55 MPH Speed Limits?

We have seen in the media lately, that the Green Party are proposing a reduction of motorway speed limits to 55 miles per hour. Firstly, this is not a political post! So with that out of the way, let's have a little dive in to this from a transport company perspective.

The Green Party are proposing a reduction of motorway speed limits, to both improve safety and apparently improve fuel efficiency, therefore reducing emissions. On the safety aspect, there are clearly safety issues on motorways. These are not helped by the insane removal of hard shoulders and the so called Smart Motorway system. However, if we set that aside, vehicles have never actually been safer. Having witnessed a lot of crazy driving on the motorways over the years, we would counter that it is certain drivers that are the main issue, not speeds or vehicles. That said, safety does need to be looked at, so we have some common ground there.

There is a lot of data that suggests that the most fuel efficient speed to drive modern engines is between 55 and 65 mph, with 60 being the optimum. Now, this probably varies from vehicle to vehicle and engine to engine; however it shows that figures used by politicians often seem to be cherry picked to suit what ever agenda is up for discussion. Given the cost of our fuel bill, we try to operate at efficient levels anyway!

Economically, we struggle to make sense of this proposal. As we do with an increasing number of political suggestions and government implementations. The cost to the economy of this change would be significant in our expert opinion and has probably not been considered at all in this. Our staff are generally restricted to a shift time of eleven hours. For example, if we make a delivery from Liverpool to London, this generally takes ten to eleven hours. This is with the current speed limit of 70 mph on the motorway. This one change would mean this delivery would now require an overnight stay. So, that is two days worth of vehicle and staff costs, instead of one. Plus hotel and subsistence costs. This is a simplified example, but it is not difficult to see the knock on effect this would have on our pricing. Imagine the impact of this on inflation, it would be significant. When people are already struggling to pay basic costs, this should be food for thought in all proposed policy decisions. Anyway, just our two penn'orth worth, but what do we know?