Police pulled over a foreign driver last night, who was driving at 146 kilometres an hour on the Suðurlandsvegur road between Reykjavík and Hveragerði, reports RÚV.
Top speed on highways in Iceland is 90 kilometres an hour, which means that the man was 56 above the legal speed limit. In his defence, the main claimed that this was the normal speed in Europe and, therefore, thought the same applied to Iceland.
One of Iceland’s most dangerous
Last year, sixteen people died in traffic accidents in Iceland, with tourists involved in five, and Suðurlandvegur has one of the highest number of car accidents in the country, with three fatal accidents recorded on the road in 2016—the same number as the year before.
Earlier in the month, a German tourist passed away on the same road, after heavy winds blew his car off the road.
Increase in number of tourist accidents
As the number of tourists in the country has grown, so has the number of accidents involving them. In recent years, the fatality rate among foreign visitors has been 0.5 per 100,000.
It is vital that people who drive on the roads know the speed limit and respect it. Roads in Iceland aren’t always in the best condition and the weather can be very unpredictable.
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