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Speed limits and their observance are probably the area of driving that causes most debate on the IAM Forum, and amongst drivers in general. Before joining this debate, we must clearly state the IAM's official stance on speed limits: every driver should drive within the speed limit at all times. Certainly the Newbury Group Observers encourage this practice on all observed runs and, of course, during the IAM Test – who would even think of exceeding the speed limit, even for a moment, when there is a serving police officer in your front passenger seat?
Yet the vast majority of drivers, including IAM members, do exceed the speed limit from time to time, even if they don't admit to it. Why should this be? There is an unofficial belief among many advanced drivers that speed limits are unnecessary because everyone should always drive at an appropriate speed for the road and traffic conditions. Whilst that is true, it has no base in reality because people just don't do it. So the Government takes the alternative view and installs speed limits nearly everywhere so that drivers don't have to exercise judgement. That leads to many speed limits that are inappropriate or even illogical – no wonder they often get ignored.
The limit that is least obeyed is the 70-mph maximum on motorways. If you do drive at 70 mph, you are likely to find a stream of vehicles passing you at 80 mph or more, or someone tailgaiting to try to make you go faster. The Government stubbornly refuses to increase this limit, giving reasons to do with the volume of traffic, difficulties of enforcing a higher limit etc. Yet consider these two sets of facts:
• The current 70-mph motorway speed limit was imposed in 1959, on the newly-opened M1. Cars at that time were primitive compared to today's vehicles, with a maximum speed of no more than 80 mph, narrow cross-ply tyres, inefficient drum brakes, and no power steering, ABS or traction control. The 70-mph limit was also set as a trial, to be reviewed after a period of four months – it never has been.
• The speed limit on dual carriageways is also 70 mph. The A34 Newbury bypass is a fine road but it has only two lanes, not three, and you could quite legally encounter learner drivers, cyclists and invalid carriages, as well as the ludicrously, illogically and even suicidally short entry and exit slip-roads at the junctions with the A4 near Speen and the A343 near Highclere. The A34 is thus potentially a much more dangerous road than the M4, but it is subject to the same speed limit.
West Berkshire also has the notorious Village Speed Limit Scheme, under which most villages and residential areas are subject to a blanket 30-mph speed limit. In many areas this is fine, in the sense that the speed limits are logical for the type of road. But in others the limit is quite illogical, and often leads to rapid changes of speed limit between 30, 40 and 50 mph and the National Speed Limit (NSL) of 60 mph within a short distance. Some examples of illogical 30-mph limits, following the blanket reduction from 40 mph some four years ago, are the A4 between old College Roundabout and Speen, and the B4009 between Love Lane and Hermitage, where a long section of 30-mph limit is inserted within a main limit of 50 mph where the road passes some houses. Both these limits are widely ignored; if you do drive at 30 mph you will often incur the wrath of following traffic.
One difficulty is in accurately assessing what the speed limit actually is. Did you know that, in a 30-mph limit where there are street lights, it is actually illegal for the local authority to erect repeater signs? The rationale for this is to reduce the amount of signage on the roadway, but it can lead to difficulty if the street lights are not easy to see – hidden by trees, for example. In a 40-mph or 50-mph limit, or in a 30-mph area with no street lights, repeater signs are mandatory – but even they are often small and spaced too far apart to be helpful to drivers.
Another difficulty is the NSL itself – 60 mph on single-carriageway roads and 70 mph on dual carriageways. Do all drivers know that, though? And note that when a single-carriageway road becomes a dual carriageway, and vice versa, the NSL changes from 60 to 70 mph or back again without any extra signs being required. There is also a wide variety of other speed limits, for vehicles towing trailers, buses and coaches, and goods vehicles below and above 7.5 tonnes – look at page 26 of your Highway Code. These, again, are widely ignored – when did you last see a large lorry obeying the 50-mph limit on a dual carriageway or the 60-mph motorway limit?
A comprehensive review of speed limits, to ensure that they are all appropriate for the road conditions and well marked, is long overdue. Also, the general speed limit on motorways should be increased to 80 mph – that would take account of the performance and capabilities of modern vehicles and would recognise the actual speed at which most vehicles travel. There is very little likelihood of it leading to a wholesale increase of speed to a median of, say, 90 mph, as some of the people who oppose this suggestion seem to think.
The Government’s slogan ‘Speed Kills’ is true to only a limited extent. What we should be campaigning against is the inappropriate use of speed, i.e. driving too fast for the current road, weather and traffic conditions, whatever the posted speed limit, and driving so fast that you are unable to stop in the distance you can see to be clear.