I feel the need, the need for (less) speed

- Status-Q

When we started towing a boat behind our car, and were consequently limited to 60mph rather than 70mph on major roads in the UK, I found I rather liked travelling that way. Yes, it took a bit longer, but it was more relaxing.<br>And I've noticed that, whether due to a growth in wisdom or to a decline in testosterone -- I prefer to think it's the former -- I now tend to drive rather more slowly than I did a decade or two ago. Rose suggests I may just be subconsciously aware of slower reaction times...<br>But this has led me to propose Quentin's Law of Optimal Velocity, which is the maximum speed in miles per hour at which you like to drive, and is given by:<br>Vmax = 120 - age<br>but I freely admit that this is based on a rather small sample size (errm... one, to be precise) so would be grateful for more data.<br>Does it correspond to your own experience?

Tags:

driving,

travel,

vehicle

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Comments

Jeremy SJ

April 13, 2026 at 8:15 a.m.

'Fraid not. I'm 55, and I'm happy at 70mph.<br>What has changed (albeit over the past 10-15 years) is a deepening unwillingness to break the speed limit. Not that I was a speed demon before; but the realisation of just how little difference 5-10mph extra generally makes took till my 40s really to sink in. These days, I really only go above whatever the limit is if I need to for safety reasons. As my advanced driving observer said years ago: safety first, speed limit second, on the fairly rare occasions that they don't coincide (and on those occasions you probably should've driven better earlier to obviate the necessity...).

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Jim

April 13, 2026 at 8:56 a.m.

57 year-old here. Funnily enough, the camper van has adaptive cruise and I almost always set it to 62mph/100kph so your law is has some additional support.

Just fast enough to efficiently overtake HGVs, and not hold them up as they sit on their speed limiter but also slow enough to be able to spend long periods in lane one not stressing about what's going on in front and behind all the time. The cognitive load seems lower, consequently reducing fatigue.

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Alun Rees

April 13, 2026 at 9:15 a.m.

I used to drive far too fast and two things changed my habits significantly nearly 20 years ago. First was a one-off, I was visiting an old friend from university who lived near the A1, she wanted to visit a couple of people who lived 15 miles or so north of her home. I noticed how (relatively) slowly she was driving and started to wonder what had happened to her previously heavy right foot. Then I realised that we were having a conversation, and instead of trying to get ahead of everything, we were able to relax and talk without having to worry about the rest of the madness hovering between throttle and brake. Secondly, about the same time, was my starting to use a sat-nav and discovering that driving like a fast "eejit" made very little difference to my arrival time, Perhaps 2 or 3 minutes in an hour's journey, if that.<br>Finally a decade ago, a move to rural West Cork in Ireland completed the transition to patience and sanity.

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Mark Farrington

April 14, 2026 at 11:26 a.m.

Interesting: 71 here.

Yes, although at times a fast car driver and motorcycle rider in my youth, I fortunately survived virtually unscathed, and undoubtedly the speed at which I have felt subjectively comfortable in any road situation has reduced over maybe the past 15 years. I now strongly identify with the sentiments expressed above about the minimal impact of speeding on arrival times!

A couple of technological developments have further contributed to my slowing down:

I was an early adopter of TomTom GPS units and now apps, and having a highly accurate digital speedometer that shows red once you're 3mph over the limit is a help.

Secondly, my current BMW has well-designed cruise control and a speed limiter, which I use a lot. At motorway speed the cruise reads 3mph over when checked on the app, so I tend to set it at 73, while the speed limiter is fantastically useful around town and especially in 20mph zones, where there’s obviously much more variation from traffic....