Rural Speed Limits May Be Reduced

Rural Speed Limits May Be Reduced

A new Domination plan has expansive that speed limits on most single - carriageway roads in rural areas could be cut from 60mph to 50mph in an striving to reduce the quantity of car accidents and deaths.
Jim Fitzpatrick, the road safety minister noted that figures suggested a road accident was most likely to befall on rural parts of the road network, upon most of which the governmental speed limit of 60mph applies.
Dangerous roads
Great Britain had one of the best road safety records in the world, but this has slipped in recent second childhood. In 2007, competent were 2, 946 deaths and 30, 000 serious personal injuries on the roads. 29 % of these collisions were due to suggested speeding. The Regimentation is catching a consultation on the plan, which is likely to be indeed opposed.
The governor of the AA, Edmund Czar, will reconciled Mr Fitzpatrick and Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon to discourse about the matter, but pointed out that a overlay alleviation of speed limits would not make roads safer, given that many accidents on rural roads involved only one car.
“It will not solve the problem – you have to look at the detail a dinky closer. Nearly every weekend we glom these solo car accidents. They ' re scratch to do with the speed limit. They ' re to do with inexperienced drivers driving recklessly. For a immaturity of reckless drivers, the rest are punished. A swathe reduction could lead to some roads having a lower speed limit than necessary. That could lead to dangerous overtaking. The best speed limits are those motorists honor and conjecture, ” he said.
Local authorities have the power to impose lesser speed limits, he also. This is a thought that is also supported by The Pack for British Drivers, who figure the emphasis should be shifted from speeding to driving habits.
They have suggested that police patrols should be released to sweat over dangerous or bad drivers, whether they are speeding or not – reasonably than spending their continuance trip after speeding vehicles that recurrently represent no disquiet.
The ABD heavier that the Government’s research suggests that regularly when speed is blamed for a car accident, it is really just bad driving. For advance, accidents caused by ‘failure to evaluator other person’s alley or speed’ are noted in the report.
The chemistry however, verbal this theory was risible: “It is utter blather to class this as a ‘speed related accident’. The situation here is one person blunder to appraiser the path or speed of a second vehicle – which is not to say that the second vehicle is travelling at an burdened or illegal speed. It is considerably a failure to read correctly on the allotment of the first gala. ”
A Department for Transport spokeswoman spoken: “This is being looked at, but no decisions have been taken. ”
Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers vocal: “Rather than across the board reductions in the speed limit that hit the most responsible drivers, we presume true a trick to make our roads safer needs to target problem drivers. ”