30 September 2011
From Brake, the road safety charity
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The government's consultation announced this morning proposing raising the motorway speed limit is shameful, says Brake.
Brake chief executive Mary Williams OBE said: "The minister Philip Hammond is partially arguing that this move is a good idea because a proportion of drivers break the 70mph limit and that their law breaking needs to be made 'legitimate'. Actions of law breakers should not be legitimised. This is a selfish move that will achieve nothing other than carnage and is pandering to an uninformed few. What is far more legitimate is the grief of families bereaved on Britain's motorways in horrendous pile ups at high speed, and the rights of all UK citizens to have slower, not faster, speeds on roads to enable drivers to avoid collisions. The tragedies on Britain's motorways, often in treacherous weather conditions and due to all sorts of causes, ranging from driver fatigue, to vehicle technical problems, to dangerous driving, are real and inevitable and more inevitable the faster the speeds. Higher speeds equal less time to react and avoid a collision in an emergency."
For research indicating that raising speed limits on motorways means more deaths, click here. For further guidance on the science of speed and the contribution speed makes to deaths and injuries on roads, visit the road safety facts section of the Brake website.
Williams added that increasing speed limits and its implied objective of making motorways faster and more efficient in terms of journey times was out of touch with the imperative to move traffic off motorways and put people onto trains and other forms of transport to reduce carbon emissions. Higher speeds also burn up more energy, while also being unlikely to improve journey times. "The best way to improve our motorways for those who need them, such as freight and long distance coaches, is to reduce cars on them," she said.
She called on the government to scrap the consultation and instead invest in a review of the safety of the UK's entire trunk network, including the adequacy of all crash barriers, frequency of rest stops, and hard shoulders, and to invest in methods to prevent driver fatigue on long distance trunk roads, a major cause of weaving traffic, that, at speed, can cause carnage.
Williams called on the general public to respond to the consultation objecting to the proposal to raise the speed limit.
