marcus@pyuxt.UUCP (M. G. Hand) (06/23/84)
>>The German drivers are much better disciplined >>in high speed driving. And still the death rate on the autobahn is >>much worse than anything here. >When the limit was >removed, the fatality rate dropped by 10%. So if you think it was a blood >bath during your experience, it was significantly worse with the speed limit >in force. The British had the same result from raising the motorway speed >limit from 55 mph to 70 mph in '76. Actually, the speed limit in Britain was never 55 mph. However, it was reduced to 50 mph for ALL roads (unless otherwise further limited) during the oil crisis of late 73/early 74. This limitation only lasted a few weeks though, (and everybody was amazed at their reduced fuel consumption and dismayed at the time it took to get anywhere) and was soon moderated to 70mph for Motorway class roads, 60 mph for trunk routes and dual carriage ways (ie roads with some kind of median or central crash barrier) and 50 mph for all other roads. This actually stayed in effect for about a year although everybody quickly forgot that it was still supposedly in force. I've no idea what happenned to the accident statistics at the time but you should bear the following in mind when interpretting them: 1. the government was trying to discourage people from driving very strongly (they changed the insurance laws to allow people to pay for car pooling without the driver becoming one who uses his car "for business purposes") 2. the price of gas rocketted (like doubled overnight) 3. everyone was attempting to drive very smoothly and lightly to conserve gas, so there is a strong possibility that they were paying more attention to the road and what was ahead of them. 4. they were driving slower and had more time to react 5. on the other side of the coin they were frustrated by the speed limit, the arabs and the governments apparent impotence Marcus Hand (pyuxt!marcus)