We’re all accustomed to maximum speed limits, but how a few minimum? Starting today, August 1, the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) – along with the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM), PLUS and SKVE – is running a proof-of-concept (POC) trial for minimum advisory speed limits on chosen highway stretches, under the banner Had Laju Nasihat Minimum.
The concept is easy: each lane gets a really helpful minimum speed, displayed on signboards, and drivers are encouraged to travel no less than at that pace for the lane they’re in – unless conditions don’t allow it, resembling in heavy rain or congested traffic. In other words, if you ought to cruise slowly, keep left; the further right you go, the faster you’re expected to flow.
Note the word “advisory” – this can be a trial of guidance signage, not a brand new enforceable speed floor. MIROS lists five objectives for the exercise:
- Stopping lane monopolising (lane hogging)
- Reducing the speed difference between vehicles
- Increasing traffic capability and flow
- Reducing the chance of dangerous lane changes
- Improving overall road safety
The POC runs at three pilot locations:
- PLUS E1 (northbound): Tanjung Malim-Behrang
- SKVE E26: Ayer Hitam toll plaza-Bandar Saujana Putra
- PLUS E2 (northbound): Bandar Ainsdale-Nilai
Through the trial, drivers on these stretches are encouraged to:
- Use the lane that matches the advisory minimum speed shown on the signboards
- Avoid overtaking from the left
- Give solution to vehicles that want to overtake
- Maintain a protected following distance
“Jangan jadi punca trafik terganggu” – don’t be the explanation for disrupted traffic – is how MIROS put it in its announcement, and that framing is the entire point of this exercise.
Why slow driving within the flawed lane is dangerous
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It sounds counter-intuitive, but driving slowly on a highway – within the flawed lane – doesn’t make anyone safer. Road safety research has long shown that the danger on highways isn’t absolute speed alone, but speed variance: the larger the difference between the fastest and slowest vehicles sharing the identical stretch, the upper the crash risk. A automobile doing 70 km/h in the suitable lane of a 110 km/h highway is a moving obstacle that each single vehicle behind it must react to.
The research on this goes back a long time. The classic reference is the “Solomon curve” – US researcher David Solomon’s 1964 study of around 10,000 crash-involved drivers, which plotted crash involvement against deviation from the common traffic speed and located a U-shape: drivers travelling near the mean speed had the bottom crash rates, with risk rising for those going faster and, in his data, rising much more steeply for those going slower. Later work tempered the slow side of that curve – a Nineteen Seventies reanalysis showed a lot of Solomon’s “slow” crashes involved vehicles slowing to show relatively than cruising slowly – but a 1968 follow-up by Julie Cirillo found the identical U-shaped pattern on American Interstate highways, where turning traffic isn’t an element. Economist Charles Lave’s oft-quoted 1985 finding distilled it further: fatality rates tracked speed variance, not average speed. Modern reviews land on a balanced position – higher absolute speeds raise crash risk, and so do large speed differences between vehicles on the identical carriageway, because differentials force the braking, lane-changing and undertaking manoeuvres where crashes occur.
And the way do they react? Each following driver has to brake, then change lanes – often to the left, into the blind spot-riddled space lane hogs force them into – then speed up past and merge back. Every one in all those manoeuvres is a chance for a misjudgement, and the more cars that must perform them, the more opportunities stack up. The lane hog experiences none of this drama; they simply motor on, oblivious, while generating risk for everyone else. We’ve seen where this leads – a slow automobile drifting into the fast lane caused a rear-end collision in a single widely-shared local incident.
There’s a traffic-flow cost too. Braking waves propagate backwards through dense traffic – the “phantom jam” effect, famously demonstrated in a 2008 Japanese experiment wherein drivers asked to easily maintain a relentless speed around a circular track spontaneously produced stop-and-go shockwaves. One slow vehicle within the overtaking lane can likewise congest a highway for kilometres behind it. That’s why “increasing capability and flow” sits alongside safety in MIROS’ objectives: lane discipline isn’t nearly courtesy, it’s about what number of vehicles a highway can safely carry.
It’s value remembering that lane hogging is already an offence in Malaysia, carrying a fantastic of as much as RM2,000 – the center and right lanes are legally for overtaking, with the left lane the default cruising lane. Heavy vehicles are individually banned from the suitable lane on highways. What the MIROS trial adds is the opposite half of the equation: not only “don’t camp within the fast lane”, but “should you are in it, sustain”.
To be clear, this isn’t a licence to hurry – the advisory minimums sit below the posted maximums, and the guidance explicitly excuses heavy rain and congestion. It’s about matching your speed to your lane, in order that traffic sorts itself by pace: slower traffic left, faster traffic right, everyone predictable.
If the POC delivers the products, minimum advisory speed signage could conceivably spread to more highways. Within the meantime, whichever road you’re on: keep left unless overtaking, let faster traffic through, and don’t be the explanation 100 drivers behind you will have to make a lane change they didn’t must make.
What do you’re thinking that of minimum speed limits on our highways – long overdue, or hard to implement? And be honest: does your cruising lane match your cruising speed? Share your thoughts within the comments.
This Article First Appeared At paultan.org
