BACKDOOR GOVERNMENT PLAN TO RATCHET DOWN SPEED LIMITS
23 November 2004 - Safe Speed

A recently published new draft of the Government''s primary local speed limit setting advice document contains some worrying changes. Astonishingly speed limits will be set such that 50% of motorists will be exceeding them.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign explains: ''All around the world and for many decades, speed limits have been set in accordance with the speed of traffic at such a level that only the fastest few should be prosecuted. Research evidence shows that this is the safest and most effective way to set speed limits. There has been some erosion of this principle over the last decade, but the new document promises a far more restrictive regime. In future the Government intends that speed limits should be set at the average speed of traffic. This immediately means that half of all motorists will be exceeding the new speed limits.''

Paul continues: ''The effect of this will be a gradual ratcheting down of speed limits and far more motorists criminalised despite the fact that they will be driving at a safe and appropriate speed according to the conditions.''

Paul explains the techincal details. ''Speed limits have long been set at the level not exceeded by 85% of motorists. This is called ''the 85th percentile rule''. The new proposals abandon the 85th percentile rule and replace it with a ''mean speed rule''. This means that with a typical speed limit defined under the new scheme, 50% of drivers will be exceeding the speed limit by definition.''

For over ten years now we have speed reducing speed limits and speed cameras are spreading like a virus. The fact is this policy is comprehensively failing to reduce road deaths, yet the Government sticks stubbornly to its guns. They must be saying: ''The medicine isn''t working! Let''s increase the dose!''

''Speed kills'' road safety policy has become a dogma, encouraged by a series of vested interests. It isn''t working and must be abandoned.

Every rational person knows that ''The competent and careful actions of a majority of responsible people should obviously be considered legal.'' Yet with speed limit laws, applied over-zealously we are criminalising the vast majority - and the government proposes to make it worse.

www.safespeed.org.uk

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