55mph Speed Limit

[ebikeerwidnes]

Sat navs and other route planners looking to minimise journey time would find the biggest motorways and quasi motorways less attractive, thereby directing more traffic onto lower-limit roads, generally smaller roads and those past more homes.

It may be worth it anyway, or it may be possible to do something else to rebalance the route planners, but such drawbacks should be considered.

That's a good point

I have noticed that some Sat Navs give you a route through North Wales which goes off the A55 "almost motorway" and through Colwyn Bay presumably because there is a 50 mph speed limit through the town

which is just crazy but they persist in doing it

 

[DRM]

Has that area been electing politicians who remove or refuse to install traffic enforcement cameras?

I have no idea

 

[Alex321]

Why is stop-starting through an unfamiliar town, showering pollution on its residents, less stressful than sitting still in a comfy chair in a heated cabin listening to your choice of sounds? Is this another thing we can blame on those unrealistic car ads of drivers swooshing through empty streets?

Well he didn't say it was an unfamiliar town. A lot of modern systems give you traffic alerts even when you aren't actually navigating with them.

But a lot of people do get stressed by hold ups, nobody really thinks of it in terms of "sitting still in a comfy chair in a heated cabin", even though that is in fact a reasonable description.

But there is also teh simple fact that most of us are driving to get somewhere, and if the delay is going to be longer than taking a diversion, most of us would prefer to take the diversion.

 

[mistyoptic]

With a Green Party document reportedly proposing 55mph speed limits for motorways, 69% of Britons would be opposed to such a move.
Even green voters don't like it:

View attachment 804541

https://yougov.com/en-gb/daily-results/20260407-a2c54-3

Edited to put my comment outside the quote 🙄

There was a blanket 50 limit back in the seventies during that oil crisis.

Seem to remember it worked reasonably well.

Mind you, people couldn’t whinge about it on soshul meeja back then

 

[mjr]

Well he didn't say it was an unfamiliar town.

Well, that was the scenario of @gbb's we were discussing!

 

[classic33]

Well, that was the scenario of @gbb's we were discussing!

I thought it was more sitting in traffic, having followed a navigation aid, that did anything but aid their situation.

 

[CXRAndy]

Why is stop-starting through an unfamiliar town, showering pollution on its residents

I drive an EV, silent, no tailpipe emissions.

 

[Oldhippy]

Ev's do pose their own ecological issues though with the relentless mining of components for the batteries however.

 

[mjr]

I drive an EV, silent, no tailpipe emissions.

EVs still throw off plenty of PM 2.5 from tyres and brakes, as well as noise, which makes their use antisocial in residential areas.

 

[Alex321]

EVs still throw off plenty of PM 2.5 from tyres and brakes, as well as noise, which makes their use antisocial in residential areas.

But far less so than ICE vehicles. The regenerative braking offsets any extra PM 2.5 that would be produced by the extra weight, and the noise is far ess than ICE, so the main difference is the tailpipe emissions.

 

[mjr]

But far less so than ICE vehicles. The regenerative braking offsets any extra PM 2.5 that would be produced by the extra weight, and the noise is far ess than ICE, so the main difference is the tailpipe emissions.

No, the main difference is all the PM2.5 and noise which wouldn't be in residential areas if the vehicle stays in the jam on the motorway!

Can you link to decent numbers for the noise and PM2.5 differences, please? Except for idiots driving cars with deliberately farting exhausts, I'm pretty sure tyre/wind noise drowns out ICE vehicle noise at 40mph and think it might at 30mph.

 

[CXRAndy]

EVs still throw off plenty of PM 2.5 from tyres and brakes, as well as noise, which makes their use antisocial in residential areas.

Firstly EV dont use brake material, virtually none. Pads remaining after 100k miles of use can be as much as 90%. This is due to very strong regen braking via the motor/s

In your scenario driving through a clogged town. Travelling at those speeds EVs are silent

In fact, governments forced EV makers to emit a sound at walking speeds because people weren't aware of the EV moving. Thankfully my EVs are pre legislation for this white noise


Only when a vehicle gets upto 30mph does tyre noise become the major noise, from any type of vehicle .

Tyre wear at town speeds is again insignificant, unless your a revved up lunatic.

I just stick my vehicle on adaptive cruise in a traffic jam. It will stop and start the vehicle as we crawl along.- however if an option to jump off via sideboard or off ramp, I will take that as my default option

 

[gbb]

Firstly EV dont use brake material, virtually none. Pads remaining after 100k miles of use can be as much as 90%. This is due to very strong regen braking via the motor/s

In your scenario driving through a clogged town. Travelling at those speeds EVs are silent


Only when a vehicle gets upto 30mph does tyre noise become the major noise, from any type of vehicle .

Tyre wear at town speeds is again insignificant, unless your a revved up lunatic.

I just stick my vehicle on adaptive cruise in a traffic jam. It will stop and start the vehicle as we crawl along.- however if an option to jump off via sideboard or off ramp, I will take that as my default option

While i have my deep reservations about EVs (mainly because I simply can't charge ine at home, so am forever disadvantaged)...all other arguments aside, an EV is absolutely going to cause.less environmental and health impact...at that moment, In that traffic jam

 

[Alex321]

No, the main difference is all the PM2.5 and noise which wouldn't be in residential areas if the vehicle stays in the jam on the motorway!

That is not a difference between ICE and EV, that is a difference between using those roads or not.

Can you link to decent numbers for the noise and PM2.5 differences, please?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scien...ehicles (EVs) are becoming,2014; Simons, 2016).

'Since secondary PM particles are mostly of submicron size, the EFs of the PM2.5 fraction of the ICEVs (28.7–33.0 mg/V·km) were two times higher than those of the EV (13.9–17.4 mg/V·km)."

Except for idiots driving cars with deliberately farting exhausts, I'm pretty sure tyre/wind noise drowns out ICE vehicle noise at 40mph and think it might at 30mph.

Well I hear ICE vehicles coming up behind me much more easily than EVs on quiet town roads. If it is busy you can't really distinguish one car from another, and out of town, where they are traveling faster, the difference is much less marked - as you say tyre and wind noise drown out engine noise at higher speeds. And remember most of the town roads round here are 20 limit, not 30. Which is also becoming much more common in the rest of the UK.

According to the sources I can find, the difference is negligible at speeds above 30kph (around 20mph). I admit to being a bit surprised it is as low a speed as that.

 

[CXRAndy]

The figure I found was at 10mph an EV is almost the same level as quiet speech. Both EV and ICE are almost identical in sound above 25mph mainly tyre noise