“Speeding is a crime that is rampant in New York City. Our infrastructure has been designed and re-designed for the past fifty years to make this crime easier to commit. T.A. would like to see measures taken to greatly reduce the design speed of NYC streets, better enforce existing speed limits, and reduce speed limits.” Read the full report from Transport Alternatives
“The primary purpose of our highway system is mobility, not safety. If it were the latter, we would set speed limits much lower.”…. Prof. Patricia Waller of the University of Michigan Transport Research Institute (UMTRI) gave this address – ‘Speed Limits: How should they be determined’ – to the Sydney Chapter of the Australian College of Road Safety (ACRS) in September 2001.
U.K. speed cameras are cutting crash figures. Read this report from the BBC.
In May 2004, the U.K. Parliament issued a Postnote document, specifically on speed cameras — read it here.
On the other hand, the U.K. ‘Autocar magazine and the RAC Foundation report that speed cameras may cost more crashes and casualties—full report (November 2003).
Another British website explores the arguments that speed cameras are no more than revenue earners for the Government and the police. Click here to view the conclusions.
The first speed cameras in Great Britain were installed in West London in 1992. Britain has 72,000 speed-related road accidents each year, resulting in 1,100 deaths and 12,600 serious injuries. Click here to read this February 2003 report from RoSPA.
On the subject of speed cameras, an independent expert evaluation of fixed speed cameras in NSW, Australia, has produced dramatic evidence of their life-saving and other road safety benefits. Full article.
The European Transport Safety Council issued a press release in June 2002 about the ‘Safer Cities Conference’ in Brussels, where urban speed limits were a key topic.
‘Speed Management In Urban Areas,’ an exciting report from the Danish Road Directorate, 1999.
Still, they invented a gas pedal in Denmark that fights back! Try to exceed the urban limit in a car fitted with this device, and you’ll feel like someone has put a brick under the pedal. INFATI is an Intelligent Speed Adaptation development project. Read more. They also have a web page that shows the equivalent fall distances from a building to show the severity of impact when vehicles hit pedestrians at various speeds. Read more. (To convert kilometers per hour – km/h – to mph, divide the figure by eight and multiply the result by 5)
Regarding roadway safety, drivers’ social skills are as essential as their mechanical abilities, says Canadian driver education expert Dan Keegan. Read more.
Travelling Speed and the Risk of Crash Involvement on Rural Roads, a report from Adelaide University Road Accident Research Unit (RARU)
Travelling Speed and the Risk of Crash Involvement on Urban Roads, a report from Adelaide University Road Accident Research Unit (RARU)
Report: The Effects of Crosswalk Markings on Vehicle Speeds in Maryland, Virginia, and Arizona. U.S. Department of Transport, Federal Highway Division. (PDF)
In crashes of vehicles with pedestrians, vehicle speed is critical. Accidents with high speed are always catastrophic for pedestrians. The sort of injuries or fatalities that pedestrians suffer depends on the vehicle’s speed and the shape of the vehicle’s front. Accident statistics show that 50km/h (31mph) is the limiting speed where a pedestrian can still survive a crash with a vehicle. If a car travels at 30km/h (19mph) when it crashes with a pedestrian, there is a high chance that the pedestrian will survive the crash and may suffer only a light injury. ‘Analysis of Road Accidents on Pedestrian Crossings Caused by Speeding,’ by Jitka Rokytova and Michal Sklenar, of the Centrum dopravniho vyzkumu (CDV) — Transport Research Centre — Brno, Czech Republic.