New Road Safety Measures Planned After Prince Philip Crash

The A149 speed limit will be lowered from 60mph to 50mph.
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Norfolk Council has approved plans for new safety measures on the section of the A149 where the Duke of Edinburgh was involved in a crash.

With the authority’s environment, development and transport committee giving the green light, the speed limit will be lowered from 60mph to 50mph and an average speed monitoring system will be implemented after the incident on Thursday.

Philip visited hospital this morning on doctor’s advice for a precautionary check-up which confirmed he had no injuries of concern, Buckingham Palace said.

The news comes after Prime Minister Theresa May revealed she had sent the Duke of Edinburgh a message following the crash.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “The prime minister has sent a private message wishing him well.”

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The crash will be “investigated and any appropriate action taken”, Norfolk Police said, adding that officers were following standard procedure where a road traffic collision resulted in injuries.

The 97-year-old Duke was driving a Land Rover Freelander, which flipped over after it was hit by another car when he pulled out of a driveway near the Queen’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, onto the busy A-road.

The woman driving the other vehicle, a Kia, and her female passenger, needed hospital treatment.  There was also a nine-month-old baby boy in the car.

The Duke of Edinburgh is from a generation when some people did not need to pass a driving test to obtain a licence.

He was born on June 10, 1921, but compulsory testing for new drivers to obtain a licence was only introduced in Britain on June 1, 1935.

This applied to all drivers and riders who started driving on or after April 1 1934 – when the Duke was 12.

The Queen’s husband lived in both Europe and the UK as a boy, and enrolled at Dartmouth Naval College in 1939.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said: “The duke has got a driving licence and follows all of the usual DVLA procedures.”

The Queen, however, does not having a driving licence – due to her exemption from the law requiring all other citizens to pass a test and hold a licence if they want to drive.

The monarch learned to drive with the Army in 1945 when she was 19, after she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the Second World War.

She still drives herself around her estates.