Carlton Reid03:18pm EDT
Mar 28, 2020
Medics and other experts are calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) to recommend that national governments should lower speed limits on their roads as a means of reducing hospital admissions during the coronavirus outbreak.
Many countries have introduced lockdown measures that have resulted in reduced road usage. Some motorists are speeding on the newly empty roads, risking their own lives and endangering pedestrians and cyclists as well as other motorists.
“I’ve been cycling to the front line in an NHS hospital,” says Sunil Bhopal, a clinical lecturer in population health pediatrics at Newcastle University.
“I’ve been worried by how fast the cars are speeding past me now; it’s changed out there.”
Bhopal, who is also an honorary assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wants WHO to advocate for speed limits to be lowered, but also believes national governments could be prime movers.
“I think the U.K. government can take the lead on this—they can do it if they want to.”\
