> In big cities and small, all intersections have a roundabout.

As someone that has lived in London for nearly 30 years, I can safely say - no they don't. Most intersections have traffic lights.

There are large numbers of roundabouts in parts of the US too now. E.g. Montana.

Actually this is wrong, it's what everyone thinks, but when you take the hazard perception test, if you press a button when you perceive a hazard, you will fail. What actually happens is there are 5 points available per hazard. You have to press the button five times, evenly spaced throughout the due of the hazard, but not starting earlier than the test setters deem appropriate, or you will drop points. It's one of the most bizarrely implemented tests, and needs serious practice to get its arbitrary rules right.

The national speed limit for a single carriageway is 60mph, and for two or more carriageways is 70mph.

That's the default. These were introduced in the 1950s - before then, there was no national speed limit.

Councils and highway agencies can then decide due to a number of factors to reduce that number to what they deem appropriate. Most councils pull that down to 40mph in unpopulated areas, 30mph in built-up areas. Some councils - and the whole of Wales - pulled the built-up limit down to 20mph.

The Highways Agency has deemed some parts of the motorway network aren't safe at 70mph, so will drop the speed appropriately. Sometimes permanently (50mph on junctions is common), sometimes dynamically (overhead gantrys). It's all fine.

This is how the UK works - you set a default, and then let councils figure out things for themselves.

What you seem to be missing is that this is not a speed target. In most of the UK (notable exceptions include Greater Manchester and Hull, in my experience), drivers do not aim to get to that speed, they use their judgement.

On that road, there is no way much over 30mph is safe, as you don't have line of sight to oncoming traffic within a stopping distance. Do you know how I know that? The driving lessons and tests I took are far, far better than most in the World, even those my parents took.

Nobody is driving that road at 60mph without a death wish, but it doesn't mean we need to spend thousands of pounds per mile dropping the limit and then struggling to actually enforce it.

I think this type of road combined with satnavs makes them more dangerous - number of times ill enter a destination on my satnav and its trying to send me on some lane

I notice it when cycling too - there is more traffic on these lane - and the drivers think they can drive along like some A-road

As others have said, a limit not a target. But also, how fast you can travel along a road sensibly very much depends on conditions. If you do let people think of the limit as a target, you'd better set the limit low enough that it's still appropriate in terrible conditions.

As a specific (and horrific) example, this doctor was found to be mostly liable for a collision that happened due to her speed, while still under the speed limit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66121540

My general take is that I try to drive as if a maniac (meaning anyone who might think it's reasonable to drive faster than I do) is about to come the other way along the road. I should be able to stop within my sight-lines if the road is wide enough to take evasive action, and well within half that distance if the road is narrow.

You don't have to drive 60 mph there though. You can use your judgement.

I'm more used to France's 90 km/h countryside roads (now 80 km/h for most of them) but it's the same, sometimes you can only drive 70 or 50, but sometimes 90 is perfectly fine. But you should be able to see it for yourself, and in the specific places where you can't see the danger there are generally signs and a lower speed limit.

I recently saw one with a 'national speed limit' (i.e. 60mph) sign, and right below it: 'not suitable for motor vehicles' (an advisory sign, so no legal weight behind it). It's the default for anything considered a road, and generally unless proven otherwise the government is reasonably happy to let people use their judgement on lower-traffic areas.

I think a national speed limit is a sensible system. In many countries, every random stretch of road has a different speed limit, as though driving speeds have been centrally planned - usually poorly.

Expecting the driver to be an educated and safe driver who is capable of judging the appropriate speed for the road is far superior. This also inculcates a better attitude in the driver - the speed limit is not a target.

If I was doing 60mph instead of ~50mph these motorbikers would be dead (me too probably):

https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsOnBikes/comments/debwm4/2_bik...

I like the 60mph limit. I'm coming from a rural background where it's unlikely anyone would set the speed limit for each individual road correctly. National speed limit is saying "you can go up to 60mph, this isn't necessarily the correct speed for the road"

There are quite a few rural roads where it is a perfectly reasonable speed (straight, wide, 2 lane), and plenty of roads where you physically couldn't get your car past 40mph without fecking it into a hedge. It's a limit, not a maximum, and it's that way so we can trust people's judgement based on the current conditions of a road, which is (at least in a rural context) almost certainly more accurate than what a council would set.

you're pullin my leg. is that a proper road or a bicycle path?

Large roundabouts are pretty safe, if you've gone through the learning process we have in the UK. I did about 30-40h of practical lessons with an instructor, over half of which would have included multi-lane roundabouts.

The lights control the flow, so no need to worry about giving way. You pick your lane in the lead up using the signs and road markings. Then you follow your painted lane, the markings of which guide you all the way through. The markings and lights do all the work for you, unless you're in the wrong lane at the start. All your awareness is focused on looking for hazards of people who are in the wrong lane because your route is dictated by the road markings.

I will admit, they look complicated - especially if you've never driven one before. My first time around one was a bit nerve-wracking, but they quickly become second nature.

Ireland has followed the same trend, slightly behind the UK.

Because they don't have the same road use culture.

The article starts off with a graph showing the UK has 2 deaths per 100k people, with Norway, Malta, Singapore, and Sweden at 1.9. It then finishes by saying:

> If every country could lower its rates to those of the UK, Sweden, or Norway, this number would be just under 200,000. We’d save one million lives every year.

The article wasn’t making the case that the UK is the absolute best, it was discussing what the UK did to change from being unsafe to much safer.

Our AC plugs are, however, the safest design on the planet.

I think if these guys are honest about their numbers - and the main number they're calling out is a 22-fold decline in road deaths per mile driven in the last 75 years, which is remarkable - and shows those other safer regions in their comparisons, what is the problem?

>kinda like how we love to tell everyone how chuffed we are with how safe our AC plugs are.

I would actually love to see some data that compares total deaths and injuries per capita from electrocution from plugs across different countries. I have a feeling the total worldwide figures are tiny in comparison to injuries from stepping barefoot/putting your knee on UK plugs.

Also, UK plugs tend to have the wire coming out the bottom and then curving upwards as the electrical device is usually above the socket, over time resulting in an exposed wire, while most other plugs have the wire coming out the centre.

It would be more interesting to compare the rates of serious injury (including death), I think. That would remove the effect of improvements in medical treatement over time.

> kinda like how we love to tell everyone how chuffed we are with how safe our AC plugs are.

I never see Brits saying this. Only people from other nations.

The plugs are the safest though!

Definitely self-congratulatory.

I chose active travel over car dependency at an early age. I also worked in the cycle trade. My opinion is that roads have become far more dangerous, however, most of what can be killed by the car has already been killed and the reason for fewer deaths is slimmer pickings.

Children and the elderly are two canaries in the coal mine.

Kids used to get new bicycles at Christmas, play in the streets and be 'free range' in the UK. Nowadays they are all welded to mobile phones and cocooned in SUVs. Only something like one on four know how to ride a bicycle nowadays and that Christmas trade in bicycles died thirty years ago.

Although you see a fair few Lime bikes and people commuting by bicycle in London, most bicycles are sold to rich people for them to strap to cars, for them to drive to a designated safe spot, for them to ride from the car park in a loop back to the car park. You never see these bicycles parked up next to the door at a supermarket or even at a railway station, partly due to the risk of theft, but also due to the dangers of the road.

As for the elderly, nowadays they are boomers and they all have cars. They only give up their car keys when they get condemned to retirement homes. Hence, like kids, old people are not to be found in the streets, unless cocooned in tin boxes.

As for being cocooned in a tin box, what happened to spirited driving? In the 1970s it was normal for people to cross the country with no sat nav or seat belt, driving as if they were in a Group B rally car, taking their special shortcuts, drunk, with cigarette in hand. Nowadays this doesn't happen, people in cars just shuffle from traffic light to traffic light fearing CCTV and speed cameras.

We have also priced out younger motorists, who would have been the 'spirited drivers'.

Hitchhiking used to exist in the 1970s. Thatcher era stranger danger put an end to that, so nobody hitchhikes these days. Does this mean that hitchhiking is safer? No!

There is another aspect of car dependency and 'safety'. Sure, you might not get killed in an ultra-violent crash in a tin-box cocoon, however, what about cardiovascular disease? Being car dependent and eating the convenience foods of the car dependent is a shortcut to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cognitive decline and death by blocked arteries.

The government knows this, and this is why 'active travel' is a phrase. By 2030 the UK government wants more than half of all journeys in built up areas to be 'active travel' rather than lame car dependency.

Similarly, Ireland has seen a massive drop in road deaths, but one problem is that a lot of that improvement came from removing vulnerable road users - the kids biking and walking to school, etc are now much more likely to be in a car. (The US is similar - biking or walking to primary school was once the norm). Similarly you’d have zero drownings if you threw sharks in every pool. I do wish we could acknowledge that a lot of the improvement in road “safety” was a result of people just removing themselves from places where cars are.

> By the time I had left sixth form (18), two other people from my high school had died in RTAs and two others had life changing injuries.

I think your experience is extremely unlucky. I went to a school in London (in the 80s) with around a 1,000 kids from 8 to 18 and there was one road death, and two injuries, all in the same accident, in all the time i was there. I did not know the buy who died personally, although i knew one of the others who was in the car.

I agree with you about the improvements in general. I do think the 20mph limits where I now live (and in some other places) seem a bit random, and there are some difficult A road junctions that I think the really could do with lower limits or other improvements that do not have them.

Absolutely true that kids are objectively much safer, but people have grown fearful. I wonder whether being safer has made people less tolerant of risk more than risks have diminished. Its common to hear arguments that anything that might save even one life is worth doing.

I don't know I'm the same and find being in the valley more stressful than the drive to wembley from central London. More taxing mentally to have insane people passing you at 100mph. The licensing is harder but still was a one shot 5 hour prep thing for me.

I think universal vehicle inspections alone would massively cut down on a significant amount of accidents, especially in Michigan. The number of people I see driving in 6” of snow with bald tires, grinding brakes, and blown out suspension is really concerning.