Humberside Safety Camera Partnership
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Letter to the Editor
For victim’s families there is no distinction between driving a couple of miles over the speed limit and speeding excessively
It seems that many motorists draw some kind of distinction between what they consider to be ‘straying a couple of miles over the speed limit’ and driving at excessive speed.
As a former police officer, on many occasions I have had to break the bad news to a family whose loved one has been killed by a speeding motorist. Never once have I been asked whether the driver was breaking the speed limit by a little or a lot! Research shows that driving too fast is still the biggest contributory factor in road collisions in the UK and two out of three accidents in which people are killed or injured happen on roads where the speed limit is 40mph or less.
Seven out of ten drivers admit to regularly breaking the speed limit on roads in built-up areas; perhaps this is partly a result of the completely unfounded perception that because they are not exceeding the speed limit by a great margin they are still driving safely.
Any motorists who use this excuse are fooling themselves because an average family car travelling at 35 miles per hour will need an extra 21 feet to stop compared to one travelling at 30mph. Also, if you hit a cyclist or pedestrian at 35mph rather than 30mph, the force of the impact increases by more than a third. Even at 33 miles per hour, a vehicle has 10 per cent more momentum that a vehicle travelling at 30mph. You may think of it as ‘only’ three miles per hour, but it actually equates to a ton and a half of metal hitting a human body at 15mph! Remember that the next time you get behind the wheel.
The reason why 60 of the 68 sites across the Humberside area where we use mobile safety cameras to reduce speed are in 30 and 40 mile per hours zones is simple – this is where most collisions occur, particularly those that result in serious injury or loss of life.
It is important that motorists recognise the potential consequences of driving even just a couple of miles over the speed limit because I am sure no-one would want the death or serious injury of a pedestrian or cyclist on their conscience for the rest of their lives. If you break the speed limit, you break the law and you have to face the possible consequences.
Michael Harris, Project Manager, Humberside Safety Camera Partnership.
