An understanding of the causes of road collisions is essential in formulating strategies for reducing their incidence. Speed is clearly implicated in a proportion of the collisions that occur on our roads, but it is important to understand how large this proportion is, and under what circumstances drivers make inappropriate speed choices, in order to generate suitable policy responses. This project provides a unique insight into the range and diversity of collisions of all injury severity (fatal, serious, slight and no injury) which are attributed to speed, both excessive and inappropriate. The project addresses the following research questions: How many collisions are caused by inappropriate or excessive speed? What collision types are disproportionately speed related? If excessive speed is known, how much greater is it than the speed limit? If inappropriate speed is known, how did it compare to the posted speed limit? Why was it inappropriate? What groups of drivers/riders are most commonly associated with speed-related collisions? What other driver/rider behaviours are associated with speed-related collisions? How does speed choice relate to the road environment? Do some road environments appear to encourage higher speeds? Why are some collisions, such as those relating to the loss of control of a vehicle, not also identified as being speed related? (Author/publisher) This report may be accessed by Internet users at http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/research/rsrr/theme5/
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