Speedaholism

Take the accelerator for example, which is the source of all misery on the roads (deaths, injuries, emissions, wasted energy). The further you depress it, the more revs the engine makes, the faster the car goes and – because more fuel is being injected – the more CO2 and other regulated emissions (NOx/CO/CxHy/PM(10)) are released. Engine technology, power, weight and fuel type, together with the accelerator and the speed of the car, determine each car’s fuel consumption and level of emissions.

Terms such as ‘clean cars’ and ‘sustainable traffic’ are a falsification of reality: ‘clean cars’ don’t exist. Even electric cars produce emissions or waste – elsewhere. The only non-polluting vehicles are bicycles and Shanks’s pony (i.e. your own two feet).

Political interest in and budgets for these truly clean forms of mobility are inversely proportional to the contribution they make to sustainability, even in the Netherlands. This is due to our love for the Sacred Cow and to the 'auto-industrial-cultural complex', a power complex that is causing Germany to divert billions of Euros in tax to the automobile industry as an ‘environmental’ scrapping premium, a blatant environmental fabrication. Thankfully the subsidy criteria for the Dutch scrapping scheme are aimed more at environmental benefits than at promoting sales (for more on this, see my previous column).

Thanks to this auto-industrial-cultural complex and the credit crisis, tens of billions of Euros/dollars are being pumped into the oversized automobile industry, which is struggling against the slimming down of its overcapacity and its plus-sized products (auto obesity). Even the Netherlands, a country of bicycles, is feeling the crunch, as cars maintain a prominent presence everywhere – in our hearts (our love of cars), in our conduct (car addiction), in the media (car programs, dedicated newspaper sections and magazines) and in politics. Dutch political parties VVD and CDA have always tried to win the drivers’ vote (which demonstrably does not exist), but they are now threatened to be overtaken on the right by Geert Wilders’ PVV.

A touchy issue among Dutch drivers is the maximum speed limit on motorways. In 1988 it was set at 120 kilometres per hour, after drivers had been driving at 120 km/h en masse for years, even though the limit was 100 km/h (established during the first oil crisis as a fuel-saving measure). Every now and then the VVD starts whining about raising the limit to 130 km/h and cutting back speeding enforcement and sanctions – invariably without plausible arguments.

But lo and behold, recently Minister of Transport Camiel Eurlings also argued for less speeding enforcement on motorways (and more on local roads, where more deaths occur). Such pronouncements are a typical example of car-twaddle and betray a lack of factual knowledge and – what’s worse – political memory.

Each year over nine million speeding fines are issued in the Netherlands, roughly two-thirds of which are acquired on local roads for reasons of road safety. Speeding enforcement on motorways (where daily speeding offences still number in the millions) occurs mainly for environmental reasons, as NOx/CO2 emissions, just like noise pollution, increase disproportionately at higher speeds. Current enforcement efforts in the Dutch system of speed limits, which also includes limits of 100 or 80 km/h on the busiest motorways in addition to 120 km/h, is reducing the massive CO2/NOx emissions on motorways by ten to twenty per cent.

The fact is that judicial decisions allow speeds of up to 8 km/h above the speed limit to go unpunished, whereas this has been shown to result in a ten per cent increase in emissions. Without the current (unpopular but efficient and cost-effective) speeding enforcement, drivers, just as they did prior to 1988, would start driving too fast en masse more often, because of the reduced (subjective) likelihood of being caught. This in turn would produce more noise pollution and NOx and CO2 emissions, while these are the dominant environmental problems surrounding motorways.

Dutch air quality and climate policy will lose their credibility if Minister Eurlings gets his way in this matter. The Minister doesn’t seem to realise that current speeding policy has been fixed since 1988 in Parliament-wide approved policy documents, namely the Speed Limits Memorandum (Nota Rijsnelheden), the National Environmental Policy Plan (NMP3) and the Implementation Memorandum on Climate Policy (Uitvoeringsnota Klimaatbeleid).

Each year ten million Euros of the climate budget are spent on police and judicial capacity for speeding enforcement, which in turn produces a large income from fines. This climate money therefore does not adversely affect safety on other roads – on the contrary, it reduces both emissions and traffic risks. This is because the road toll on motorways is due almost entirely to speeding, including on the part of heavy goods vehicles, whose limit is 80 km/h.

The recent tightening of speeding enforcement on motorways in France has already saved thousands of lives! German Autobahns, where incredible speeds are reached, are twice as dangerous as those in the Netherlands despite German cars having on average more stars in the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) than the (older) Dutch car fleet.

It is time to crank up speeding enforcement Europe-wide, on all road types, and for the European Union to implement a general speed limit of 120 km/h. Without this measure, European climate, energy and road safety targets will be unattainable. The habitual resistance to speed limits on the part of the German automobile industry and politicians costs thousands of human lives, is an environmental crime and deserves to be corrected by other civilised countries. Hopefully, Europe will now take on Germany’s speedaholism.