What's the speed limit, Mr. Policeman?

At Total Lockout, as practitioners of health and safety, we have a professional duty to keep abreast of best working practices and strive to maintain whole of life learning in this field, both at corporate and personal level. As a paid-up Technical Member of IOSH, I made a commitment to maintain my CPD (Continuous Professional Development).

So when I was recently invited to participate in a program run by Safer Essex Roads Partnership, naturally I jumped at the chance.

Early in the program participants were shown photos of different road scenes and we were asked to state what we thought the speed limit was on that section of road. I scored 1 out of 5 correctly! Being a RoSPA Gold Award Motorcyclist, this was quite alarming for me. All my guesses were 10mph out, sometimes above, sometimes below the correct answer.

Driving at 10mph above the speed limit has serious implications in the event of an accident and can mean the difference between life and death.

What became evident as the program continued was that many of the others on the program also struggled to correctly assess the speed limit. The road ‘furniture’ that is put in place to help us ascertain speed limits has changed greatly over the decades and unless The Highway Code is your regular bed time read, it’s likely that a large proportion of the population are also lacking in knowledge in this area. The presence of street lighting is a big factor, but the siting, shape, size and colour of speed limit signage also has a bearing on the speed limit.

It really is quite remarkable that in the UK we can pass our driving test at 17 years of age, and never be (compulsorily) reassessed again in our entire life. The driving environment continues to evolve, but the one thing which doesn’t change is the Human Factor. Considering the consequences of death on the road, not least the cost to the economy (over ￡30Bn), is it not time to consider regular compulsory reassessment during our lifetimes?

By the end of the program I could confidently assess the correct speed limit with 100% accuracy. A little knowledge can go a long way to a safer life.