Speed limit petition

Speed limit petition

With a grand total of 75,886 signatures, the Motor Sport / Motoring News petition was handed by Earl Howe to Mrs Lynda Chalker, Minister of State for Transport, a few days before Christmas. The petition calls for an upward revision of speed limits on Britain’s motorway system, and should have coincided with the result of a survey which Mrs Chalker had carried out into the whole matter of speed limits in Britain.

Mrs Chalker was gracious in accepting the petition, but stressed that her prime concern was road safety, and reducing the toll of deaths and injuries. We reminded her that motorways are the safest roads to travel on, and that the bunching that the 70 mph limit encourages is dangerous in itself, so now we can only wait and hope.

We believe that the timing of the petition was right, and that there is a stronger possibility of having the motorway limits raised under this administration than any other in the past 18 years, so if nothing comes of the effort we could be stuck with the 70 mph limit for generations to come. Since Mrs Barbara Castle’s administration confumed the 70 mph limit Britain’s motorway system has increased from 600 miles to more than 1,700 miles, much of it to a high standard where 70 mph can be positively pedestrian for much of the time.

In the photograph Mrs Chalker accepts the petition from Earl Howe. On the right is Michael Cotton, managing editor of Motor Sport, on the left Gordon Cruickshank (Assistant Editor), and David Tremayne, Editor of Motoring News.