The national speed limit on England's motorway network has been 70 mph for a long time now; the same as it is on any dual carriageways. Last year the Government stated that it intended to ensure the speed limit on motorways accurately reflected the "reality of modern vehicles and driving conditions" rather than those of 50 years ago. Our cars' engines and tyres can easily achieve much higher speeds than 70 mph while still remaining safe, but is our motorway network up to the challenge?
According to the Road Safety Foundation report, our motorways are not currently providing sufficient protection to drivers and passengers to safely consider raising the motorway speed limit. It has shown that there are actually wide spread faults with the protections systems currently in place which are already risking people's lives.
When driving at motorway speeds more protection is needed than the car itself can provide; it must work in symbiosis with the protection systems on the motorways in order that enough energy is absorbed by metal rather than a human body.
Motorways feature a variety of safety systems to protect us including safety fencing which absorbs the energies associated with a high speed car crash. Many of the protective features of our motorways are part of the road design themselves and run-off protection, while a few sections of motorways feature electronic safety controls such as hazard warnings and variable speed limits which better manage the intense flows of traffic that travel on them every day.
The problem is that so many vehicles travel on our motorway network that any tiny risk is magnified. For example, a one in ten million chance can happen as frequently as every three months. This means that even unusual circumstances have to be treated as serious issues, and those unusual circumstances can be things as simple as roadworks or extreme weather, or less common things such as pedestrians on the motorway, drivers and passengers next to broken down vehicles awaiting recovery or mobile tyre fitting, lorry loads being spilt, and rear end shunts when the traffic slows down suddenly. These are the situations our road planners need to plan for, and the Road Safety Foundation don't feel that our motorways currently reach an appropriate standard to raise the speed limit.
One argument from those who support raising the speed limit is that there is little respect for the current 70 mph limit, but according to the Road Safety Foundation drivers who want to be able to travel at 80 mph already do, so the economic benefits that the government believe will occur if people can get to their destinations quicker will only happen if those drivers then speed up to 90 mph after the speed limit is raised. Instead of increasing the speed limit the Road Safety Foundation recommend systematically repairing all the motorways. This would result in large economic benefits and 80mph speed limits could then be trialled on limited sections of the motorways that already feature variable speed limits.
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