Rural Speed Limits May Be Reduced

Rural Speed Limits May Be Reduced

A new Strings plan has gaping that speed limits on most single - carriageway roads in rural areas could be cut from 60mph to 50mph in an pursuit to reduce the numeral of car accidents and deaths.
Jim Fitzpatrick, the road safety minister noted that figures suggested a road accident was most likely to arise on rural parts of the road network, upon most of which the national 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 age. In 2007, qualified were 2, 946 deaths and 30, 000 serious personal injuries on the roads. 29 % of these collisions were due to suggested speeding. The Force is return a consultation on the plan, which is likely to be superlatively opposed.
The chieftain of the AA, Edmund Crowned head, will reconciled Mr Fitzpatrick and Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon to thrash out the matter, but pointed out that a swathe lowering of speed limits would not make roads safer, liable that many accidents on rural roads involved only one car.
“It will not solve the problem – you have to look at the detail a wizened closer. Partly every weekend we gape these solo car accidents. They ' re nihility to do with the speed limit. They ' re to do with inexperienced drivers driving recklessly. For a innocence 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 tribute and believe, ” he verbal.
Local authorities have the power to impose secondary speed limits, he and. This is a thought that is also supported by The Circle for British Drivers, who hash over the accent should be shifted from speeding to driving habits.
They have suggested that police patrols should be released to enterprise over dangerous or bad drivers, whether they are speeding or not – reasonably than spending their while pipeline after speeding vehicles that generally represent no disorder.
The ABD bounteous that the Government’s research suggests that oftentimes when speed is blamed for a car accident, it is really just bad driving. For name, accidents caused by ‘failure to assessor other person’s lane or speed’ are noted in the report.
The organizing however, vocal this theory was sappy: “It is utter rubbish to class this as a ‘speed related accident’. The situation here is one person omission to judge the path or speed of a second vehicle – which is not to say that the second vehicle is travelling at an unsuitable or illegal speed. It is positively a failure to regard correctly on the ration of the first feast. ”
A Department for Transport spokeswoman uttered: “This is being looked at, but no decisions have been taken. ”
Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers uttered: “Rather than across the board reductions in the speed limit that hit the most responsible drivers, we affirm a program to make our roads safer needs to target problem drivers. ”