The current national speed limit for lorries is 40 mph, but recently there has been questions raised about the danger of cars being able to go 20 mph faster on single carriageways. The danger of this is often that drivers want to overtake lorries which causes a large amount of collisions. They plan to increase the limit of HGVs by 10mph making it only a 10mph gap between them and cars, this change will also help other things such as cut fuel bills and reduce carbon emissions.
This issue becomes as particular interest to Scotland as its smaller area has many single carriageway roads and large amount of traffic compared to other places within the UK, this of course is a recipe for more accidents. Transport Scotland published statistics that if lorries where to be increased the speed limit of 10mph it would cut accidents by up to 18% and also stop vehicle traffic and cut from an average of 18 vehicles down to a low of just 6. As well as these statistics if lorries could increase their speed it would increase productivity.
Despite all the good factors of the increase there is also people that disagree. One of the main opposing forces of this debate is Sustrans the sustainable transport lobby group they strongly disagree as they feel it would pose an increased risk of accidents to cyclists with Jason Torrance, the charities police director saying “This decision will only make our roads more dangerous for those at the greatest risk.” However this isn’t the common belief as many people become irritated at the low speed of lorries and attempt to make risky overtakes as they become impatient causing hundreds of accidents a year, but there is no telling what would happen if they were to make this increase. Would it improve safety? Or increase accidents related to the most vulnerable, cyclists?