Rural Speed Limits May Be Reduced

Rural Speed Limits May Be Reduced

A new Inside track plan has unplugged that speed limits on most single - carriageway roads in rural areas could be cut from 60mph to 50mph in an struggle to reduce the cipher of car accidents and deaths.
Jim Fitzpatrick, the road safety minister noted that figures suggested a road accident was most likely to occur on rural parts of the road network, upon most of which the civic 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 years. In 2007, crack were 2, 946 deaths and 30, 000 serious personal injuries on the roads. 29 % of these collisions were due to suggested speeding. The Power is proceeds a consultation on the plan, which is likely to be emphatically opposed.
The big wheel of the AA, Edmund Mogul, will appropriate Mr Fitzpatrick and Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon to altercate the matter, but pointed out that a shroud contraction of speed limits would not make roads safer, obsessed that many accidents on rural roads involved only one car.
“It will not solve the problem – you have to look at the detail a dwarf closer. Halfway every weekend we inspect these solo car accidents. They ' re zero to do with the speed limit. They ' re to do with inexperienced drivers driving recklessly. For a tender age of reckless drivers, the rest are punished. A swathe contraction 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 veneration and believe, ” he uttered.
Local authorities have the power to impose inferior speed limits, he augmented. This is a thought that is also supported by The Category for British Drivers, who debate the weight should be shifted from speeding to driving habits.
They have suggested that police patrols should be released to strife over dangerous or bad drivers, whether they are speeding or not – fairly than spending their chronology big idea after speeding vehicles that oftentimes represent no bad news.
The ABD augmented that the Government’s research suggests that much when speed is blamed for a car accident, it is really just bad driving. For offer, accidents caused by ‘failure to appraiser other person’s passageway or speed’ are noted in the report.
The arranging however, uttered this theory was risible: “It is utter twaddle to class this as a ‘speed related accident’. The situation here is one person error to judge the path or speed of a second vehicle – which is not to say that the second vehicle is travelling at an hapless or illegal speed. It is fully a failure to survey correctly on the module of the first diversion. ”
A Department for Transport spokeswoman uttered: “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 hold a project to make our roads safer needs to target problem drivers. ”