Road signs & flippin' speed restrictions

Jeremy Clarkson - that fount of all motoring knowledge - told us recently that those new electronic road signs which have their own solar panels and wind turbines cost you and I £10,000 each! But, but, but - by law there must be a conventional sign nearby for when the electronic one isn't working!!! So what's the flippin' point of having them?!

Was he exaggerating? No - I saw them for myself on the A303 the other day - electronic signs and a few metres behind them the conventional signs!

As Clarkson says;

Well said Jeremy - but will they listen?

They MIGHT listen if he were to become Prime Minister! Were you one of the 49,447 people who signed the petition to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister? See No.10's official video response here.

Then there's the shear number of signs. Information overload. You can spend so long trying to read them all that you fail to see little old granny stepping into the road in front of you.

Because there is a sign for almost every conceivable hazard we tend to assume that if there is no sign there is no hazard - and that's dangerous. If there were fewer signs we would be forced to take more care and the roads might well be safer places to be.

Speed limits! What are they for?

Once I believed they were to stop children & little old grannies getting run over. But I was clearly wrong since if that was the case there would be lower limits in built-up areas than on dual-carriageway A-roads - wouldn't there?

I'm all for limits in built-up areas - in fact I'd favour a 20mph limit - but you don't get children playing footie on the A46 out of Bath where for 3km you have a rural stretch of dual carriageway with a 50mph limit! (WHY?). And you don't get little old grannies leaping out at you from the side of the A367 out of Bath where for 1km you are forced to drive at just 30mph along a dual carriageway with no side roads, drives or anything else that could possibly warrant anything less than the national speed limit (WHY?).

It was all so simple once. There was the national speed limit and there was a 30mph limit in built-up areas. But now the limit changes every few metres. It's 40...now it's 50...oops it's just dropped to 30...at last the dual carriageway - back up to 70....or is it? And more time spent wondering what the current speed limit might be is less time concentrating on avoiding little old granny as she leaps out in front of you.

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