Bikers and speed limit enforcement

Posted by: Bruce Woodhouse on 09 April 2017

Gorgeous weekend here and we took my nice old car for a long run across country roads of N Yorkshire on Saturday, playing V8 tunes off the drystone walls and generally loving the spring sunshine.

As ever the case on the roads around us each sunny weekend we saw lots of motorbikes, many driven well but a very significant percentage driven dangerously and often illegally fast. No number of signs alerting drivers to the numbers of fatalities on each route seems to dissuade. Some of the antics were shocking, and wince inducingly dangerous.

N Yorks Police use very few fixed cameras-and almost all of those in urban areas. We saw one Police motorbike in a village with a hand speedgun facing the traffic but no other obvious enforcement apart from traffic police parked up in some of the laybys and café stops.

So how do the Police enforce speed limits on bikers who have no forward facing numberplate to catch a camera and who in general are too swift to be tagged and chased by a Police traffic vehicle? What do they/should they do? Unmarked Police bikes (risking their own lives chasing)? Roadblocks to stop the big offenders? Are bikers effectively impossible to police?

Bruce

 

Posted on: 12 April 2017 by Simon-in-Suffolk

I love our Skoda Citigo  .... I believe the same car  chassis and engineering as the VW Up .. fantastic little cars..

Posted on: 12 April 2017 by hungryhalibut

They are indeed super. They are cheap to insure, use hardly any fuel and are really nice to drive. And nobody looks at you and says 'tiny dick'. What's not to like? Well, I can accelerate faster on my pushbike, but that's not really the point. 

Posted on: 12 April 2017 by Simon-in-Suffolk

indeed - but the engine does seem to respond quite well to being worked reasonably hard and it can then accelerate acceptably - but yes at 59 bhp you won't buy one of these small cars to be fastest away at the lights.. but it is surprisingly swift on A roads and dual carriage ways and handles country lanes really well. You are right for the insurance too - makes a huge difference for young drivers which we have two of when building up their no claims .. our  Citigo is insurance group 2

Posted on: 24 April 2017 by Bruce Woodhouse

Just to complete this thread

 I had a very thorough and realistic reply from N Yorks Police detailing the work they do around this issue and recognising the difficulties. They also stated that afternoon they had 2 serious incidents on the roads that pulled vehicles away from normal enforcement positions which may have made their presence appear less than usual.

Fair play for such an honest response.

Bruce