Should The Motorway Speed Limit Be Raised To 80mph?
At the dawn of the UK’s motorway network, there wasn’t a speed limit at all. That ended in 1965 as 70mph speed limits were introduced, but over 50 years have passed, so is it time for an update?
Improvements in crash safety, brake technology and even road technology since then have been massive, so it’s no surprise that the idea of an increase in speed limit has been raised by both campaigners and members of parliament in recent years. It’s even been discussed in the House of Commons, but proposals have never been given the go-ahead.
Upping the speed limit would mean quicker journey times and this will benefit the economy, not to mention making long trips less frustrating and slipways more entertaining…
Thanks to new ‘smart’ motorways with variable speed limits it’d be easy to introduce 80mph limits in test areas, or even roll out a higher speed limit on all newer sections of motorway, leaving older, less safe parts at 70mph.
On the other hand, bumping up the speed limit could still lead to an increase in accidents, even if the 315 foot 70-0mph braking distance given by the Highway Code is rather generous (with most modern cars, you’re looking at around half that). You’d get a substantial increase in emissions across the motorway network, too.
So with these things in mind, what’s your opinion? Get voting!
Comments
You need a good education for the drivers, better roads and then 80, 90, 100 or even higher speed limits won’t be a problem. Not only there is no speed limit on most motorway sections in Germany, the officially suggested speed is 130 km/h (80 mph). A speed of 80 mph is what is considered as the safest while not hindering the traffic behind. There aren’t as many deaths on the German motorways as one would expect, in fact the statistic is amost the same as with any other European country.
But you can’t ignore that our motorways are in a much better condition than in the UK however. I haven’t driven on UK motorways yet, but what I heard from people who did, it’s really bad at some sections. So I can’t really judge that, but 80 mph limit seems like a fair deal.
I will attest that some sections of British Motorway are pretty bad - what can you expect when most of them have been under very heavy use since the early 60s?
Thankfully there are a lot of modern sections of road and the government is presently engaged in a massive infrastructure program. Two roads where I live, the A19* and A1M, were resurfaced and resurfaced and widened, respectively. I could very easily see people doing 80~100mph safely on those roads when traffic permits.
* technically not a motorway because it doesn’t have a hard shoulder, but still a major road.
Umm, no?… It should be upped to 90 instead :P
A lot of cars on UK roads would not be safe at 90, or even 80 tbf. there are places where many drivers do 90 where they feel safe and the flow of traffic matches, however enforcing it would be dangerous. roads are safest when everyone has the same velocity
There should be no speed limit, as simple as that.. Speed limit makes people sleepy, hence lose concentration
Wait a Minute? there’s a limit?
In Europe, almost every country has speed limit on motorway of 80 mph, except some parts which are not close to village or town, and there is no speed limit, in my country there is speed limit is 80mph (130kph) but we don’t have too much cameras, so it is like Germany
Yes cause everyone is already going 70+ mph anyway
I’m surprised you only are allowed to drive 60 on those massive 3 lane A roads..
The “National Speed Limit” on single lane roads is 60mph - two or more lanes is 70.
Meanwhile im sitting here crying over how most Norwegian motorway speedlimits are 80 KILOMETERS per hour
I would say that it would be nice to have more variable speed limits across the main highways and allow even faster speeds in safe parts. And even lower the limits when the conditions are not perfect. But 70mph on the motorway is very low. The driver get easily bored and tired. Now if stupid drivers are tailgating and causing accidents, it doesn’t matter if you increase or lower the limits, they will do it again, actually if you decrease the limits they might do it more often becoming more dangerous…
Never going to happen and tbh I’m glad because most people seem to struggle at 70. I’ll continue blasting around safe in the knowledge that speed camaras are bright yellow and there’s only a few hundred traffic cops out there who are mostly already on their way to an incident. Seriously I’ve been overtaken by 3 cop cars while doing 90 in the past year.
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