Brake, the road safety charity, has urged the government to cut default speed limit on rural roads to 50m/h or lower.

The call for reduction in default speed limit on rural roads is made after a survey revealed that nearly half of motorists overtook on rural roads at 60m/h. Brake and Direct Line surveyed 942 drivers and found 47 per cent of respondents admitting that they sped to over 60m/h on rural roads to overtake other vehicles. Around a quarter (23 per cent) of all respondents said they crossed speed limit once every month.

More disturbingly, 1 in 8 of the respondents admitted that they overtook when they were not able to see what was coming from the opposite direction. Commenting on the findings, Ellen Booth from Brake said, “Speeding down a country lane isn't the epitome of freedom; it's the epitome of stupidity.” In a head-on crash at 60m/h, the risk of death is 90 per cent.

Available figures show that 749 deaths occurred on single carriageway rural roads in 2009. The figure is more than a third of all road deaths occurred in the country.