Speed Limits

The thing about speed limits is that they don’t seem to work that well for anybody, but are they the best we’ve got?

This post describes the journey towards my current thinking… (a narrative that should be read as a whole.)

My starting point is as someone who does not like being told what to do by ‘the authorities’, especially when confident in my own initiative and ability. With regard to driving, I have always had a good sense of spatial awareness and very good eyesight. I have to date never caused an accident despite being involved in a handful of non-fault collisions, largely due to impatience and inattentiveness. I have a motorbike license too, the training for which I have found extremely empowering, especially, in fact, for when cycling. Motorcycling and cycling demand a sharpened awareness and an appreciation of the fallibility of others.

I began driving while living in a village. Public transport to nearby towns was poor; driving made life practical. As a car driver I was consistently frustrated with the encroaching limits and restrictions imposed on me by the roads in my locality.  Over time, lower speed limits and cameras came creeping in in an ever more invasive way to make driving less and less of a pleasure and more of a stress.

There’s little denying the ‘need for speed’ thrill that many, perhaps the majority, including myself would admit to. Even when travelling within the limits of the law, a good stretch of 60 or 70 m.p.h. road can quench that thirst. Trawling along a major trunk route behind a lorry at 40 miles per hour, when used to travelling at upwards of 59 m.p.h.* can without a doubt be a drag. Keeping at 40 is even more testing if there is a completely open road with clear visibility either side. Speed cameras just punctuate the journey with nerving reminders that one could be caught out.

*no one wants to incriminate themselves!

To that extent, I understand and sympathise with the Association of British Drivers. I really do. I have seen silly speed limits put up around the area I lived with unforeseen negative consequences (tailbacks causing accidents due to impatience, choking fumes, gridlock etc.) I also don’t like the use of the phrase “speeding kills”, because it doesn’t. Hitting people at speed does. I find the ABD’s approach to speed limits, which challenges their arbitrary nature, quite refreshing in what feels like an increasingly over-regulated world.

Though as I said, we are all fallible. The consideration that people have different levels of eyesight, spatial awareness etc. must be a key factor in decision and policy making. I used to know two individuals who found my driving very frightening, but I found theirs equally so. The difference is that I would go too fast for them and they would drive too close to the car in front for my liking. The common factor between them was their shortsightedness, literally, not figuratively. I was sympathetic but not very surprised to learn that one of them had driven into the back of a lorry (he was unscathed but shocked). An impaired ability surely increases the risk of an accident; for him, a lower limit could have saved him an accident.

It now seems pig-headed but I have at times considered, for the purposes of preserving my precious little ‘right’ to drive as fast as I deem safe, the idea that drivers could be assessed on their ability to perceive risks, exercise peripheral vision and have the kind of brain that interprets the road well. Those of us who excel could be free to drive as fast as we like! (Utterly unworkable, I know!)

The ABD believes that drivers should have more freedom to use ‘common sense’ in order to drive safely. I entirely accept their view that as roads become more regulated, people drive in a less attentive manner, but this is difficult to reconcile with the range of ability in driving that is found on our roads. I guess a statistical examination of accident rates and speed limits might be the best way of working out where to draw the line between safety and sense; after all, we could not go back to the days of the red flag!

Where we might disagree is with urban areas, not because I dispute the ability of good drivers, but for what might seem a disconnected consequence from the perspective of motorists. The emergence of pressure groups campaigning to make our cities more pleasant places to live has highlighted that limiting speeds for the purposes of accident reduction is not the only reason for doing so. On Twitter, @TheABD describe themselves as “…the UK’s leading campaign group for drivers who can THINK for themselves.” This eloquently frames the real issue as I see it, which is that they cannot think for other people. I recently made a presentation at a community group in Elgin about the work that Sustrans does with our Street Design (Scotland) and DIY streets (England) projects. Residents were wondering whether they should have a 20 m.p.h. speed limit in their street. Even I was shocked at their resounding response when I suggested that actually, 20 m.p.h. might still seem too fast for their children playing out in the street. I encouraged the residents to do a simple speed test to see whether 5, 10, 15 or 20 m.p.h. would be most appropriate.

This, in my opinion, is the thing that always trumps any perceived right to drive at the speed one feels safe. If the existence of cars in our towns and cities is pushing people out of our streets, causing the inactivity of our children and leading to a likely epidemic of heart disease, we should be moving towards to banning cars, not introducing unenforceable speed limits. It is the perception of safety that is critical here, not the actual speed. Children have not yet developed the ability to judge distance and speed; parents know this and naturally, want to protect their children.

Apart from there being no statutory mechanism for speed limits lower than 20 m.p.h. to be introduced, it is my belief that 20 is just too low, in comparison to the preferred speed of most motorists in urban streets, to be seriously adhered to. While costly, I am sold on the idea that the re-design of streets must be, in the long-term, crucial in pacifying the car in urban areas. It should be physically impossible to drive at more than 10 m.p.h. through vibrant residential streets, but no speed limit to that effect would be effective in causing that.

I am not a fan of speed limits in urban areas; they are too arbitrary, their signage is ugly and they can be interpreted as a prescription to go faster than is appropriate. In suggesting they should be completely removed, I think that I might go further than the ABD.

Speed limits do, in their defence, offer a legal footing which gives the courts, law enforcement and users a benchmark, but a design-led approach to streets is capable of a far more dramatic reduction of speed and the risk of serious collision in towns and cities.

The irony is that following a design-led approach, I fully support the ABD’s quest to be able to use their own skill in determining appropriate speed in urban areas.