Reduced motorway speed in Spain
Monday, March 21, 2011 @ 10:44 AM
It just sprung to my mind, and if it came to mine then it must have come to the minds of many others, that if the Spanish government have reduced the motorway speed in order to gain more speeding fines, their aim in the long run is going to be counter productive.
And the reason is the following. Why would a driver want to pay his valuable and scarce money to get onto a toll road where his speed is restricted to 110 km per hour when he can travel at 100 km per hour on the normal roads and for free? After all, if he has to reduce his speed 10 km an hour he might as well reduce by a whole 20 km and not only reduce on his fuel bill, as the Spanish government are trying to imply, but also save on his toll bills.
People will get used to setting off on their journeys a few minutes earlier and the Spanish government will find that their income from the toll roads will come down quite considerably. One supposes that toll roads were created in order for drivers to get to their destinations faster but if that is no longer possible because of the restrictive speed limit then what is the point of using them?
If one is going to have to relax behind the wheel, because it has more than been proved that driving at a slow speed lowers one's degree of alertness and concentration, then you might as well leisurely drive through towns and villages with nice scenery than be crawling along on a blank motorway with no touristic sites which might eventually cause you to nod off through the boredom and have an accident.