Excessive Speed and the

Intersection Accident

Presented by Johan Joubert: Traffic Consultant

The speed limit on all freeways in South Africa is 120km/h.
This is the general speed limit on freeways as prescribed in
the Road Traffic Act. Law enforcement can only start when a
motorist exceeds 132km/h (10km/h grace allowed). In
Kwazulu Natal this grace is 20km/h, so Law Enforcement can
only start at 141km/h.

During peak hours, the average speed is much lower due to

vehicle volume and densities. The problem with speed
violations is particularly extreme during off peak hours and
especially after the afternoon peak.

At this time the variance in speed, i.e. the difference between

fast moving and slow moving vehicles becomes a major road
safety risk.
Research has indicated that the variance in the speed of
vehicles on a particular segment of roadway is a measure of
the distribution of actual vehicle travel speeds above and
below the average travel speed. The higher this figure, the
more dispersion there is of speeds, which contributes to the
potential for more crashes.
A phenomenon of speed variance is that as the speed of a
vehicle increases beyond 15km/h above the average speed on
a highway, the risk of it being involved in a crash increases
exponentially.

At 32km/h above the average, the risk of a crash has been

estimated at 11 times greater than at the average travel speed.
The laws of physics say that a vehicle’s speed energy
increases with the square of its velocity increase. As an
example, suppose the prudent travel speed on a roadway was
70km/h but that a through vehicle was traveling at 90km/h.

A simple computation shows that when a vehicle increases its

speed from 70 to 90km/h, it has made a 77 % increase in its
total speed energy.

Thus, an excessive speed of 90km/h on a 70km/h prudent

speed roadway results in much more speed energy available
to cause harm.
Excessive speed reduces the ability to accommodate
judgment errors of others.

As the vehicle speed increases, the ability to accommodate

other motorists lessens correspondingly. There are several
sub factors that cause this and some of these are:

• Each succeeding increment of increased speed requires

a much larger increment in stopping distance.

For example, on good road surfaces, an average car requires

only around 16m of heavy braking to reduce its speed from
70km/h to 50km/h, but the same car must brake close to 23m
to reduce its speed from 95km/h to 70km/h!
The excessively speeding vehicle has less time to safely
respond.

It takes about one second for an excessively speeding car to

slow from 95km/h to 70km/h during emergency braking and
another second to go from 70 to 50km/h. Thus, the extra
second taken to slow down from the excessive speed is often
the time that could have been used to accommodate an error
of another motorist.
•
The ability to visually monitor the road for collision
threat situations decreases with increased speeds.

Driving is largely an activity of tracking and obstacle

avoidance. As our speed increases, this naturally reduces
the time available for both tasks during our approach to an
intersection.

Also, in some situations such as traveling through curves, we

may have to devote larger increments of time to tracking than
at slower speeds.
The ability to safely steer away from the collision threat
decreases with increases in speed.

At lower speeds, we can make strong steering changes with

relative safety. At much higher speeds, these steering
changes typically have to be reduced to avoid total loss of
control.

3. Excessive speed can contribute to judgment errors by

other motorists.

The roadway doesn’t have to be totally devoid of traffic for us

to feel relatively safe in crossing or turning. When we look for
clearance to enter or cross, we subconsciously look for
vehicles that are within our collision threat zone
Each of us develops our own version of a collision threat zone
which is nothing more than an envelope of clearance
necessary for us to safely make a turning or crossing
maneuver.

However, a vehicle traveling at a highly excessive speed may

be a strong collision threat but lie just outside this collision
threat zone envelope.
Thus, a motorist may begin a crossing or turn and suddenly
be confronted with an impending collision. Sometimes the
crossing or turning motorist may have an opportunity to avoid
an accident, yet for some reason fails to abort the maneuver.

This may occur because the motorist was confronted with a

strong violation of expectancy. Suppose, in the original
viewing for clearance, no vehicle was within the collision
threat zone.
Now, if a speeding vehicle suddenly appeared nearby during
an early phase of the turn, this vehicle may not immediately
register as a collision threat in the mind of the motorist.

When things are not supposed to be there, the mind tends not
to immediately accept the reality of their appearance. Also,
when something strongly violates our expectancy, it can take
longer for the mind to accept and devise an
appropriate response.
In summary

An excessive approach speed can have several adverse

influences on the typical intersection accident.

It adds much more dangerous energy to the situation, reduces

the ability of the speeding motorist to accommodate errors,
and can contribute to judgment errors of the crossing or
turning motorist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. AA RSA Road Traffic Safety Foundation, Annual Traffic Safety Audit, 1998.
2. Effects of Raising and Lowering Speed Limits, US Department of
Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, October 1992.
3. Guidelines for Setting Speed Limits, Technical Report RV/19, National Institute
for Transport and Road Research, CSIR, February 1986.
4. Maximum Posted Speed Limits for Passenger Vehicles, Insurance Institute for
5. Highway Safety – Highway Loss Data Institute (HIS-HLDI), October 2001.
6. South African Road Safety Manual, Final Draft, May 1999.
7. Report 55: A Decade of Experience. Transportation Research Board.
8. The Effect of Speed, Flow and Geometric Characteristics on Crash Rates for
9. Different Types of Virginia Highways, Nicholas J Garber, PhD. Virginia
10.Transportation Research Council, University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
Virginia, January 2000.