Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has proposed to increase the speed limit on highways to 100 km per hour and on upcoming new access controlled expressways to 120 km per hour.
A highways ministry official told Hindustan Times that in a recent review meeting, Gadkari said that the rise in better quality vehicles on better roads calls for an increase in the speed cap and a formal proposal will be submitted.
Currently, the Delhi-Agra Yamuna Expressway has a 100 km per hour speed limit while all the national highways (NHs) across the country have a speed limit of 80 km per hour.
The government has already planned to build 1,000 km of access-controlled expressways. These are expressways that are specifically designed for cars to travel at high speeds. Work has already begun on the Delhi-Meerut and the Eastern Peripheral Expressways.
The average speed limit on autobahn, the legendary access-controlled highway system in Germany, is 142 km per hour. In some stretches of autobahn, there is no speed limit for some classes of vehicles.
But in India, Gadkari’s proposal will be met with challenges from road safety experts who point out the poor safety standards on the roads that witness the highest deaths in the world. Speeding accounted for 44 percent of road accident deaths. Close to five lakh road accidents were reported in India in 2015.
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