Motorway Driving Lesson Uk

Motorway Driving Lesson Uk with Lucy shortly after she'd passed her driving test. How to join the motorway, use variable speed signs on a smart motorway and more is all covered in this driving lesson. The motorway begins at 22:08. For more motorway lessons see http://bit.ly/2B1QSGJ

This lesson with Lucy highlighted a very important point which is very unusual. It was lucky that I captured such a rare event when I had all my cameras running.

At one stage we're unsure of what the speed limit is because the variable speed signs go from 40mph to being blank. Usually a speed sign applies until you see another so we were left wondering what the blank sign meant as we passed several more that were also blank when at least one of them should have said national speed limit. Was the limit still 40 or had it gone back to national?

A blank variable speed sign would usually mean the national speed limit applies unless there is a metal sign at the side of the road such as when roadworks are being done. In this case you should stick to the speed limit of the metal sign which would usually be lower.

I emailed Highways England (the agency that operates the signs and speed cameras) asking if I had got this right and why we hadn't seen a national speed sign.

What happened is that just as we drove under the last 40 sign that you see in this video it changed to a national speed sign. We wouldn't have seen it but everyone behind us did. There was a national sign at the start of the slip road for the cars joining as we're talking about what the speed is.

It's always wise to do as we did in this video and keep your speed down until you are sure the speed limit has increased. Usually there are at least two signs, one after the other, showing a change in speed to stop this from happening but that wasn't case here.

I also learnt that If the speed limit decreases as you are driving under a sign/camera then the speed cameras won't activate until a set amount of time after the speed has changed. That's only fair otherwise you could be going under a blank sign at 70mph and be caught as it changed to 40mph!

They wouldn't say what that amount of time is but that it would be more than enough time for anyone to see the change from any distance and change their speed. Off the record I was advised it may be about 30 seconds. It's all planned so that people with the worst eyesight could still see the sign from as far away as possible so that nobody can be unfairly caught.

Highways England assured me that if a sign is blank then it would only enforce the national speed limit anyway. Even if the sign was supposed to say 40 but the signs went 40, 40, blank, 40 then the blank sign would not fine you for going over 40mph even if the others would.

I hope this information proves useful to people in the future because it's not nice spending 2 weeks waiting to see if you're going to get a speeding fine. This was over a year ago now and nothing happened because what I said in the video was correct and it had returned to national speed limit. Better safe than sorry.

There are some brand new speed cameras on these signs that I didn’t even know about at the time You won’t spot them, they’re hidden out of view which is legal. I checked with police after making this video and they answered the question that Lucy asked; there doesn’t have to be any warning of speed cameras at all because whether or not there are cameras you shouldn't be speeding.

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