Ask a room of van drivers the national speed limit for a 3.5-tonne panel van on a single carriageway and a chunk of them will say 60. They are wrong, and the wrongness is expensive: goods vehicles up to 7.5 tonnes maximum laden weight are limited to 50 mph on single carriageways and 60 mph on dual carriageways - 10 mph below the car limits most drivers carry in their heads. Only on motorways does the van share the car’s 70.
This is one of the most commonly prosecuted misunderstandings in fleet driving, and it is entirely preventable with a five-minute briefing.
From the national speed limit table for goods vehicles not more than 7.5 tonnes maximum laden weight:
Over 7.5 tonnes the limits step down again: in England and Wales 50 on single carriageways, 60 on dual carriageways, 60 on motorways; in Scotland a heavier goods vehicle is limited to 40 on single carriageways and 50 on dual carriageways, with 60 on motorways. And vehicles that look like cars but are registered as goods vehicles - many pickups and crew-cab variants among them - must follow the speed limits for goods vehicles of the same weight. Motorhomes and motor caravans are also classed as goods vehicles in defined circumstances. The body style does not set the limit; the registration class and weight do.
Signed limits always override the national defaults: a 20 mph zone near a school or a 50 limit on a bendy stretch of dual carriageway applies to every vehicle whatever the table says.
Speed cameras enforce the limit for the vehicle class, not the limit the driver assumed. A van at 58 mph on an unrestricted single carriageway is within the car limit and 8 mph over its own. Average-speed camera zones and mobile vans make no distinction the driver can see - the classification happens in the back office against the registration’s vehicle data. The first a fleet knows is the notice of intended prosecution.
The motorway trailer rule catches a second group: hook a trailer to a van and the motorway limit drops to 60, a fact many drivers towing rarely have never been told.
And the Welsh default built-up limit - 20 mph where England expects 30 - catches cross-border operators whose drivers run the same urban routes either side of the border on different days.
One more wrinkle for mixed fleets: the same route can carry three different correct answers at once. The car driver behind your van on a single carriageway is entitled to 60 where your van is limited to 50, so the tailgate pressure drivers feel is built into the limits themselves. Brief drivers to expect it, hold the legal limit, and never let the vehicle behind set their speed - the camera will grade the van against the van’s table, not the queue’s mood.
Van speeding is not a private matter between driver and camera. Points accumulate on the licences of the people your O-licence depends on, insurance costs follow convictions, and a pattern of speeding in a fleet is the kind of evidence that colours how an operator is viewed when anything else goes wrong. The limits are public, stable and briefed in five minutes - a fleet that keeps getting caught by them is telling the world something about its management.