It is generally acknowledged that the number and severity of road accidents increase with increasing driving speeds. Several studies based mainly on studies of the effects of changes in speed limits on rural roads show that as the mean speed increases by 1 km/h, the number of injury accidents increases by approximately 3 percent. Studies of the effects of the speed of a single vehicle on its accident risk are less numerous and not particularly well known. In recent years, however, several such new studies have been published. In this paper the results of these studies are applied to the speeds on Finnish rural main roads to calculate how speeding offences in different speed categories contribute to road accidents. It is concluded that a large number of minor speeding offences (e.g. less than 10 to 20 km/h over the limit) cause as much or more accidents than a smaller number of greater offences. For the covering abstract see ITRD E136183.
Abstract