On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 19:50:51 UTC, "David Taylor"
OK, serious answer.
There is no such thing as a "safe" bit of driving or a "dangerous" one. There are only relative values, the most important of which, for this purpose, is probably "safety relative to what society considers acceptable". I think society has every right not to allow drivers whose safety level is unacceptable to use its (society's) roads. The unacceptable safety level is not "cannot drive at all without crashing and dying" - it's considerably higher than that.
So the whole question comes down to "if speed limits were removed, would the number of drivers who are more dangerous than society deems acceptable increase, decrease or stay the same?" Now, I don't think anyonegets safer by driving faster. The drop in safety will range from negligable (65 instead of 60, good visibility, dry day, car in good nick, alert driver) to enormous (95 instead of 60, fog, rain, tyres on limit, sleepy driver) but overall things will get less safe.
I take a pragmatic approach. I think limits should be kept (to weed out the idiots) but substantially increased (because what was appropriate for a Jaguar 3.8 is not appropriate for a Focus 1.6). I'd go for 90 on dual carriageways, 80 on single, 60 for HGV's, all minus ten for rain.
Ian
