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Belgians in favour of raising speed limit on motorways
According to a survey of more than 1,000 Belgians by mobility organisation Touring, 80% of the respondents are in favour of raising the speed limit on motorways from 120- to 130km per hour, given the limit would be reduced to 110km per hour in rainy conditions, write the Mediahuis newspapers.
Touring is surprised by the results, which would bring Belgium's speed limits up to match those of French motorways. "But you cannot compare Belgium with France; Our roads are different,” warns Touring spokesman Danny Smagghe in various Belgian media. “Belgium has many more motorway entries and exits, which means that cars have to brake and merge more often.”
According to a study by the Belgian Road Safety Institute, the raised speed limit could lead to 30 additional traffic fatalities per year, and that's in the case of dry weather.
Comments
Who checks this stuff? The current limit is 120, not 11O (sic).
Not many drivers take any notice of the current speed limit anyway.
Thanks for the correction Norm!
Eric....If you were in Belgium 15 years or so back, you will have noticed a huge decrease in people completely ignoring speed limits. It's the one area where there has been a visible improvement in this countries shockingly poor road safety record.
These days if a car flashes past doing 160+ it's normally on foreign plates. 15 years ago if you were doing 120 you were a hazard to traffic flow.
As to increasing the limit, I can't see any point. It would make very little difference even when travelling from one end of the country to the other. In fact in the peak traffic I firmly believe most motorways would benefit from a well policed 90 limit. More traffic flow, smoother traffic flow, less accidents.
Raising the speed limit would have at least one additional negative effect - an increase in CO2 emissions and air pollution. Let's keep the limit as it is!
@ADRIAN_JOYCE_EU - myeah ... that's why Germany is so polluted from traffic and that's why they're looking so bad in the statistics ... oh wait ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death... ...
And no, don't blame the "foreign plate" drivers for miss-behaving in traffic. Try the same in Germany or in Austria (where the limit is 130km/h, by the way) and we'll talk later.