---

Road Safety Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 21:"After Clause 17, insert the following new clause—"    ““MOTORWAYS: MAXIMUM SPEED    The maximum speed on a motorway shall be 80 miles per hour, and in other circumstances shall be determined by highway controllers and the police with access to the motorway warning signs system.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I want to restate the aim of this amendment, which was moved in Committee. It is designed to introduce the concept of variable speed limits in conjunction with increasing the maximum motorway speed limit to 80 miles per hour. In combination, these two elements establish a simple and straightforward system of speed limits that is both safe and practical. The efficacy of variable speed limits has already been demonstrated on the M25 orbital motorway in Surrey, where road safety is undoubtedly enhanced by the adjustment of the speed limit in accordance with circumstances such as traffic flow and adverse weather. This point was broadly accepted in Committee by many of your Lordships and the Minister himself. It was the second part of this amendment, the proposed increase of the motorway speed limit to 80 miles per hour, that prompted a much greater debate in Committee. During that debate many noble Lords, and indeed the Minister, referred to studies conducted in the United States of the road safety impact of the repeal of the federal speed limit law in the US in 1995. I must remind noble Lords that these studies did not produce the unanimous conclusion that speed increase is detrimental to road safety, which was implicit in their citation in Committee. In fact, many of the studies found quite the opposite. The Cato Institute 1999 policy analysis, Speed Doesn’t Kill: The Repeal of the 55mph Speed Limit—that is, in the United States—states that, despite the fact that 33 US states had raised their speed limits since 1995,"““almost all measures of highway safety show improvement, not more deaths and injuries . . . Moreover, the average fatality rate even fell in the states that raised their speed limits””." This conclusion is also supported by a recent 2005 study by another American academic, Robert O Yowell, who concluded in his study, The Evolution and Devolution of Speed Limit Law and the Effect on Fatality Rates, that:"““the assertion that speed kills, and more speed kills more, is . . . unfounded””." Furthermore, I must also remind noble Lords that this new clause diverges significantly from the American experience, since raising the speed limit to 80 miles per hour in this instance is reliant upon the use of a variable speed limit motorway warning-sign system, where speed is adjusted in accordance with circumstances. Increasing the motorway speed limit is a proposal that already has widespread public and expert support. A recent survey conducted in May 2005 by the company Motor Insurance found that 82 per cent of motorists supported an increase in that limit. It is not surprising that the public reject the current motorway speed limit so emphatically when one considers that it is widely considered arbitrary and anachronistic. In short, it has lost its relevance to modern-day motorists, the cars they drive and the roads they drive on. Since the limit was set in 1964, both cars and motorways have advanced dramatically. Due to advances in technology, people are now able to drive cars safely at higher speeds. I beg to move.