Ubik

Heard a program last night on the world service, the state of Montana tried an experiment and scrapped speed restrictions for a few years. They went from 55mph limit to anything you please.

The policeman / council official said that they noticed no difference in accidents or fatalities during this time. After a few years they put limits back but this time 75mph, again no difference in the number of accidents.

They did mention that car clubs were comming down and blasting down their highways but that it was mainly at night and away from populated areas.


There were a couple of funny bits, the BBC correspondent took his driving test. The examinier told him for some people (you can be on the road at 15 years old!) its hard to test them as in some cases you have to drive three hours from their farm to get to the closest traffic light.

I had heard Montana was vast but bloody hell, three hours to the nearest red light??

JackClark

We got stopped doing 90 in Montana earlier this year. Told us to slow down a bit

hedgehog

As I recall, though I might be wrong, this wasn't a decision to scrap the limits there was actually some consititutional error which made their limits illegal. It took them several years to resolve this situation and in that time they had no limits outside of towns.

When this was made public the greens went nuts predicting bodies piling up at the side of every road but, in truth, fatalities didn't increase at all and I have seen some research which indicated that accidents actually feel.

As also pointed out many people in the state, and from out of state, actually made the effort to visit or buy fast cars just so they could drive fast in Montana so there was some pretty serious hardware going as fast as it could through the state and yet accidents didn't increase. It certainly wasn't the case that there was no limit but everyone drove at 30mph. It sort of shoots down the green and PC brigade trying to sell us "speed kills" in the UK. Even the fact that our own motorways, our fastest roads, are also our safest roads puts paid to any hint that there is a correlation between speed and accidents.

So why are there all these controls on motorists? Oh yeah, in truth control of your every movement is the ultimate aim of the greens and your government, the ultimate Stalinist dream is about to be enacted in the UK.

Andrew Dixon

Perhaps this has got something to do with the fact that the roads are pretty quiet there most of the time. This would mean that it is far safer to drive flat out?

Can you imagine if motorway speed limits were abolished here? I am pretty sure that there would be a rise in accidents.

ajm

I'm not totally convinced of that. Most motorways seem to have a self limiting factor where traffic settles to a speed that is safe for the conditions and the volume of traffic. Very rarely is a motorway clear enough to do silly speeds, and when it is that clear there is very little to hit, so the risk stays the same.

Leslie

Most of those who want to drive faster settle at about 85-90 mph and thats probably what the motorways would average out at. People would only really be able to do 3 figure speeds in safety if the motorway was pretty well empty. Its the high relative speeds where the danger would lie if the slower drivers were not expecting it.

Les

Ubik

Thats what the local Police men were saying, people go at a speed they are comfortable with. From their experiance they said that it was the drink driver and the driver who did not take other people into consideration who were the problem.

An interesting program well worth listening to if it pops up again.

gareth123

Weird, even when Montana had 'reasonable and prudent' as it's daytime speed limit, there was still a 55 limit at night. IIRC this was all changed in the late 90s to regular speed limits.