Should the speed limit on motorways be raised or lowered?
It’s a complicated issue, and one that I’ve had to do a lot of reasearch into during my many years spent creating paperwork for the transport industy. The biggest danger on a motorway is the speed differentials. In other words, you’ve got big lorries doing 50mph and cars doing 80+ only a couple of metres from each other, whilst having to zip around other vehicles. On that basis, raising the speed limit would be dangerous. However, one cannot ignore the fact that very few cars stick to the motorway limit (some 97% of car drivers a year conscientiously break it), so raising it won’t make things any worse. If anything, it’ll encourage those 3% of cars to keep up with the rest of traffic, making the road safer. The argument that people will just drive faster anyway is a very thin one, and is somewhat offensive. It’s now almost concrete that speed limits have no affect on the way people drive at all, an issue I’ll get back to later. How many people honestly get in a car and aim to break a s
