Sally Moore, head of the Personal Injury team at Leigh Day & Co has supported claims by road safety charity Brake that a higher speed limit on Britain’s motorways could only lead to more fatalities and has added her voice to those demanding any increase in the speed limit is abandoned.
The call comes in the wake of two motorway collisions which campaigners claim could, in all probability, have been much worse if the speed limit had been higher.
Avon and Somerset police are investigating the cause of the 34-vehicle pile-up on the M5 in which seven people were killed and dozens injured. In Cheshire a lorry fell from a bridge onto the M56 motorway below, the lorry driver was killed and two people were treated in hospital after cars collided with the stricken vehicle.
Ellen Booth, Brake’s campaigns officer, said: “We don’t yet know what exactly caused the [M5] crash and how significant speed was as an issue. But we do know that higher speed limits mean higher average speeds. And the faster people are travelling when they are involved in a collision, the more likely it is that they will die.”
A full impact assessment of the proposed 10mph increase in the speed limit on motorways has yet to be carried out, however, initial estimates from the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) suggest that the change would lead to a 1% rise in all road deaths, meaning 18 more fatalities based on the nearly 1,850 people killed during 2010.
Sally Moore said:
“It makes no sense whatsoever that lives will be lost to ensure that people can get where they want to get to faster. There can be no economic benefit to balance out the death of a loved one.
“Whilst the full details of what caused the crash on the M5 and the M56 are as yet unknown, it is a sobering reminder of why safety is not a luxury.”