I’ve just got back from a camping trip in Derbyshire. It’s home to some fantastic roads including the well-known Cat and Fiddle – well known for having the highest recorded accident rate in the UK. I deliberately refrain however from the phrase “most dangerous road in the UK”; the Cat and Fiddle, like any road, can be driven quite safely. Characteristically, it is like many roads in the region, with a mixture of tight bends, other vehicles and other hazards, but also featuring straight sections and in some places, fair views of the road ahead.
The thing that struck me, not having been to the region for a while, was the almost scatter gun approach to road safety. The sheer mass of road now red-ringed to 50 MPH; the mass application of no-overtaking areas; ridiculously densely-placed warning signs; speed camera vans placed on straight sections, not to catch those flying dangerously into a corner, but those creeping up to 56 while accelerating onto a straight.
This all creates several problems based on the differing behavioural reactions of different drivers.
There are drivers that, left to their own devices, would quite happily slow down for a village, school, any other hazard. These drivers will adhere to the speed limit if they can clearly see the reason for it. Problem is, when you force these people to do 50MPH constantly regardless of whether there is a hazard or not, they soon get frustrated. Inevitably, some eventually put their foot down to go faster than they would if the whole thing was just National Speed Limit. The same behaviour pattern is even more disasterous when applied to a lengthy overtaking restriction.
Secondly, we have drivers who are conditioned to believe that doing the speed limit constantly is the right way to “be safe”. They are, as I would say, a “speed limit drone”. Unfortunately, while the speed limit might be too low for the straights, it’s too high for some corners. Inevitably, they are caught out by assuming the speed limit will keep them safe.
Finally, from the perspective of an advanced driver, doing the safe speed around corners means they end up with the aforementioned speed limit drone right up behind them. As the straight opens up, there’s progress to be made… but an over-conservative speed limit prevents this. Reality is, if you removed the speed limit completely, these guys would be able to concentrate on purely doing the safe speed.
This all really points to the problem: a speed limit is an attempt to set a blanket safe speed for a section of road. Given that we are taught to accept this, the vast majority of drivers of course do not learn how to actually gauge the safe speed from the road itself. Due to this and the behaviours above, the accident rates do not fall. All the while we’ve got misguided campaigners (not police, not advanced drivers – generally people with little driving acumen and often themselves falling into the speed limit drone category) convincing the government that the best way to prevent all accidents is to lower the speed limit everywhere to 20MPH.
So where do you stop? If 50 isn’t working, should we make the entire of Derbyshire a 40? How about a 30? Why don’t we just stop driving entirely?
Alternatively, we could stop dodging the point – the point that driver education and driving standards are the single, fundamental problem.
…but of course, we couldn’t make the driving test harder, could we? I mean, it’s everyone’s human right to drive, right?