious and fatal accidents, the main cause of the accident is losing control of your vehicle due to inappropriate driving speed (source: bfu – Advisory Centre for Accident Prevention).
Sure but it still doesn’t provide any context to the picture you posted. You just assume that the car was travelling too fast. You could also post statistics of accidents caused by a stroke, heart attack, seizure. Or accidents caused by avoiding a wild animal suddenly appearing around a bend or oil spills or a tyre blowout.
I guess that’s why they have accident investigators otherwise they’d just have some chin-stroker saying, “Ahh… it was a BMW, clearly it was going too fast. Case closed!”
On the same road as the BMW crash, the day before. Avoiding a wild animal.
The animal was a deer.
The lady in the car was not hurt. Neither was the deer.
OK, my mistake. I thought these were links to news stories without the news text, hence the reason the context was missing. I didn’t realise these were your own pics. Crikey, must have been a hell of a bang.
This really is absolutely moronic signposting.
Again, you are mistaken.
They are from Police reports.
I found the second one whilst searching for any more information on the first one which may have showed that the BMW driver had a medical incident* or something else, using the same road name.
*excessive anxiety on his way to the penile enlargement clinic?
But you can presumably see where the misunderstanding occurs, right? Random pics of random accidents supported only by your assumptions and speculation. Perhaps it would have been helpful to provide at least an outline of the report?
https://www.polizei-schweiz.ch/kanton-luzern-chaos-auf-den-strassen-bikerin-bei-unfall-verletzt/
Whoops, my google skills failed me. The deer incident was 2016. Sorry.
Are you allowed to keep the deer? Asking for a friend…
That looks faulty to me, impossible. Because the end-50 comes after the 60 sign.
Since there’s just a bicycle lane the idea is probably 60 limit as it’s partially built-up. (plus I don’t recall any 80km/h stretch with a sidewalk where bikes aren’t signalled to use that but that practice might vary).
My first assumption here would be that the end-of-50 sign has been turned around and is intended for vehicles heading towards the camera. On a two-way road you would not normally have signs on both sides like that. Still seems a little odd though that it would then be 50 in one direction and 60 in the other.
Edit: although on closer inspection, i.e. if you copy the picture and zoom in, allowing for a slight distortion from the camera angle and lens, it becomes apparent that these are actually directly opposite each other, so the initial oddity then disappears. Still seems very odd though.