I just returned from a 2 week trip to England. It's been 20 years since I've been back so quite a lot has changed.

We rented a car and visited relatives in various parts of the country.

Last time I was there, the Motorway speed limit was 70mph, but most folks were running 85-90mph.

Brits are far more courteous drivers than Americans and use the lanes, on the highways, to not impede those that would like to travel a little faster.

But on this trip, one thing I noticed, everyone is driving the speed limit, or no more that 2-3mph over the limit.

This is true is city, suburban and highway roads.

When mentioned this to my relatives, they were surprised at my assessment, but I think they've been slowly conditioned by more and more speed cameras, that they know see the speed limit sign and obey it.

Where speed cameras are in use, there have to be posted signs. These signs don't need to be right where the camera is, just somewhere on the road before the actual camera.

They are also using average speed cameras, where a pair of cameras will be used to assess your average speed through a zone, could be a couple of hundred yards or a mile through a village, so again people slow down to the speed limit.

These cameras are all digital and mail you your violation and add points to your license. I think I read somewhere that they cap at 2400 pounds per day in computer generated fines, which at 100 pounds per incident, doesn't take too long a stretch of road to accumulate.

I'm not sure what legal standing you have to fight these in court. I'm guessing by how everyone is obeying the limits, no much wiggle room.

Many Motorways (Interstates) have been converted to what they call Smart Motorways. They have multiple overhead lane signs, about a 1/2 mile apart, closer in areas that get a little more congested, that inform of lane closure due to an accident or disabled vehicle and also have dynamic adjustable lane speed limits, again designed to keep traffic flowing. So you have a 70mph Motorway, but as traffic gets heavy, certain lanes may drop down to 60mph or slower, and likewise the speed camera is also adjusting its threshold for violation, so everyone slows down.

They also have different speed and lane limits for larger vehicles, i.e. trucks and every truck was observing their requirements.

With these smart Motorways, they also have standby breakdown/rescue services that will despatch as soon as there is a need.

But what is interesting, for these smart Motorways, they have removed the hard shoulders and basically used those spare lanes as driving lanes, effectively going from a 3 lane to a 5 lane highway, giving them 40% more road.

From my tourist perspective, this all seemed to work very well, in 1200 miles of driving, we saw no actual traffic accidents and only two lane closures for a disabled vehicle, and in both cases, traffic still flowed an 40+mph past the incidents.

This may seem all a bit 'Big Brother is Watching', and that is definitely the case for British law Enforcement, but if you are not breaking the rules, you've got nothing to be worried about.