I commented previously on government plans to increase the motorway speed limit to 80mph – first of all in February this year, then in September, and most recently in October.
In my first article, I made it clear that it will not shorten journey times – the main argument from the government for doing it. All it will do is make people arrive at the next bottle-neck quicker, with the associated increased accident risk that will create. I stressed this in the second article. And the third was based on some extra evidence derived form the very people most at risk: young or new drivers.
Car freaks (many of whom are ADIs) and people who think they’re a whole lot better drivers than they actually are are drooling at the prospect. In that third article, I wrote:
One of my pupils asked me for my thoughts on it today. I told him that I don’t have any issues with an increase in speed limits from my own perspective – but I have a major concern when it comes to trusting other drivers to handle it properly.
You can maybe guess where this is heading. I doubt that many people in the UK are unaware of the events on the M5 Motorway over the weekend. Unsurprisingly, it has reopened (was it ever closed?) the debate over plans to increase speed limits.
Now, we don’t know what speed those cars and lorries involved were doing, but the severity of the outcome suggests they weren’t going at 30mph!
Let’s assume for a moment that at least some of them were breaking the current limit, and some were driving somewhat shy of that due to the alleged poor visibility. The outcome was total carnage.
Now imagine an upper limit of 80mph. What difference would there have been in the outcome? At best, absolutely none – it would have been identical. But at worst, some of those involved would have crashed at a higher speed than they are allowed to travel at legally at present.
Those going at the slowest speeds would have been doing so no matter what the upper limit was set at. So raising the limit would have added 10mph to the speed the crashes occurred at, and as I said in a previous article, the relative speeds of the cars involved in a collision are the seed for an accident, but the absolute speeds involved dictate the severity of the outcome once the vehicles are at rest (and the mass of the vehicles involved also comes into it, as well).
In other words, if two cars touch each other when one is going 5mph faster than another, the initial contact damage is slight. But if they are going at 70mph and 75mph respectively, loss of control is likely, and the outcome is unimaginably more dramatic than it would be if you merely clipped the wing mirror of a stationary car at 5mph – the same relative speed difference.
In spite of what some anorak advanced driving groups are claiming, speed DOES kill. Losing control at 80mph is definitely going to be worse than losing it at 70mph – and even 70mph is bad enough.
Of course, the M5 case is rather unique and spectacular, but the solution is still to enforce speed limits and prosecute offenders – not to raise the limit so they aren’t offending anymore.