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156 
EDUCATION'S THE ANSWER
Page 20
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Since the dawn of motoring, politicians have been obsessed with speed limits. Politically and legally they are important; logically and morally they are nonsense.
While the government claims that such limits save lives, a recent official report on the subject shows how widely they are flouted (CM4-10 July).
Common sense indicates that the lower a limit is set, the greater will be the numbers ignoring it. Over half the lorries reported upon exceeded the urban limit.
Government television advertising seeks to prove that a vehicle having to make an emergency stop would have a better chance of not hitting anything if it were travelling slower. Undoubtedly true, if like is compared with like.
But urban limits apply equally to riders of mopeds as they do to drivers of 44-tonners, even though the braking distances for such widely disparate vehicles will differ markedly even in identical conditions.
A sadly all-too-frequent comment by coroners reporting on fatal road crashes is that drivers faced with an obstruction in the road instinctively swerved rather than braked, even where it took them into the path of an innocent third party.
Education is the answer, not greater enforcement of arbitrary limits.
Anthony 0 Phillips, Salisbury, Wilts.