Would a speed limit database lead to fewer road deaths?
One of the Department for Transport’s (DfT) principal aims is to cut road deaths by 40% by 2010. And since excess speed is a known contributor to accidents, would a database of national speed limits, available for free, help achieve that aim? The answer is not as obvious as it might seem, according to Professor Frank Kelly, the outgoing chief scientific adviser to the DfT. It’s not just a question of whether data should be “free”; just as important is the question of who should contribute to the data, and whether it needs to be “owned”. In fact the problem is not technological, acording to Professor David Rhind, formerly director-general of Ordnance Survey and now vice-chancellor of the University of London. “The problem lies elsewhere and it is about policy coherence, intellectual property rights and much else,” he noted in an article for last September’s Journal of the Foundation for Science and Technology. “There is no single up-to-date source of information about the road speeds th
