The various speed cameras and speeding threads shed much heat, but also a little light amongst the smoke.

One consistent theme that emerges is demand for higher speeds on motorways, so I thought out might be interesting to explore an area where there might be room for agreement. (That's partly because I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I can reach several points of agreement with patently, and I think that this could be explored further)

I'm not trying here to stake out a position, but rather to see if there a chance of agreement, by asking a rather different (and much narrower) question:

How could we create roads which safely permitted speeds well in excess of the current limits? (say 100mph)

Discussions in the back room and references to external sources have reaffirmed that motorways are the fastest existing roads, and also clearly the safest (at least per vehicle mile, tho maybe not so clearly by other measures).

Lots of drivers want to go faster than the 70mph limit. There are some good reasons to support this, not least that modern cars can safely proceed much higher speeds than their precessors. However, there are problems in permitting this on existing motorways, including speed differentials and too many difft types of traffic.

Let's leave aside the wider questions such as energy use and pollution (where I have deep reservations), and concentrate instead on the narrower question of safety issues involved in creating roads where drivers could legally and safely proceed at 100mph. (We could consider other figures, but 100 seems like a useful gain over 70, and still achievable by the average mid-sized hatchback)

It seems to me that there are a few crucial features of this safe 100mph road. I'm just throwing them out as ideas :)

1/ Reduced speed differentials. Differentials create bunching, lane-changing and overtaking.

2/ Upper and lower speed limits. Reduced differentials means resticting speed, so no trucks in the slow lane, and no doing 105 either: maybe a range of 90-100 would be required.

3/ Strict enforcement of the upper-and-lower limits: they are crucial to the road's safety, so we'd need either lots of cameras on some new in-car technology.

4/ Anti-congestion measures. Access to the road would have to be limited to prevent the stream of 100mph traffic piling into the hold-up.

5/ Restricted access: the 100mph road would be unsafe for a clapped-out Mini or even a brand-new Smart car! So only approved vehicles would be permitted -- most mid-sized and larger newish cars should qualify.

6/ The standard driving test would probably be inadequate, and special permits (such as an enhanced driving test on IAM lines) would be needed.

7/ Junctions would need to be massively upgraded to allow drivers to safely join a stream of 100mph traffic; the 100mph road would probably have far fewer junctions than most current motorways.

I'm sure others will have difft ideas on that list of points, and may even dislike the whole lot :)

But one thing immediately strikes me: some drivers just want to be able to proceed very quickly from A-B, but others want excitement from their driving.

Maybe this safe 100mph road, with its limited overtaking would end up too much like a very fast but very boring convoy to appeal to many drivers?
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