Near Miss of the Day 795: Close pass driver tells cyclist: “ I found it difficult to get past”

STiG911 wrote:

Right, nevermind that it's a 20 limit and the cyclist is either near or at that speed, you just barrel past, you absolute toolbag.

No-one follows the 20mph speed limit, though...

I was driving at the weekend at 20mph in the 20mph limit and was overtaken.  I caught up with her at the next set of traffic lights.  Had I not had the family with me, I would have said something.  As it was, I satisfied myself by pulling away from the lights faster than her and getting in front again.  Sadly, I had to turn into my road less than 100 yards further up the road, but nonetheless it was satisfying (and, yes, childish).

Our village had a 20 mph limit introduced fairly recently, following a long campaign from the parish Council and a supportive Lib-Dem distict Councillor. It had seemed to have local support, but I know most of the locals, aren't keeping to the limit. The only reason I don't get overtaken while driving is because the road is too narrow. It feels like I've taken on the role of village speed enforcer!

alot of drivers just ignore it as a limit, as nothing ever happens to them if they exceed it. I don't think the politicians who advocate it as a default limit option for urban roads, really appreciate the scale of that problem.

"Something" has been done, if a pedestrian is injured or killed, especially a child then the driver can be prosecuted, and it might bring down an average speed of 35-40mph to 25-30mph, which would be a more survivable impact for the unprotected human form.

Imposing a 20mph limit is actually slightly better than doing nothing.

It's just window dressing if there's never any effective enforcement behind it.

stonojnr wrote:

alot of drivers just ignore it as a limit, as nothing ever happens to them if they exceed it. I don't think the politicians who advocate it as a default limit option for urban roads, really appreciate the scale of that problem.

true, but if a 20mph limit means 20% doing 20 and 80% doing 30, it's still better than a 30mph limt with 80% doing 30 and 20% doing 40.

It's better than that most likely because of course in a 30mph limit the average will be over 30...

Anyway - can't we have both a lower default and some more enforcement? Oh, wait - new "tax cutting" party leaders, right.

A decent enforcement method is a car in front doing the speed limit. I do 20 in a 20 limit very consistently (I do sometimes speed by accident but correct myself when I realise). Some people get quite irate getting 'stuck' behind me. But screw 'em!

Agreed - it likely needs a certain proportion of drivers to do this for effectiveness though.  It will also attract the usual comments of "slow drivers are causing accidents - because the idiots others are forced into dangerous overtakes".  This is of course ridiculous but as cyclists will know definitely a thing.

Reported?

Presumably not- given the stupid 'music'

Just the sort of twats we have to deal with on a daily basis

It's a BMW and there's a lot of oncoming traffic. Such people are subnormal, so there's no point in disputing with them. They would just say 'I gave you 1.5m' plus various expletives and threaten to '[expletive deleted] flatten' you but would be unable to define the boundaries of the 1.5m he's lying about.