This article strongly criticises measures in the UK to reduce the speeds of road vehicles, even though the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) currently claims that speed causes somewhere between one third and two thirds of all road accidents in the UK. Its authors consider that inappropriate speed, not speed itself, is the problem. They consider misguided the proposition that roads can be made safer only by closely monitoring and regulating all motorised road users. In their view, this approach leads to increasingly repressive and restrictive regulations, almost all of which are able to raise considerable revenue. They state that there is no collection, collation, or analysis of accurate UK road accident causation data. The most recent exhaustive study on this topic was TRL Report 323, which analysed in detail the factors contributing to nearly 2800 accidents. This report concluded that 'excessive speed' represented only 7% of definite contributory factors, and that it was a definite cause in only 4.3%; the authors are concerned that the DETR is not publicising its findings. Similar results were obtained in another British study. The article examines the effects of speed in some detail. It also argues that some effective casualty reduction measures, such as better traffic engineering at bends and junctions, are not implemented sufficiently.
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