The Psychological Effect of Speed Limits.
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ALL branches of the passenger road-transport industry are giving strong support to the contention that the limitation to 30 m.p.h. of the speed of heavy pneumatic-tyred passenger vehicles, under the terms of the Road Traffic Bill, is unnecessary and unwise. In the main, the arguments which have been advanced have been based on a comparison between the relative safety, from a mechanical point of view, of private cars and motor coaches and buses, supported by the plea that to limit the speed of a popular type of vehicle will merely tend to slow the normal traffic stream and result in considerable overtaking with its consequent dangers to all road users.
There is, however, one other aspect to which it is as well to direct attention. In these days of cheap motorcars and motorcycles, coupled with easy hire-purchase arrangements, many drivers, particularly those engaged on coaching tours, whose wages are augmented by not inconsiderable gratuities, run their own machines of these types. There is, admittedly, a great difference between driving for a livelihood and for pleasure, but the psychological approach to each class of work may well be the same, whilst it must not be forgotten that, in some cases, drivers actually use motorcycles for journeying beween their homes and their work. To ask these men to adapt themselves to different sets of circumstances in the space of a few hours is to increase their responsibility and, with traffic conditions in their present complex state, this is certainly not a desirable thing. to do.
The primary task of the driver of a publicservice vehicle should be to control his vehicle, and any factor which tends to distract him from this important work reduces his alertness of mind. An insistence upon safe driving is Imperative, but safe driving and speed limitations are not necessarily correlated, as experience is showing daily.