[avira_tk]

I hate this creeping authoritarianism, a highways authority that doesn't have the competency to build and maintain safe highways is allowed to shakedown those who pay their salaries. The biggest problem on the highways are local vehicles travelling on the wrong side, cops placing dangerous barriers on blind curves and the nhai that has allowed full toll rates for highways that have no service roads.

I am not surprised that people on this forum are supporting this, wonder if they are OK with the scam that is a toll booth in the first place. The highway agency takes no responsibility for your safety, they have no business collecting and possibly putting your data in the wrong hands, as this kind of overreach is bound to.

Yesterday on BETL, a traffic jam ensued after the cops shut down a working toll booth, that ensures everyone would hand maintained a legal speed by the time they cross the booth.

[blackwasp]

I'm all for this move provided the authorities implement a harsher fine for going too slow. If 80 km/h is the limit, I want a lower limit of 55-60 km/h on the same stretch. And this should be the average speed. Once both the slow movers as well as the speeding guys are kept in check, only then will we have a smooth journey on the highways.

And if the truckers come and say no to this, then the upper speed limit should also be abolished for good. In an access controlled highway - e.g. expressways, there is simply no logical reason to not enforce the low speed limit. On 2-lane national highways, its ok, as the roads pass though villages and people frequently stop on the sides to pick up / drop passenger, unload goods etc.

Rather than the speeding folks, a bigger menace is the slow moving traffic moving across the lanes like their own backyard. Unless that is curbed, road travel will be the same as before. Authorities installed the low hight barriers on the fast lane on the Mum-Pune Eway, but that was a flop. You will frequently find 3 trucks doing 9, 10 and 11 km/h respectively occupying all the 3 lanes. I once spoke with a cop posted there and he nonchalantly shrugged off my blasphemous suggestion to fine the trucks in the fast lane.

[mpksuhas]

Though I agree 'overspeeding' is a concern, I am not able to find how this is going to solve the issue.

Toll booths in many highways are placed ~ 50 KM's apart, even in GQ corridors there are sections which have separate speed limits enroute (villages, crossings etc). At many of these places you can notice speed limits around 30 or 40 KMPH.

With this calculation, if I am doing a stretch of 50 kms between two toll booths, I should be taking around an hour for sure. How many of the road users (including me) will be happy with this is to be seen.

While I agree that 3 digits speeds are dangerous on any road, what you end up with a toll - toll calculation is average speed and not speeding as such.

[ach1lles]

I'm all for safe driving but a speed limit of 80-90 kmph on 6 lane highways for modern cars is asinine. It would be much better for safety and (my) brain health if they could just impart lane driving discipline to the big vehicles first. Trucks and buses have no business overtaking other trucks and buses and weaving through traffic.

Personally, for me it is much more distracting trying to stay below 90 kmph than it is to practice disciplined, safe driving.
This (and other methods) will be able to catch speeding vehicles, sure, but are they really the worst offenders on the road? Most investments in time and effort I see are put towards catching speeding vehicles, or issuing challans for not wearing helmets and seat belts. Neither of these, IMO, are the biggest problems to others' safety on the road, but I guess that'a a discussion for another thread.

[Altocumulus]

I am sure the next thing on the cards are 200 BHP cars with a 80km/hr speed governors. That would definitely ensure everyone is within the speed limit.

These measures are just to cover up the incompetence of the relevant authorities. Most cars are capable of being driven at higher speeds safely in the hands of a competent driver. It's a farce of a driver education/ driving test and road users ignorance which cause the accidents. That the bud which requires to be nipped. An 80km/hr car is still dangerous in the hands of an incompetent driver.

[Thermodynamics]

For the safety of everyone and to our motto "Live to Drive", I wholeheartedly agree with this effort.

Limiting speeds is important but guess, we should also focus on improving other aspects as well. I tried to list a few below and am sure there are many more left.

People's responsibilities
- Avoid drunken driving
- Avoid sleepless driving
- Respect signals and sign boards
- Practice lane discipline, indicate appropriately while changing lanes and while overtaking
- Give way
- Lower your beam whenever the oncoming vehicle requests
- Maintain adequate distance from the vehicle ahead
- Do not race on road, value other's life. I am afraid this trend will grow dangerous with the popularity of heavy duty motorcycles. Please object, if we find someone doing that.

Government's responsibilities
- Ensure pot hole free roads
- Standardized speed bumps design, ensure they are visible and their proximity sign boards are in place
- Ensure driving licence procedure is fool proof
- Build adequate infrastructure to handle the ever increasing traffic
- Minimize Four crosses and T junctions. Instead, provide U-turns and streamline traffic through service roads
- Ease toll booth queues, On a peak weekend some booths queue up to an hour. The moment a driver labors out of such agony, it is natural tendency to make up for the delay.

[Arjun Reddy]

Apart from the people and government, Private companies like L&T, Soma and who ever has built and operates these roads should also take some responsibility. After all it is a public private partnership and they end up earning from the tolls collected.

They just seem to restrict their staff to collect and manage the queues at the tolls. They show no responsibility outside of the 100 meters.

I think they should ensure highway patrols, prevent or police people driving on the wrong side of the roads, prevent cattle from straying onto the road. This will ensure safety for the road users.

[2000rpm]

We Indians, introduce Jugaad in everything.

This is a good way with minimum investment. In fact, the toll receipt at the 2nd toll can actually be inclusive of fine. Thus making life even easier for collection.

[Shanksta]

While this will be a good way to catch people who are really gunning it constantly above a ton. I wouldn't be surprised if most don't get caught unless they have a completely free run from one toll to the next.

Because of the umpteen number of times we slow down and accelerate due to traffic or slow trucks on the overtaking lanes and similar instances. The average I always manage to cover in a hour is only 70-75kms. Except the rare instances, like driving to Chennai from Bengaluru on a weekday where you will reach The outskirts of Chennai in 3.5 hours maintaining even a constant 80kmph.

Originally Posted by GTO

Cops in Maharashtra have been doing this manually since a while now. They wait at the 2nd toll booth on the expressway, compare your time between the two tolls and act accordingly.

Not just the expressway as far as I saw on my drive to Pune from Chennai 2 weeks back.

Enroute to Pune from Hyderabad there were cops at every toll booth in Maharashtra checking overspending manually and similarly on my return journey via Kolhapur too there were cops at every toll booth. Initially I thought they were there to harass out of state vehicles as I had read on another thread, but turns out they were manually checking time. I never got pulled over at any toll booth despite driving my TN registered car.

Only once while passing through Satara a cop stopped us to check our PUC. There were a minimum of 4 cops on each side of every toll booth.

Originally Posted by smartcat

Correct. And I have seen many who drive like their pants are on fire, but then take a 5 or 10 minute break just before reaching the top.

Yeah this exactly what I have observed. Especially on the return downhill you can see everyone parked near the deer park.

[SS-Traveller]

Toll booth timings should not be used for catching speeders in the current scenario, since clocks between toll booths are never synchronized, and computer clocks running at different toll booths may (intentionally) not be set to synchronize with time from the internet - hence, anyone can contest the data (as all argumentative Indians are wont to do).

However, if properly implemented, this system is more fair to motorists than single point cameras, since one can be "trapped" by a camera at an awkward location (such as at the bottom of a sharp slope or a very limited overtaking zone).

Back in 2014, while undergoing low risk driver training in Australia, we had a long discussion on this - on highways there, there is no differential speed limit for light and heavy vehicles. So, for example, a road train with 3 trailers drives at 110 kmph, as also a Ferrari, on the Hume highway. Th road train, say, 30 metres long, slows down to perhaps 100 kmph on upslopes, but the Ferrari obviously doesn't. When the Ferrari attempts to overtake the road train safely, it can easily cross 110 kmph for a few seconds, and can then be penalized by an automated speed camera on the highway (set about 5 km apart). You are penalised for exceeding the limit by just 2 kmph.

At that time, Point-to-Point speed cameras were being gradually introduced on the highways - this would solve the overtaking problem. Read more details about it in this article.

However, in the USA, this system has not been introduced: https://www.snopes.com/autos/law/cameras.asp.

Originally Posted by Santoshbhat

A few questions come to mind.

1) Will they send notices by post to all the violators or will there be random enforcement by cops sitting at random booths and collecting spot fines?

Notice by post is along way away in this country, considering the jurisdictional issues regarding vehicles rgistered in different states, false addresses, non-transfer of registration of vehicles sold to another person, etc.

Originally Posted by Santoshbhat

2) This could well create a situation where drivers stop before the toll booth or by the side of the road on highways to kill time and create another kind of dangerous situation.

Oh well, stopping anywhere on the highway hasn't been penalised since as long as I can remember!

Originally Posted by Santoshbhat

3) What will be considered as too fast? Most highways have an 80 kmph limit. So if you average 80 kmph, surely you have crossed 80 kmph at some point.

Crossing 80 kmph for short distances, say for the purpose of overtaking, doesn't jeopardise cars and drivers as much as sustained breaking of speed limit does. Which is why, the averaging method of penalising speeding drivers is more fair.

Originally Posted by Santoshbhat

...enforcement without updating laws to match the current environment will taking everyone backwards.
... What's the point if we are all forced to drive on these highways at speeds that were fixed as limits about 25 years back? 50 mph is simply too slow on big 4/6 lane highways.

Gradually some folks are waking up to the real world. Within Delhi, some roads (especially portions of highways extending into the city) which were 50/60 kmph earlier, have now been designated as 80 kmph zones. Unfortunately, we still have idiot drivrs who are unable to sustain such speeds and happily crawl along at 40 kmph on the first lane.

[sharktale]

I was pulled up for alcohol-checking once, whilst driving (though I was sober, just exhausted and grumpy). I asked the traffic policemen about the illogical speed limits, 30-40 kmph where the roads where wide enough and tempting to anyone.

He calmly replied in Bengali, " The issue is to regulate drivers. Once drivers regulate speed, we ourselves will increase the speed limit to more respectable limits. Till the time drivers do not inculcate driving etiquette, we cannot budge from cracking down on them for over-speeding."

[sameerg]

There is sth similar in place on noida - agra toll road. Couple of years back, I was traveling with some colleagues to agra for some office work and the cab, I was traveling in was challaned for over speeding at one of the toll gates. As soon as we paid/showed the toll reciept at the said toll gate an alarm sounded. A cop walked up to the car and told the driver to park the car aside and there a challan was issued.

Good part was the cop refused all the attempted all the driver's attempt to bribe. Infact there was some guy in jaguar shouting at cops for refusing to bow down to 'do you know who I am'.

[devsoftech]

Since two wheelers are exempt from tolls, how will they be checked? A fair share of the highway accidents involves 2-wheelers as well. Would we see a spike in motorcycles on highways?

[sam_sant2005]

I feel in south india it is highly unlikely to nab a speeding vehicle with this logic. Avg speeds is never more than 60 to 70 here. Anything more than that is close to impossible from my personal experience. For example, today I drove from Calicut to Blr (375kms) in around 6.5 hrs which is sooooper fast on my new Corolla Altis Petrol (hitting higher triple digits very often) but still my avg speed is hardly 58kmph!

However logic from them also should be straight forward, i.e distance divided by time taken = avg speed (or speed in consideration). if they go for guess work based on the avg speed, that he might have crossed 100 (say), then it is unfair.

So assuming they play a fair game, 60-70 kmph avg speed (Kerala, KA (except Hubli route and TN)) cannot be fined at all in most highways.

[sourav9385]

Now these muppets want to charge people for over-speeding between toll booths? Good thing that we're leaving this country for good, so we don't ever have to put up with nonsense like this. They're too busy taxing the living daylights out of people, charging toll for roads that don't exist, giving away licenses to people without actually checking whether they can drive or not, letting owners drive without valid insurance or drivers licenses, not having a standardized number plate even for pete's sake, but if you drive at 80 kmph between two toll booths, safely and responsibly, and get ready to fork out money at the next one because the speed limit hand painted on some sign says 60!