Reported in the Sunday Times today, that the government is to cut the national speed limit from 60mph to 50mph on most of Britain’s roads, enforced by a new generation of average speed cameras.
The reduction, to be imposed as early as next year, will affect two thirds of the country’s road network. Drivers will still be able to reach 70mph on motorways and dual carriageways and 60mph on the safest A roads.
Jim Fitzpatrick, the roads minister, defended the plan, which will be the most dramatic cut since 1978, when the national speed limit was reduced from 70mph to 60mph.
“There will be some in the driving lobby who think this is a further attack and a restriction on people’s freedom,” he said. “But when you compare that to the fact we are killing 3,000 people a year on our roads, it would be irresponsible not to do something about it. I’m sure that the vast majority of motorists would support the proposals.”
New research by the Department for Transport has found that reducing the speed limit could save 200-250 lives a year and also reduce carbon emissions.
Britain’s roads were the safest in the world until 2001, relative to its population, but have since fallen into sixth place behind countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. Some challenge that statistic because of the disparity of the countries’ sizes.
The new 50mph limit is intended to reduce the high death toll on rural roads, where, in 2007, 69% of car crash fatalities took place. It will apply to single carriage A, B and C roads. Local authorities will have the power to raise the limit to 60mph on the safest roads, but will have to justify it.
Ministers plan to use average speed cameras, which monitor speeds over distances of up to six miles, to help enforce the new limit. The cameras have already been installed at 43 locations. The Home Office is expected to approve their wider use later this year.
Speed Check Services, the company behind the cameras, claims the number of deaths or serious injuries at its sites has fallen on average by 60%.
Fitzpatrick said: “If you look at the figures on rural roads, there are disproportionately more people dying there than on any other roads. The nature of some rural roads, with dips and bends and difficult conditions, means that the 60mph limit is not enough.”
The 50mph proposal will be laid out in a consultation document to be published in the early summer.
Edmund King, president of the AA, warned that the move could alienate some motorists. Last year the AA asked 17,481 motorists if the limit on single carriageway roads should be cut to 50mph. Nearly half backed the move but 38% opposed it.
He said: “There are quite a few single carriageway rural roads that are straight and adequately wide, where 60mph – in the right conditions, driving sensibly — is not a problem.
“The danger of the blanket approach is: are you going to then reduce speed limits just for the sake of it where you don’t need to? That’s where you lose the respect or the support of the motorist.
“We all know some rural roads where the 60mph limit is ridiculous, although there are equally others where it suits. So it is a case of getting that balance.”
Assuming that the Sunday Times has got its facts right (and let's face it, one might be a bit more dubious if this had appeared in the Mail), this is a proposal of quite staggering stupidity.
We live in the country, and we are happy to say that 50mph is a perfectly suitable speed on the majority of country roads – no argument there, and this new limit is not going to alter our own driving habits very much: we'll do the same as 90% of the other drivers we pass, and continue to drive at a safe speed for each particular road in those particular conditions – which will be 50 or even 40mph a lot of the time, and 60 where it's appropriate.
And there's also no argument that a high proportion of accidents do occur on country roads, for obvious reasons – lots of farm and house entrances, sharp bends, high hedges, poor surfaces, narrow lanes, slow-moving farm vehicles etc.
So why is the proposal so mind-bogglingly dense?
For two reasons. The first is that it won't work. We all know that the number of speed limits and speed cameras in this country has mushroomed in recent years, increasing by hundreds of percent in many areas. What effect has this had on our accident statistics?
Virtually none. Speed camera partnerships can make all the grandiose claims they like about accidents being cut at cameras sites, and the firm that stands to make money out of this new venture, Speed Check Services, can bleat on till they're blue in the face about the reductions they've recorded, but the hard fact is that the speed limit + cameras solution has failed utterly. Annual casualty figures fluctuate from year to year, naturally enough, but we're stuck at roughly 3,000 and speed cameras haven't made the smallest dent in that number.
But sadly the government and its road safety advisers have no other solution. They're like a doctor who prescribes the wrong medicine year after year while the patient slowly dies. And I think we all know the reason for this, don't we? Cameras make money for the government, which they don't want to spend on giving us the well-designed, safer roads that might actually be effective.
The quote from Jim Fitzpatrick, the roads minister, is quite illuminating: “... we are killing 3,000 people a year on our roads, it would be irresponsible not to do something about it.” It doesn't matter whether what you do is effective, just so long as you can't be criticised for doing nothing. That's politicians all over, isn't it? - when in doubt, just thrash about wildly and hope something connects.
The second reason is that these new limits won't be enforced. Do they really think they're going to install average speed cameras on every country road? Pull the other one! Of course they aren't.
And the police won't enforce them: in our county which has more unnecessary 30mph limits than anywhere I've ever been, the head of the traffic police has been heard to admit in a public meeting that he hasn't the resources to police them and isn't even going to try, so he isn't going to take any notice of the new 50 limits either.
No, these limits will be universally ignored, not just by the minority of boy racers but by the vast majority of law-abiding, careful motorists who know that their attention should be on the road ahead, not on the speedometer. The whole speed limit system will fall even further into disrepute, bringing the risk that motorists who know there's no need to observe the limits most of the time, will fail to do so in the genuinely dangerous places and at the most dangerous times when it is really important that they should obey them. The tiny minority of old ladies of both sexes who do rigidly observe every single speed limit will obstruct the rest of us while they sit smugly watching their speedometers, cosily wrapped in their security-blanket illusion that no harm can come to them because look, see what safe drivers they are. It would come as no surprise if this new system actually took more lives, not fewer.
Speaking of the old ladies of both sexes, it's worth mentioning again something we've written about before in these pages: statistics from Canada have shown that people driving 10kph below the limit have far more accidents than those driving 10kph above it. And a report from the Road Traffic Laboratory some time ago suggested that people who claim always to observe speed limits experience more accidents than the rest of us. We tried recently to find that report again, but it seems to have mysteriously vanished from the internet. Wonder why?
There's an ad campaign at the moment from the NHS, warning of the dangers of over-using antibiotics. Perhaps we should have a similar one about speed limits. There's no doubt in our minds that, like antibiotics, they're necessary and useful in the right circumstances. But they aren't a universal panacea, and the more you use 'em, the less effective they'll be.
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