CHRIS HARRIS
A lot has changed since 1967 – not least cars and roads. Time to rethink motorway speed limits, wonders Chris
“THE LAW NO LONGER REFLECTS THE WAY PEOPLE USE THE ROADS”
For those of us who take the view that most politicians are lowlifes and therefore most political discourse is a battle of egos instead of the stuff that might actually make a practical difference to people’s lives there was an interesting nugget of information released a few weeks ago Strangely it came from the mouth of Liz Truss
Truss announced that she would be “prepared to look at” scrapping the mph limit on motorways Now this might just have been a bit of flirting with Middle England’s frustrated road users but it did the job for me My ears pricked up The speed limit has become one of those subjects we’re not allowed to discuss for fear of offending people I won’t list any of the others here for fear of being cancelled but we all know what they are The one we’re dealing with here is especially dodgy if you happen to present a television show about cars but we all have to live dangerously now and again so here goes
The current mph limit was set in It’s hard for anyone under the age of to understand how much life has changed since then but the motoring landscape is as you can imagine quite different I can’t think of an area of public life that is so unrecognisable but is still governed by a law that could never have conceived it would need to last for so long If the speed limit was an aeroplane it would be a DC still pounding transatlantic journeys
Sadly the most common argument delivered in defence of increasing the speed limit on motorways is also one of the easiest for the naysayers to counter Yes auto technology means cars can travel safely at much higher speed these days but the roads are so much more congested you could argue that the two cancel each other out The issue here isn’t so much people like me who the antispeeding lobby views as murdering lunatics wanting to travel at mph the whole time it’s just the sensible application of a limit where it is necessary It really is terribly simple
When the roads are busy mph makes perfect sense Quite often even when that limit is in place on a variable limit section of motorway it isn’t possible to travel that fast and that’s fine But at pm on an empty stretch of motorway with excellent driving conditions in a car that’s capable of cruising at double the limit it all seems a bit silly to me And to clarify this is coming from someone who thinks the mph limit in Bristol where I live is absolutely spot on The problem we have is that the law no longer reflects the way people use the roads And the great folly of the past years is that the antispeed lobby thinks speed cameras are a decent substitute for police cars they aren’t In we should have the sophistication to vary the limit to suit the circumstances This is what Lord Buckmaster said in on the same subject “The existing speed limit was so universally disobeyed that its maintenance brought the law into contempt ” Spend minutes on the M and you’ll see that nothing has changed in years
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