One World

Different factors that affect speed limits on the road s for vehicles. ? Speed limit is the maximum speed at which a vehicle can travel in a certain area. Usually they are indicated by signs next to the road. As you can see from the graph below, speed limits are extremely important. If speed limits wouldn’t be there, a lot more accidents would resolve into death. Speed of the vehicle in miles/hourPercentage of chance of death 207 3044 4086 Those speed limits aren’t just chosen by people. Many things have to be considered while deciding about a speed limit. A lot of environmental and human factors affect those limits.Some of these are: †¢The weather †¢Traffic †¢The driver †¢The vehicle †¢The road condition †¢The type of environment The weather can affect a lot of things that then affect speed limits. This we can notice by the temporarily change in speed limits when there are bad weather circumstances. For example when it is raining very heav ily or there is snow, speed limits will be changed until it stops raining or the snow melts. These changes are usually indicated by electrical signs on the road. Even when it is not indicated, drivers should be responsible enough to slow down in these circumstances.The traffic is also a very important factor. In areas where there is a lot of traffic, the speed limits will generally be set lower. Since in these areas a lot of cars come together at the same time accidents can easily happen. Those areas with a lot of traffic are usually where there are traffic lights or pedestrian crossings. The speed limit will be indicated by a road sign. The driver is one of the most important factors. The bad thing about this factor is that the driver is very unpredictable and the drivers behavior is different all the time.Speed limits can obviously not be set according to every driver’s mood so generally they look at the other factors: weather, traffic, vehicle, road condition and type of e nvironment to predict the driver’s behavior. Generally drivers will tend to drive fast when there isn’t a lot of traffic and when there are no obstacles. This can be very dangerous as unexpected things can happen. In these areas the speed limit could be decreased based on that. The vehicle and the state of the vehicle are also very important when setting speed limits.Obviously the speed limit can’t be set according to every individual vehicle so usually the speed limit is chosen in a way which is not too fast so that the older vehicles can keep up and not too slow so the people with faster vehicles won’t get annoyed. They also look at the type of area in which the speed limit has to be set. If it’s in a country area with farms, they will take in consideration that also tractors will be driving there and animals can be around. The road condition has to be very good in order to be able to drive on it in the first place.In sandy roads or areas where a lot of mud may occur, the speed limits will be set lower so that the vehicle has a lower chance of slipping. Bumps in the road will also cause the speed limit to be lower than in straight areas. That’s also the reason why speed bumps are used. They make people drive slower as they can damage their vehicle in case they don’t. The type of environment has to do with the people that live around but also the buildings that are close or nature around the roads. In urbanized areas where a lot of people live, the speed limit will be set quite low to cause as less danger for pedestrians as possible.Then, talking about buildings in the surrounding area, if there is a mall or a school they will have to take in consideration that children or families with children will be walking around there and crossing the streets. Therefore the speed limits will be adjusted so that even if there is a collision the chance of death won’t be very high. In some cases, very polluted environ ments can cause the speed limit to be set lower but in some cases even higher. This is because the pollution of a car is lower when it either drives at a very low speed or quite a high speed as shown in the graph below.As the speed increases you can see that the fuel consumption and therefore also the pollution increases. But when you reach a certain speed, that fuel consumption will start decreasing again. So for the least amount of pollution you should driver very slow or faster than about 60 miles per hour. Bibliography onlinemanuals. txdot. gov/†¦ /factors_affecting_safe_speed. htm www. ibiblio. org/rdu/sl-irrel. html www. transport. qld. gov. au †º †¦ †º Safety †º Road †º Speeding www. wellington. govt. nz/projects/new/†¦ /lowerspeed-facts. pdf www. conference. noehumanist. org/†¦ /Proceedings-HUMANIST-S6. 6. pd