'Speed kills' policy unsafe: campaign

More will die on the roads warns safety expert

By PH Staff / Tuesday, 8 August 2006 / Loading comments

Rural limits to be reviewed

Road safety campaign Safe Speed called the Department for Transport's guidance for setting local speed limits "flawed and deadly because it is founded on bad science and tends to de-skill driving".

The rationale was as follows:

Basing speed limits on average traffic speeds as suggested in the new advice tends to put around half of all drivers outside the law.
At the foundation of the new guidance is the idea that reducing speed by 1mph leads to five per cent fewer crashes. The science employed is just plain wrong and the claimed speed accident relationship does not exist.
Reduced speed limits, where they are unnecessary, de-skill driving, and if our drivers employ less skill, more of us will die on the roads.

Founder Paul Smith said: "The new guidance is based on faulty foundations and will ultimately cause road deaths to increase. If we want safer roads we must look at the psychological factors that underlie crashes. By tending to de-skill driving these proposals will make road safety worse.

"Department for Transport is clearly blinded by its own 'speed kills' propaganda and is not fit for purpose. It does not understand the process of safe driving and as such is not competent to devise road safety policy."