A lot of fatalities in car accidents happen when cars are overtaking others on rural and single track roads, and Brake (the national car safety charity) are looking to reduce this number greatly to ensure that there are less fatalities.
Nine hundred and forty two people were interviewed, and of this forty seven percent of people admitted speeding at more than sixty miles per hour to overtake drivers that they felt were going too slow on rural roads. One in eight shockingly admitted to overtaking when they couldn’t even see what was coming in the other direction, which is a worrying statistics for road safety experts. https://lawyers.justia.com/lawyer/heather-dickerson-1586061
In 2009, seven hundred and fifty deaths occurred on the roads on single carriageways, which is a third of the deaths on the roads that year. If you are involved in a head on crash at sixty miles per hour then you have a ninety percent change of dying, whereas if you lower the speed to forty then the death risk drops by over fifty percent.
Overtaking in such a dangerous manner is proven to make very little difference to your journey time. F you overtake a car travelling at forty miles per hour so that you can make the rest of your journey at fifty, you add ninety seconds onto your time. Hardly seems worth it for risking someone’s life.
The advice is that on a country road that often has a speed limit far too high for the amount of sharp corners and dangers seen, that you should drive carefully and at a safe speed. There may be cars coming in the other direction, not to mention joggers, cyclists and horse riders that can add to the danger. The advice is to not risk overtaking on a rural road, unless it is to get past something that is moving very slowly, like a tractor or other farm vehicles.
Brake are appealing to the government to change the speed limits on country roads to ensure the safety of drivers at all times.
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