Higher speed limits result in fewer crashes

Raising the speed limit can make roads safer, according to a study carried out in Denmark.

The Danish Road Directorate monitored how driver behaviour and accident rates changed when speed limits on country roads and motorways were increased.

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Auto Express magazine reported that there was a drop in the number of accidents when the speed limit on single carriageway roads was increased from 50mph to 56mph. This has been put down to a smaller speed differential between the fastest and the slowest drivers, resulting in less overtaking.

When the speed limit was raised on rural roads, the slowest drivers increased their speeds, while the fastest were found to slow down by 1mph on average.

And it’s not just country roads that were affected – when motorway speed limits were raised from 68mph to 80mph, fatalities also fell.

A spokesman for the Alliance of British Drivers:

“The research would seem to suggest that we are going the wrong way in the UK. This has proven that deaths and accidents have fallen despite limits increasing.”

But would raising speed limits work in the UK? Not according to the Transport Research Laboratory, which suggests that although the number of crashes may go down, the severity would increase resulting in more serious casualties.

A Transport Research Laboratory spokesperson:

“A key element isn’t just the risk of the crash that is proportional to travelling speed for a given road, but the risk of injury should a collision occur.

“We would be interested to see how the Danish study has handled confounding factors. This would all influence the applicability of this scheme to other countries or road networks.”

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By motoringresearch.com