Skip to main content

FTA supports A9 HGV speed limit trial

The Freight Transport Association (FTA) has given its support to the HGV speed limit trial which commences on the A9 in Scotland on Tuesday 28 October. The pilot project on the A9 will raise the speed limit on the single carriageway sections between Perth and Inverness from 40 to 50mph for heavy goods vehicles which have a laden weight exceeding 7.5 tonnes. The trial, which will last 36 months and is to be introduced at the same time as a new average speed camera system, is aimed at improving the opera
October 10, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
The 6983 Freight Transport Association (FTA) has given its support to the HGV speed limit trial which commences on the A9 in Scotland on Tuesday 28 October.
 
The pilot project on the A9 will raise the speed limit on the single carriageway sections between Perth and Inverness from 40 to 50mph for heavy goods vehicles which have a laden weight exceeding 7.5 tonnes.  The trial, which will last 36 months and is to be introduced at the same time as a new average speed camera system, is aimed at improving the operational performance of the route.
 
Malcolm Bingham, FTA’s Head of Road Network Management Policy, said: “FTA is in full support of the 50mph speed limit trial for HGVs on the A9 and we look forward to its introduction on 28 October.  We welcome the opportunity for such a trial as we believe the current differential in speed limits between HGVs and other vehicles increases the road safety risk.  This trial will provide some much needed evidence to help determine if there are any advantages, on safety grounds, in setting the speed limit of an HGV to 50mph."
 
The A9 remains one of Scotland's most important links. The 2112 Scottish Government is committed to dualling the route between Perth and Inverness by 2025 and the pilot is part of wider engineering, enforcement and education measures being delivered in advance of the dualling programme.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Mexico City seeks solutions to improve air quality
    December 6, 2017
    David Crawford ponders prospects for one of the world’s most congested and polluted cities. In 1992, the United Nations named Mexico City as the world’s most polluted urban centre. In the first half of 2016, following the updating of pollution alert limits to meet international standards, Mexico recorded 115 days where ozone concentrations exceeded the acute exposure health limit.
  • HGV blind spot technology tested to improve road safety
    April 24, 2014
    A new project funded by the UK’s Transport for London (TfL) will independently test blind spot safety technology, which can be fitted to Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) to help reduce the risk of collisions between HGVs, pedestrians and cyclists. One of TfL's top priorities is to reduce by 40 per cent the number of people killed or seriously injured on London's roads by 2020. Recently, the Mayor and TfL published six commitments which, working with a range of partners, are guiding initiatives to deliver thi
  • APA supports automated work zone speed enforcement
    July 17, 2015
    A trade association representing the highway construction industry strongly supports automated enforcement of speed limits in work zones and Maryland's experience with a similarly designed program has had very good results, the association head has told a joint Pennsylvania House and Senate committee. According to PennDOT, 24 people were killed in work-zone crashes in 2014, eight more than in 2013. Additionally, there were 1,841 crashes in work zones last year, a slight decrease from the 1,851 crashes
  • Progressing work zone safety systems
    February 1, 2012
    David Crawford investigates progress in a key safety area - work zones. Highway construction zone safety is taken seriously enough in the US to merit a special spring National Work Zone Awareness Week, which in 2010 ran from 19-23 April. Headed by the US Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), this aims to reduce an annual toll of work zone deaths - 720 in 2008 (an average of one every 10 hours) with more than 40,000 traffic injuries (an average of one every 13 minutes).