You're sure it wasn't largely to milk fines from people going slightly over? What was the initial threshold for fines? What is it now?
An upper limit is not the desired and accepted speed everybody needs to aim for.
I agree entirely. But while you seem to be thinking about the situation where the speed limit is higher than the natural safe speed range people would intuit without a sign, often it's significantly lower. That's a bad way to design roads and speed limits. In pedestrian areas restrict the roads more, and in non-pedestrian areas let people go a good pace on straight dry roads.
> Nobody is milked. The rules are simple and trivial to follow. Those that are fined are really asking for it.
How much over is your threshold for "really" asking for it? If it includes people going 2-3 over then I very much disagree.
2. "Slower is better." is a stupid half argument. Speed limits are a tradeoff between the benefits of going fast and the benefits of going slow. If it wasn't a tradeoff then the speed limit would be walking speed everywhere on every road.
2. There are very few benefits to cars going faster. If you want speed, trains are much more efficient at high speed. Fast cars are wasteful and dangerous.
Cars being limited to walking speeds in cities would be great. But failing that, I'm happy with the local groundrule: 30km/h if there's no bike path, 50km/h if there's a raised bike path, and 70km/h if there's a bike path that's separated from the road by at least 1 metre.
Are all these cameras in cities? Are there any on separated highways?