What causes accidents: speed
There is a well known saying from safety campaigns which simply says that "speed kills".
Although many people think that you have to be travelling really quickly in order to make an impact sufficient enough to seriously injure someone or to kill them - such as the sorts of speeds you see on the motorway - this is not actually the case.
Indeed even at what you might consider 'low' speeds, like those around streets in towns and cities, just a few mph can make a major difference to the strength of an impact and therefore the severity of an accident, whether or not it involves other people or is a single vehicle crash impact.
Going a little too fast is doubly dangerous. First of all, it means that you have less time to react to an unexpected situation - for instance something running across the road. But secondly, if you hit that object or person at the higher speed then the impact is much more severe too.
This is why you should always stick to speed limits even if you think it is safe to go quicker: it is never safe, because the unexpected could always happen. Travelling at 35mph instead of 30mph where that is the speed limit could lead to the difference between life and death for someone who gets involved in an accident with a pedestrian.
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