News

An owner-driver has received a ticket for speeding which has caused confusion over what is defined as a dual carriageway and what is not. Les Parrott received his ticket for driving at 48mph on a section of the A556, which has two lanes on each side of the road, but is not designated as a dual carriageway because it does not have a central reservation.

Parrott, a 56-year-old owner-driver from Dove Holes, near Buxton,  Derbyshire, who says he has a clean licence after 36 years' driving, believed he was on a dual carriageway and, therefore, entitled to drive at 50mph, but the limit is 40mph on an ordinary A-road, which is how the road he was on is defined.

He tells CM he has asked several haulage companies about the issue, and that, "the only ones who seem to know about it are those that have been done for it". Parrot believed until now, was that if a road with two lanes on each side was divided by a double white line in the middle then it was a dual carriageway.

Transport lawyer Tim Ridyard, of Barker Gotelee Solicitors in Ipswich, Suffolk, says that the confusion is not new and that even if a road has three lanes, it is not defined as a dual carriageway unless it has a central reservation.

Ridyard says that this definition is "constantly being re-visited" by politicians, but that a relaxation of the speeding laws is  "politically very unpalatable" because of the strength of the road safety lobby.

He adds that the definition of a dual carriageway is quite clear in the Road Traffic Act 1984, so it is unlikely that any appeal against a speeding fine incurred in these circumstances would be successful.