By now you will have picked up on the fact that a small but significant change has been made to the speed limits that most probably apply to roads near you. From 1st July 2018 the old speed limit of 90 km/h (56 mph) on certain roads has been reduced to 80 km/h (50 mph). The roads in question are ones where traffic flows in both directions with there being no physical barrier between the two carriageways. (The law specifies a ‘physical barrier’ as being ‘crash barriers’ – often called ‘Armco’ in the UK – or concrete barriers or an earth central-reservation.) White lines or zebras lines don’t count, so the reduced speed limit will be in force when that is all that separates on-coming traffic.
There is one exception to this: where there is a three-lane carriageway (and don’t we all hate them?) the two lanes that run alongside each other will retain the old 90 km/h limit, and the single lane running in the other direction will adopt the new, lower speed.
During the change-over, old 90 km/h speed limit signs will either be masked off or be replaced by new 80 km/h speed limit signs. There are 11,000 speed limit signs to modify across the country, so don’t expect the change to be signalled throughout immediately!
The announcement of this change is available on this government Service-public website. The blog post on our website that discusses speed limits has been updated to reflect this change.