Reuben Jacob Smeed CBE (1909–1976) was a British statistician and transport researcher.[1][2] He proposed Smeed's law which correlated traffic fatalities to traffic density and predicted that the average speed of traffic in central London would always be nine miles per hour without other disincentives, given that this was the minimum speed that people will tolerate.
He chaired the Smeed Report which reported to the Government of the United Kingdom on road pricing in 1964 which recommended introducing congestion pricing on busy roads. These recommendations were not taken up until the London congestion charge was finally introduced in 2003, when average traffic speeds across the congestion charging zone rose by 15% from 14 kilometres per hour (8.7 mph) in the year prior to introduction to 17 kilometres per hour (11 mph) immediately after its introduction, the highest average speed since 1974.[3]