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FHWA Home / Safety / Proven Safety Countermeasures / Appropriate Speed Limits for All Road Users

Appropriate Speed Limits for All Road Users

There is broad consensus among global roadway safety experts that speed control is one of the most important methods for reducing fatalities and serious injuries. Speed is an especially important factor on non-limited access roadways where vehicles and vulnerable road users mix.

A driver may not see or be aware of the conditions within a corridor, and may drive at a speed that feels reasonable for themselves but may not be for all users of the system, especially vulnerable road users, including children and seniors. A driver traveling at 30 miles per hour who hits a pedestrian has a 45 percent chance of killing or seriously injuring them.1 At 20 miles per hour, that percentage drops to 5 percent.1 A number of cities across the United States, including New York, Washington, Seattle and Minneapolis, have reduced their local speed limits in recent years in an effort to reduce fatalities and serious injuries, with most having to secure State legislative authorization to do so.

States and local jurisdictions should set appropriate speed limits to reduce the significant risks drivers impose on others—especially vulnerable road users—and on themselves. Addressing speed is fundamental to the Safe System Approach to making streets safer, and a growing body of research shows that speed limit changes alone can lead to measurable declines in speeds and crashes.2

Applications

Posted speed limits are often the same as the legislative statutory speed limit. Agencies with designated authorities to set speed limits, which include States, and sometimes local jurisdictions, can establish non-statutory speed limits or designate reduced speed zones, and a growing number are doing so. While non-statutory speed limits must be based on an engineering study, conducted in accordance with the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) involving multiple factors and engineering judgment, FHWA is also encouraging agencies to use the following3:

Based on international experience and implementation in the United States, the use of 20 mph speed zones or speed limits in urban core areas where vulnerable users share the road environment with motorists may result in further safety benefits.4

Considerations

When setting a speed limit, agencies should consider a range of factors such as pedestrian and bicyclist activity, crash history, land use context, intersection spacing, driveway density, roadway geometry, roadside conditions, roadway functional classification, traffic volume, and observed speeds.

To achieve desired speeds, agencies often implement other speed management strategies concurrently with setting speed limits, such as self-enforcing roadways, traffic calming, and speed safety cameras. Additional information is in the following FHWA resources:

Safety Benefits:

Traffic fatalities in the City of Seattle decreased 26 percent after the city implemented comprehensive, city-wide speed management strategies and countermeasures inspired by Vision Zero. This included setting speed limits on all non-arterial streets at 20 mph and 200 miles of arterial streets at 25 mph.5

One study found that on rural roads, when considering other relevant factors in the engineering study along with the speed distribution, setting a speed limit no more than 5 mph below the 85th-percentile speed may result in fewer total and fatal plus injury crashes, and lead to drivers complying closely with the posted speed limit.6

 


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Page last modified on November 19, 2021
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