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When last November the Ministry of the Interior and the DGT announced their intention to abolish the rule that allows exceeding the limit on secondary roads by 20 km / h when overtaking, they did not present any scientific report to back it up.

Only they were doing it for consistency with the message about the danger of speed and overtaking.

Besides, no other country in Europe allows something similar, they affirmed.

In mid-March, the Council of Ministers carried out the reform of the Traffic Law that contemplates this change.

This will allow its parliamentary procedure to begin with the idea of ​​having it ready before the end of the year.

But there was no report either, despite the controversy that has been generated since the first announcement.

At the request of the association for the defense of drivers

DVuelta, the professor at the University of Zaragoza and traffic accident researcher, Juan José Alba, has done a study on the matter.

And it does not leave Traffic in a good place, which by all evidence indicates that, in 2019, 16% of those killed in accidents died in a frontal collision, mostly due to improper overtaking.

Although I can argue that lowering the limit from 100 km / h to 90 km / h in 2019 was one of the causes for that, that year, the accident rate decreased by 10% on secondary roads.

A FOOTBALL FIELD IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION ...

Specifically, Alba's study concludes that ending that 20 km / h margin will multiply by three the time that a car passes a truck driving in the opposite lane,

going from 2.52 seconds (overtaking at 110 km /

h).

h) at 7.56 seconds (at 90 km / h);

while the space that is covered in the maneuver, exposed to another vehicle in front, jumps from 77 to 189 meters.

An extra distance 112 meters that is much more than what a first division soccer field measures.

In other words, the most dangerous maneuver on the road will be even more so.

Besides, the research is generous in its approach.

Because it calculates an overtaking maneuver for a 16.5-meter-long truck moving at 80 km / h,

but it only takes into account that length and the 4.5 meters measured by an average passenger car.

That is to say, it

does not contemplate time and space since overtaking begins;

and neither is the phase

in which the car returns, with a sufficient safety margin, to its lane.

Dangerous overtaking of a truck

“If the DGT warns of the danger of frontal collisions, what it must do is find out why they occur and propose the best solutions.

Instead, it prevents faster and safer overtaking, ”says the expert to DVuelta.

THOSE WHO WANT TO RUN MORE, LOOK FOR OTHER WAYS

In addition, his report does not defend speed per se, but the greater safety provided by that extra margin of 20 km / h allowed since the mid-1980s.

Thus, it remarks that, from 120 km / h, the gain in time or space it is very decreasing and does not compensate.

"Motorists have to be aware that they are traveling on more dangerous roads

and, if they want to go faster, they will have to look for alternatives," Jorge Ordás, DGT's Deputy Director of Mobility and Technology, told this newspaper at the end of 2020.

It also acknowledged that there are no investigations that link frontal crashes and off-road with rapid overtaking.

And he claimed that, if over time a wrong measure were shown, which he did not believe, "it would be reversed."

The Race and Associated European Motorist Club are convinced that this is a mistake.

And that is why, although the measure cannot be legally appealed, they will try to convince the political parties during the processing of the reform of the Traffic Law.

"We are planning to ask for these scientific reports and the studies on the economic cost of the signage that will have to be modified," announced Mario Arnaldo, AEA director.

Because one of the consequences of the rule "20 km / h less" as defined by Alba, is that roads and signs will have to be repainted.

Among other reasons, because many sections where overtaking is allowed today will disappear.

SECTION RADARS ALSO COUNT

Meanwhile, from the Race, Ángeles de Miguel, his legal expert, also affirmed to this newspaper that

"it makes no sense to fill the roads with caravans at 80 km / h" behind a truck or a slow vehicle,

because they end up stressing the drivers who do not dare to overtake and those who do, but cannot.

The last edge of the controversial project does not have to do with lives at stake, but with the pockets of drivers.

Traffic does not deny that the measure it wants to carry out will make it possible to put an end to the possibility of having to fight with thousands of resources of fines imposed on section radars, of which there are 80 already in operation.

They measure the average speed over several kilometers, and the driver could always argue that if he exceeded the limit, it was because he made legal overtaking at up to 110 km / h.

Last November, AEA already denounced this situation.

Meanwhile, Traffic plans to install 75 new radars this year, the vast majority on conventional roads and 60% of them stretch.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

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