Why limit the speed?

I think the whole way we deal with speed limits in the UK is flawed and wrong.

It was, after all, all set up back in the days when there was less traffic on the roads and brakes were useless.  It was a time when gears had to be used to slow engines down and blocks had to be put under wheels if parking on a hill.  Yes, around this hazy time before power-steering had even been thought of, somebody decided the number of miles per hour that should apply on different types of roads for those rare households that could afford to run a car, and there it was left.

Roads became more congested, control of vehicles changed, and people and their cars became more plentiful, and, of course, now the stupid people were also driving.

Logically, a street that in the 1960s had only, say, 3 accidents, yet in the 2010s had, say, 10 accidents is going to have many more factors to crunch in the data than just the speed of the cars.  However, the speed the cars are travelling at is all they bother to examine these days.

Typically, they will then reduce the speed limit even more.  Pretty obviously, cars only travelling at 20mph instead of 30mph are less likely to kill, but using that logic, a car travelling at 10mph will do less damage, and ultimately a car travelling at 0mph will kill 0 people.

So, I believe it is a false and imaginary gain when we force cars to move slower.  Yes, statistically it works, but it isn’t really the answer.  We need to look more realistically at the speed limits and how efficient they truly are.

At the other end of the scale, no car should ever travel at faster than 70mph.  That being the case, why are cars allowed on the road that can happily cruise around at over twice that?  Isn’t it some kind of madness to allow such machines on the roads without them being ‘governed’ to not exceed 70mph?  Or should we maybe consider removing any speed limit on motorways? We need to do one or the other to avoid the current paradox.

I mean, why is it limited to 70mph?  The German autobahn idea is one we should follow, allowing people to travel at whatever speed they wish.  Let’s face it, lose control at 70mph and you’re dead, so that’s no difference to losing control at 150mph, is it really?  Motorways shouldn’t have a speed limit, except where specific parts are dangerous for whatever reason.  And, look at how we could stop wasting police time compared to currently chasing at more than 70mph after those doing more than 70mph.

Within built up areas, I quite like the idea of variable speed limits.  Maybe forcing 20mph during school to-ing and fro-ing hours, but allowing 30 or 40mph outside of school to-ing and fro-ing hours.  Maybe speeds need to be reduced after dark, and so on.

In other words, we need to look at speed limits from a different angle.  And, maybe it’s not just the cars we need to look at.  Maybe we need to examine what we can do to better light roads and pavements, or what barriers we can put up to stop people trying to cross roads at blind spots or other dangerous points.

It’s not the cars we need to be looking at, it’s everybody.  All road users need to be examined, and a different approach is needed to speed limits, not just forever decreasing them.

Hey, whilst I’m rattling on about cars, isn’t it time that it was an automatic prison sentence for anybody driving without a licence or insurance?  And their cars should be crushed (although not always with them inside).