Archive: Speed limits introduced on UK motorways
A BBC News report from 1965 showed a police chief observing traffic shortly after speed limits were introduced on motorways for the first time.
Vehicles were limited to 70mph (113km/h) from 22 December of that year, which started as a trial but was made permanent in 1967 after a fall in the number of accidents.
John Gott, the then-chief constable of Northamptonshire Police, is seen driving along a stretch of the M1 near Northampton, remarking on how traffic was travelling "very much more slowly" than normal.
He said: "The main object of the exercise is to try and reduce these high-speed accidents. When we do have accidents, they're bad ones."
A BBC report filmed at an M1 service area near Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, in 1966, showed how many opposed the new speed limit.
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