BBC Radio 2, Jeremy Vine show, Tuesday 8 August 2006.
Interview by Clive Anderson of Steve Ladyman and Paul Smith about the Department for transport guidelines and review of rural speed limits.
Clive
Hello, I am Clive Anderson on the second day of this spell, pretending to be Jeremy Vine and they said it couldn’t last.
On the program today, should we go slower on country roads. A government review says lives could be saved if speed limits were cut from sixty to fifty, or even forty miles an hour.
Don’t be slow to give us your views. You can call us on 0500 288 291, or email
Vine@BBC.co.uk, text line 88291
News
The government is ordering a review of speed limits on thousands of roads in rural areas. It expected to lead to the existing sixty mile an hour limit being reduced in many places.
Clive
Yes this is Clive Anderson, welcome back to the Jeremy Vine show. Ah now, speed limits on rural roads could be cut from 60mph to 40 in an attempt to improve road safety.
In a major overhaul of road speed limits the government has instructed councils to review speed limits on all single and dual carriageway roads.
Sixty four percent of all road deaths occur on rural roads, so ministers are hoping that reduction in the speed limits on them will lead to fewer deaths.
In some urban areas where the risk to pedestrians and cyclist is low, speed limits could be raised to 30 or 40mph, but some motoring groups say that a reduction in speed limit is not the way to improve road safety and will in fact lead to more accidents. They argue that what is needed is better education for drivers.
So should the speed limit on rural roads be cut to forty miles an hour, err forty miles an hour in many areas.
I am joined by Steven Ladyman, MP, the minister of state for transport from the department of transport.
Um, Mr Ladyman your instructing councils to do a review err, aren’t they doing that on a regular basis anyway about every stretch of road.
Ladyman
Well they do have the power to review speed limits whenever they want, but, um, we haven’t revised the guidance for some time so they are not necessarily using a consistent set of criteria.
What I want is to end up with in the right speed limit for each particular road and I want it to be based on, err, consistent guide lines that um drivers will come to recognise and accept as err not being arbitrary and has put the right speed limit in place and therefore they’ll be more inclined to err obey the speed limit.
Clive
So is there a err a sort of general point though that err open road country roads used to be safe because there weren’t very many cars on it and now they, they're err, there getting almost as busy as any other road.
Ladyman
Well, there’s all sorts of reasons why it might be necessary to change speed limits on any particular road and, um and bear in mind we are asking them to review all local authority roads, not just rural roads. There’ll be other local authority roads that need to be reviewed as well over the next few years. ah there is also the fact that engineering may have taken place on a particular road and it might now, it may now be possible to increase the speed limit on that road, err equally it may be that the speed limit needs to be cut as a result of additional err traffic on a particular err road, and it may be they need to look at engineering works or other traffic management measurement methods to reduce speed rather than err err deal, trying to deal with the safety problem through speed limits.
Clive
So there is nothing special at the moment, this is just your encouraging err the councils to err keep looking at this um as frequently and as carefully as possible.
Ladyman
Well err, err except that I’ve asked them to carry out a complete review of all roads over the next few years and that’s part of trying to establish a deal with motorists where err we demonstrate to the motorists that we are not just arbitrarily setting speed limits, that we are actually using some sort of objective criteria based on casualty rates on a particular road, flow of traffic on a particular and indeed the speed that cars are already travelling on a particular road, and when the motorist can see that, that we are taking a sensible attitude to these issues, that we are prepared to put speed limits up and down, according to the real need on a particular road we hope that the err motorists will err then strike a deal with us and err stick more closely to the speed limit.
Clive
Cos the suspicious motorist often thinks when it a nice open stretch of road, err the limit is kept deliberately low so its err tempting to go to fast and your going to shove up a camera and get a lot of money out of err speeding offences.
Ladyman
Well cameras can only go where there are or there is already a ah, ah, ah, ah, ah history of accidents and of course the cameras have to be very visible now, um you know we issued new guidance to make sure you will always be able to see the camera, you’ll always be able to see the err notice of the speed limit in the same view of the camera so that you’ll always know what the speed limit is when you go past a camera.
So I hope motorists will come to understand as well that, that we are trying more and more to be err, to, to be careful about making sure that cameras are a positive err, err measure for err for safety and that nobody can take the view that err to, to raise revenue.
Clive
While I am quibbling about this um speed limits are quite a blunt instrument. It is quite easy to say this is the limit and anyone goes above it, but, but subtler things like a stupid overtaking manoeuvre or not slowing down when you come to a corner, where you do need to go much slower. That’s something that probably something that requires more effort by way of, I don’t know, education or being subtler with how you approach the motorist.
Ladyman.
That, yea absolutely right, and that’s why I am not suggesting this review of speed limits is the only thing that needs to be done and nor should speed limits be the only tool in the councils armoury for making a road safer.
Ideally what I would like to see, err are what are called “self explaining roads”, in other words roads are engineered and sign posted in such that err that the motorist can always understand what the err, err next risk factor is and where the next danger point is and err more effectively adjust there speed for the sensible speed for that road without having to be told to do it.
Clive
All right, so you can see there is a village coming up, or a school, or old people crossing, something like that.
Ladyman - Exactly.
Clive
Let me just go to Paul Smith who’s founder of SafeSpeed, a campaign group ah err down the line, so are you there Paul.
Paul Smith - Good afternoon Clive
Clive
Good afternoon, are you happy with this that we should be lowering speed limits on um stretches of rural road where there’s a danger of accidents.
Paul
I’m far from happy with the guidelines that the Department for Transport has issued. The guidelines that they have issued to local authorities, if local authorities follow them there’ll be a ratcheting down of speed limit all over the country.
Now it perfectly sensible to have speed limits that are appropriate to the road environment, but the ratcheting down process is a deskilling process. It fails to value the parts of the road safety system that are already working well and concentrates on a particular aspect, giving it an excessive sense of importance.
Speed limits are useful to road safety, but they shouldn’t be the central part, they shouldn’t be an obsession, we don’t want drivers concentrating on the speed limit, we want drivers concentrating on the road ahead.
The Department for Transport is institutionally unable to understand the process of safe driving at the moment. We need them to concentrate on the quality of drivers, the skills that we bring to the task, the attitudes that we bring to the task, the sense of responsibility that we bring to the task. The speed limit review is a move in the wrong direction. It's going to promote lower skills, worse attitudes, and it removes the responsibility for choosing a safe and appropriate speed from drivers toward the local authority. It's a deadly mistake
Clive
Well deadly is strong word, but if I understand what you are saying, err on a given stretch of road, or as many roads as possible you would allow the motorist to make the decision as to whether to go fast, or slow, um but how are you going to make sure that they do it safely, what would be your method for, for encouraging that.
Paul
Well I would certainly like to see improved roads policing, but lets make no mistake about this, you can’t go from point A to point B without making continuous decision about the speed you are driving at. Every time you come to a hazard you have to slow down, every time you come to traffic you have to slow down, every time you come to anything that causes a risk you have to slow down, its absolutely central to the process of safe driving. We've got thirty two million licensed drivers on the roads, maybe even more. We've got two hundred thousand injury accident in a year. Now a simple division tells you that the average driver goes a hundred and fifty years before he causes an injury accident.
The Department for Transport is failing to look at the parts of the system that work. That hundred and fifty years where people are successfully avoiding conflict every second that they are driving, we have to value that more and less um emphasis on the speed limit.
Clive
Let me go back to Steve Ladyman, some, some pointed criticisms of you there, rated from deadly, or institutionally unable to understand the safe, safe driving, are you putting too much, err dealing with this process as well , but aren’t you also putting too much emphasis on the speed limit as a way of solving accident problems.
Ladyman.
Well I’ve just made it very clear that I don’t see speed limits as being the only err tool that need to be used to make roads safer.
Frankly I don’t take SafeSpeed’s view very seriously. They’re not um err what I regard as a competent road safety organisation. The ones that are, like the AA, the RAC, seem to’ve welcomed this review.
SafeSpeed’s view seems to be that we should a sort of anarchic view of speed limits, with drivers going at whatever speed err they want. Now I suspect that ninety nine percent of us out there see driver behaving like idiots all the time. I would not trust these drivers to um moderate their own speed if there wasn’t a speed limits in place and proper enforcement going on, um it simply beggars belief that anybody can believe that we should sort of have a hands off approach to speed limits on our roads.
Clive
Now hands off sounds a bit dangerous, but the, the most of us if we, even if we stray above a speed limit we think we are doing it within limits and were doing it safely, its these other, these other characters we see driving around, they're the ones responsible, err responsible for accidents and irresponsible in their driving.
Err is there a way of identifying bad driving, which is a set of criteria which is just not speed, but takes into account all the other um circumstances of the road at the time.
Ladyman
Well one, one of the new things our new guidance is suggesting to local authorities is that they should base their new speed limits on the speed of cars on a particular road at the moment, so they should do some monitoring of that speed, and one of the things that would seem to me to indicate the need for a speed limit to be increased on a particular stretch of road is if there’s already examples, you know there’s a significant level of speeding on that road, but there are no accidents, that might indicate that, that is a road where actually you um could actually increase the speed limit and that’s one of the things we say that local authorities should be looking out for.
Equally they should be basing their speed limit on broadly speaking the speeds that cars are already travelling on a particular road, so if most motorists are going well below the current speed limit, err that would indicate probably that the current speed limit is too high and that most motorists, the sensible are already recognising the risks on that road and what we need to do then is to use the speed limit to control the nut cases who can’t see err, a risk when it is presented to them on the road and I am afraid there are a lot of them out there, um so we need a mix of mix of education, we need a mix of err engineering and other things err to make it clear what the risks are on a particular road, but we also need speed limits and we need proper enforcement of those speed limits
Clive
Did you suggest that if you were going above the, yet there weren’t any accidents then that might be a mechanism for identifying err an increase in the speed limit on a stretch of road.
Ladyman
Exactly, that is one of the things we say in our report, that local authorities should be looking out for if motorists are already um demonstrating that, tuh, that they believe the road is safe, that a particular road is safe, so that the average speed of cars on the road is quite high and there are no accidents on it, that might indicate that we have set the speed limit too low.
Clive
I am going to keep that in mind for my defence if I am caught driving on the road, I am road testing it for the Ministry of Transport just to prove how safe it could be but, but thank you very much Steve Ladyman and Paul.
COMMENTS.
Mr John Landy ?, The government should concentrate on driver education, not law changing. If they do pepper the countryside with speed cameras people will just carry on doing the same speed until they slow down for a camera.
Ken Dyre ?, from Peterborough says, when is the limit for HGVs going to be increased on country roads. We have better brakes than most cars now.
Charles, from Worthing said, if they lower the speed limit it won’t bother me, I think it will be safer for all drivers and pedestrians.
Chris Handleys says, lowering the speed limit will only increase pollution and increase accidents, as driver will have to be more cautious on rural roads.
Rupert from Oxford says, I think the Government would be better off spending money cutting the grass around the verges than wasting money on this.
Mr Solley from Canterbury, says this idea is not driven by safety, its driven by money. The slower the traffic the more congested the roads, the more drivers will have to pay.
Interview with Barbara Hughes, from Milton Keynes.
Clive - Barbara, hello
Barbara - Good morning
Clive - Good morning, now what do you think of this lowering speed limits on rural roads
Barbara
Well to be honest I think it is a waste of time. I think they should just stay as they are. We've got lower limits as you approach and go through villages and where roads are unsafe they have already got lower limits. ( Clive, hmmmm), um I just think it is a waste of time and I cannot see how it is going to be policed.
Clive
Well I suppose saying they should be left as they are, presumably as the Minister was saying and I was putting these questions and as I was putting these questions, they must be reviewing these things whole time as villages expand, as new junctions come in they can lower or raise the limits as appropriate.
Barbara
Yes I mean, around Milton Keynes in the countryside around here, Oxfordshire, Northampton and Bedfordshire they’ve already lowered a lot of speed limits um and quite often I don’t see the point of why they have done it, apart from it costs money to put signs up, um but I just don’t know how its going to be policed, how its going to be enforced.
They brought in laws about mobile phone usage, but it doesn’t seem to be policed. You can’t keep bringing all these driving laws without them being policed.
Clive
Well I think mobile phones is a difficult one to police because there are lots and lots of people doing it and you can’t have a police officer at the side of every road.
Speed is a bit easier because they can set up cameras and follow people, that’s one of the reasons possibly in favour of it, or against it on the basis it is such an easy thing to clamp down on.
Barbara - I think the way to go is education
Clive
Education !, so after you get your licence you don’t just get it for the rest of your life, you have to have a top-up course.
Barbara
Myself I have taken both the ROSPA and the IAM advanced test, because drive a lot, I do 70,000 miles a year and I know I need to keep on top of that, so I take these advanced tests.
Clive – all right
Barbara – and touch wood, no accidents yet
Clive - Excellent, well that’s as though education seems to be the answer for most things
I’m going to Janet Mc Keckny. What’s your view on this speed limit change
Janet
I’m all for speed restrictions being lowered. I actually live on the main road between Canterbury and Sandwich and it is a village, we’ve got a fifty mile an hour speed restriction at the moment, but nobody polices it, the law is flouted completely all the time.
In December 2004 we had a meeting with the traffic police and the council and highways, and highways told us that because of the history on this road we would probably get a forty mile an hour speed limit.
So what did they do. Last July they put up fifty mile an hour, just little posts with round circles on, fifty miles, and everybody totally ignores it. We haven’t even got the coloured strip of tarmac.
Now I live in Steve Ladyman’s constituency and I would like him to come along this road and sit in my house, because it is appalling. We've got a pavement on the opposite side of the road to the houses, which is too small even to push a pushchair along, that is the width of the pavement. We've go no pavement, no street lights and the traffic races along here because it is a straight piece of road, the only straight piece of road for about five miles before you reach Canterbury.
So of course it just zooms up, overtakes and it is really, really dangerous.
Clive
Well it sounds like you’ve got a good case for a limit on your bit of road if you’ve got the actual minister who is your MP then you should be in the absolute best position to get a change too …
Janet - Well but he totally ignores his constituents, doesn’t he.
Clive
Alright, well we’ve …… , I can’t attack him for ignoring his constituents. I’m hoping he has carried on listening to the discussion after his contribution, he’s aware of a disgruntled constituent and he’ll not be rushing along, proceeding slowly along to your village to look at it in the next couple of days, but thank you very much for calling.
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