Skip to main content

Danish study shows higher speed limits are safer

A two-year experiment by the Danish road directorate shows accidents have fallen on single-carriageway rural roads and motorways where the speed limit was raised. Since the speed limit on some stretches of two-way rural roads was increased from 80 to 90 km/h, accidents have decreased due to a reduction in the speed differential between the slowest and fastest cars, resulting in less overtaking. The slowest drivers have increased their speeds, but the fastest 15 per cent drive one km/h slower on average
February 25, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
A two-year experiment by the 1845 Danish Road Directorate shows accidents have fallen on single-carriageway rural roads and motorways where the speed limit was raised.

Since the speed limit on some stretches of two-way rural roads was increased from 80 to 90 km/h, accidents have decreased due to a reduction in the speed differential between the slowest and fastest cars, resulting in less overtaking.  The slowest drivers have increased their speeds, but the fastest 15 per cent drive one km/h slower on average, despite the higher limit. While the average speed remains similar to before, the speeds are more homogeneous on the roads in question.

The police were initially sceptical of the move, fearing that people would drive even faster, but they have now changed their minds.  As Erik Mather, a senior Danish traffic police officer admitted, "The police are perhaps a little biased on this issue, but we've had to completely change our view now that the experiment has gone on for two years."

On sections of motorway where the speed limit was raised from 110 to 130 km/h nine years ago, fatalities also decreased.

Alliance of British Drivers (ABD) joint chairman Brian Gregory comments, "These findings vindicate what the ABD has been saying for years, that raising unreasonably low speed limits improves road safety by reducing speed differentials and driver frustration.  They also confirm decades of research from the USA and UK on the setting of speed limits.  It is now time for the Government to push ahead with raising the motorway speed limit to 80 mph.  It must also change its guidance to local authorities on setting speed limits, so that they are once again set at a level that commands the respect of drivers.  This means reinstating the 85th percentile principle - setting limits that 85 percent of drivers would not wish to exceed.  Those who have argued that lower speed limits improve safety have been proved wrong."

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Enforcement a key part of the road safety solution
    January 31, 2012
    The Partnership for Advancing Road Safety is a new organisation set up in the US to push the national debate on speed and intersection safety, something which hitherto has been absent. Here, executive director David Kelly explains the organisation's work. With moves to address drink/drug driving and the wearing of seatbelts starting to prove successful in the US, the use of inappropriate speed and poor driving at intersections have become responsible for a proportionately greater number of the deaths and in
  • Innermost thoughts
    February 27, 2012
    At risk of being accused of going on like a broken record (and, perhaps, mystifying those readers of the post-vinyl generation with my choice of expression), I want to come back to... well, everything but the technology.
  • Europe’s road safety record suffers as austerity bites hard, traffic police chiefs are told at TISPOL 2017
    March 7, 2018
    Europe’s leading traffic police chiefs are struggling with the challenge of how best to manage the region’s road network in an era of austerity. Things are changing fast, and not for the better, reports Geoff Hadwick. Europe’s road safety record is under threat. Police budgets are being slashed, staff numbers are falling and a long-term trend towards ever-fewer road deaths has ground to a halt. The line on the graph has flat-lined. Does Europe’s road network face a far more dangerous future? Lower and
  • UK's Hindhead tunnel pushes the boundaries of traffic management
    January 23, 2012
    The new Hindhead Tunnel is the first in the UK to use radar-based incident detection. Paul Arnold, project manager with the Highways Agency, talks about the project. The comparatively remote location of the A3 Hindhead Tunnel has resulted in it becoming one of the most sophisticated in the UK in terms of monitoring and control systems, according to Paul Arnold, project manager for the Highways Agency (HA), which manages strategic roads in England and Wales. It is the first tunnel in the UK to use radar for