Dear All,
Unsuspecting Motorists have been issued with speeding tickets on a rural country road after not realising it has a new 30mph speed limit.
A beautiful section of flowing country road in East Cleveland, Yorkshire, has recently been
ruined by the presence of mobile road pirates, a.k.a. “the police”…
Councillor Steve Kay has spoken out against them , pointing out that the speed limit was completely unclear to Drivers.
He said that police “had a field day” and that the signage was deceptive.
He elaborated that while flashing 30mph signs were positioned at the approaches to the villages, at either end of the road, the stretch of country road in between them is distinctly rural in character, and that drivers believed the limit was 60mph.
“It’s ambushing unsuspecting drivers to which I object”, he said.
A local man, Mark Smith, said he was issued with a speeding ticket after driving at 38mph “along what looked like a piece of open countryside”.
“I was thinking I was tootling along well within the law, and then there is a speed camera there, and it emerges it is 30mph!
I thought I was in a 60mph zone.
If there’s no indication of what the speed limit is, you make assumptions”.
Unbelievably, the council spokesrobot had this to say:
“30mph repeater signs cannot be installed on this section of road because it is legally classed as a restricted road.
Traffic signs regulations and general directions do not permit the use of 30mph repeater signs on restricted roads.”
I had to read that about 5 times to overcome the robot voice in my head, and I literally still don’t know what to say to it!
Maybe you can have a go in the comments below:
All the best,
Adam
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There should be repeater signs when road doesn’t the default ‘street lights’ 30, in Scotland been through place with repeater 30 signs of so that council is talking nonsense
If repeater signs are not applied or street lighting at the required spacing, this would be considered as illicit fines? General public are not mind readers. If they can’t put signs up, then the road should have speed limits painted at legal spacing?
Did the road have street lights at less than 200m apart? If not it is NOT a restricted road.
agreed
A Restricted road in the UK is typically a built-up road with street lighting spaced no more than 200 yards (183 meters) apart, indicating a 30 mph speed limit. Known colloquially as “lit roads” or “30 limits,” these roads are legally defined by Section 82 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and often do not require 30 mph repeater signs, though they can be found in 20 mph zones or modified by Traffic Regulation Orders
So on The face of ot the coincil us talking out of its ar**
Dyfed powis police opperate speed camera vehicles in villages and parking on private property basically it’s terrorism against motorists going about their lives and not about safety vehicles today stop in fraction of the distance of vehicles 40 years ago
Being a local (unpaid) volunteer Councillor, I am appalled at the reports of lax knowledge of local councils who think they can make up the rules.
I have recently attended a Kent Cunty Council Road Safety seminar, and “shocked” the officials by stating that major cause of collisions (there are no accidents) is NOT caused by speeding but by the nut behind the wheel.
There was a measure of agreement to my opinion!
i was coming from Scarborough to Newcastle. I basically got lost driving along at 50, saw a little village, so I slowed down, came to the top of a hill doing 35, and there it was, a camera van in the little village in the middle of nowhere. My car picks up the speed signs and displays them on the dash, and they read 60, so there was no speed sign on my side of the road never had any info about it. It was 6 days ago, just waiting to find out i also got a dash cam recording all the time
Hi Adam,
thanks for looking out for us. This scenario is so very familiar to me and what brought me to BTST in 2007/8. Drivers should know the Law, even if they don’t join DriveProtect: it’s what the Highway Code is for.
Every road sign, whether mandatory or advisory, has to be legally applied, like visible 8 degrees each side of line-of-sight, of specific dimensions, as illustrated in the Highway Code and so it goes on.
I received a NIP in 2007 and puzzled that I’d not seen any road sign, revisited the spot with a camera and saw no road sign. It’s difficult to photograph things that aren’t there, so use common sense and take numerous dated pics of every piece of road furniture in the area. It was part of my research into what constitutes a legal road sign that brought me in touch with BTST.
9 months later, in 2008, my case came up and the prosecution produced a photograph of a road sign on a pole by the roadside. I trumped it with my pic of the same pole with no such road sign. Even then, they were inclined to believe the prosecution and it was touch and go but I’d visited the same spot the day before the hearing and the road sign the prosecution depended on was still not there.
So many people just pay the fine to make it go away but that’s as stupid as the people who erect road signs, photograph them, then take them away. Paying the fine just encourages this madness.
Get real, people. The Law says if the road sign is not legally applied, the offence did not occur. All you have to do is prove it. Read your Highway Code.