Traffic volume is reduced with more people choosing walking and cycling. Speeds are reduced only a little (you weren't going as quickly as you thought anyway) but potentially reducing accidents. The Edinburgh data shows a dramatic reduction in accidents, down almost a third.
As much as the comments from complaining drivers are frustrating, it reveals that the problem here is relying on speed limits and not street design. If you want drivers to go 20mph, you need to design the street so going any faster feels uncomfortable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc discuses this.
Also, I notice that most of those drivers complaining don't address what it's like to have a small child who's a runner and is always trying to get loose of your grip and run in to the street.
I would add to your point that streets should be designed to the highest speed and throughput practical[0] for their locale. It's an obvious source of 'driver frustration' when the apparent objective of these changes is to add friction to transport. No one likes having to dodge speed bumps, or being stuck in traffic on a 'calmed' street.
[0] which needs to be supported by e.g. separated bike lanes, well marked and signed x-walks, employment of limited access roads vs. stroads, enforcement, etc.
I must admit I found your comment jarring at first, but I don't think we really disagree except on details. I enjoy driving fast in wide open spaces (through farmland on the autobahn for instance).
But (and I think you see this) there is a key difference between a street and a road - a _street_ most definitely _should_ have things to slow drivers, because the faster the cars go, the less pleasant it is for anyone not in a car. Nobody likes walking next to 80 kph traffic. But if a system is well designed the only reason you're driving on a street is because it's your destination, and not something you're using to get somewhere else.
I find it amusing how they did not interview one single person who thought he or she might just choose a different way of transportation, instead of driving a car, unless absolutely necessary.
I used to commute in the north between two mid-sized cities, and any time I checked taking the car instead of the combined bike+rail travel would not have been faster, only much more inconvenient and more expensive (parking costs a lot, and not always easy to find...).
Today we have e-bikes and scooters, so hilly terrain is not a problem anymore. What I do think IS a problem is driving is still way too cheap in the UK, compared to other transportation methods.
I'm not that surprised I'm afraid. I am familiar with South Wales more than the rest of the country, but for many, many people, they live in small, former mining villages. If they're lucky, there's a bus or two every hour going to the nearest big city.
If you work outside the city, or in a different city, your commute skyrockets.
Additionally, many of these small villages only have very basic Nisa Today type newsagents/mini-markets, and the supermarkets are optimised for car travel, not bus (and certainly not scooter).
It's also a pretty deprived area, and a car, while expensive, is essentially a necessity. An e-bike would be an additional cost on top of the car. There are also considerations around the weather, etc.
Wales manages to have both bad public transport and bad roads and bad weather and bad parking. Perhaps the speed limit drop is intended to "nudge" people, but I'm not convinced the alternatives are quite so ready yet.
In your list, only bad public transport is a limiter.
The hills and perceived insecurity[1] are probably the biggest limiters to biking. The former being solved by e-bikes. Bad weather is not that hard to deal with than some people would think.
[1] insecurity leads to either of these 2 things:
- people are afraid to ride bikes
- people feel they would need to use an helmet, which most don't want to, especially women, because it mess with their hair.
> I find it amusing how they did not interview one single person who thought he or she might just choose a different way of transportation,
dropping speed limits doesn't do that.
if you want netherlands, you need to invest in biking infrastructure and traffic calming. you can't just drop the speed limits and try to declare victory.
> Today we have e-bikes and scooters, so hilly terrain is not a problem anymore.
distracted drivers are still a problem.
they dropped the speed limits to 25mph where i live and while i could buy an e-bike, i don't feel like getting myself killed for a principle, so i just drive 15 mph over the limit like literally everyone else.
Just looking at the Edinburgh study it is almost comically bad:
> 4.5 ‘Before’ and ‘after’ surveys were also carried out at a selection of locations where
the 30mph speed limit was retained. At these locations, average ‘after’ speeds in
2021 fell by 2.32mph compared with average ‘before’ speeds in 2016. This is a
further decrease of 1.83mph since average ‘after’ speeds were recorded in 2019.
Although many factors may have influenced this speed reduction, it could in part be
attributed to the effect of speed reductions on surrounding streets, with drivers
slowing their driving behaviour throughout Edinburgh.
So the "control" streets also saw a decline in average speed, and the conclusion wasn't that
the primary effect was due to increasing congestion over time, but instead clearly the
speed limits just magically work everywhere.
And the highest average speed on these streets was 32 mph to start with, before setting the
speed limits. The roads already were doing the work there. That doesn't compare with the ~40 mph
stroads we have around here that they've slapped a 25 mph sign onto and called it a day.
If you compare train on a train-direct path, then there will be no other winner than trains. But I can make the same demonstration with planes: “If I live in Paris, how can I go to work in New York every morning? See, the Concorde is necessary.” More seriously: “If I live in suburbia, how can I change jobs in the city for a job which is not on the same train line?”
It’s all about finding words to sustain one’s idea, not about caring for the lowlys.
> Today we have e-bikes and scooters, so hilly terrain is not a problem anymore
ebikes average at $100pm. I’m sure you will contradict me with lowballing, but there are also people for whom it’s much more expensive. And if you live with normal people, there are no bikes that you can keep secure at home or at work - we’re not all bourgeois with safe garages.
That's why I specifically took an example of my then-commute, which consisted of 15mins to the train station, 25mins train ride, then 10mins to workplace. I wouldn't exactly call that "train-direct".
The UK doesn't exactly have "suburbia" quite like the US, although there are definitely remote places without good public transport, distances are not beyond practical for non-driving.
Another prominent UK feature is the "terraced house", with a small backyard patio, usually with a small shed. This is typical for a low-wage family, or in the towns even for wealthier people. Or you would be living in a semi-detached house, probably with a small garden. Storing a bike or two is mostly a non-issue.
It seems residents in the area doesn't have much of an alternative. The train service isn't running:
> I'm travelling up the Rhondda Fawr valley from Pontypridd up to Treherbert - which is without its train line to Cardiff which is shut until the new year
Google Maps says there's half-hourly bus service from Tonypandy to Cardiff, but it takes 75 minutes, vs. 40 minutes by car.
Btw. is it a coincidence that they chose to write about this exact location, at this exact point in time (when there is no alternative way of transport)? (rhetorical question)
It’s not just that driving is too cheap, but the other options sucks.
Whoever is designing the inner cities clearly don’t give a shit about pedestrians.
A city should be designed for pedestrians first but in the UK, the crosswalks aren’t even clearly marked!
Exactly, which is the case in many European cities. For example, Antwerp, Zürich, Stockholm, all cities where you can feel a lot safer crossing the streets(“jaywalking“) than in any big city in the UK I’ve visited
The ruling Conservative Party are buying votes at the cost of the environment. It harms tax revenue, too, which should be put towards improving travel options.
For a thousand pounds you can buy a small used car, tax it, insure it and drive it around for a bit. Meanwhile an average e-bike costs more than that. Does that sound sane to you?
As a cyclist (and a driver) in a city in England; this can't come to the rest of the UK fast enough. I see it as a failure of public policy, and a necessary result.
Our streets are not designed for safe cycling and our public transport infrastructure is poor, at best. So the only way we can improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians is to reduce speed limits for cars across the board.
The political will to improve road/pavement safety for pedestrians and cyclists is not there (there's a war on motorists, apparently?) so while cyclists have to (by law) use public roads then we have to reduce car speed limits to make it safe.
Most modern cars have cruise control that work at 20mph, so the argument that it's difficult to stick to 20mph is lazy and incorrect. Studies out of Wales say that it adds approximately 30 seconds per journey and one of the quotes in this article _quoted a woman who does not drive!_
I’m a cyclist and disagree, given most urban bike vs car crashes happen way below 30 mph changing the speed limit won’t make a difference.
What would make a difference is teaching people to cycle on the road confidently and correctly (eg taking the full lane when required) and also adding a cycling component to learning to drive to give drivers more empathy for cyclists.
Both of these are too big to tackle so instead the solution is to blame speed and treat people like children.
I agree with your points except that reducing speeds by even an average of 1mph does appear to reduce both collisions and the severity of those accidents by about 5%.
If only speed limits were designed so that breaking them always equates "reckless driving", and not sometimes (often, here) "driving at a completely normal speed considering the surrounding environment".
inb4 pitchfork raising amongst the anti-car rabble
You can't enforce a speed limit by simply placing a speed sign and hoping everyone is going to magically follow them. More cops or speed cameras isn't going to work either.
My city is currently working on a plan to lower the speed limit from 50kmh to 30kmh (30 mph to 18 mph). The entire thing is a multi-year program because it essentially means redesigning those roads from scratch.
A road which has been designed for its speed limit doesn't even need a speed sign - the driver will naturally be driving at that speed already because anything faster will feel unsafe to the driver.
> You can't enforce a speed limit by simply placing a speed sign and hoping everyone is going to magically follow them.
It's not flawless but sticking up signs has a reasonable effect. I'd say at least 50% of the people who drive on the local 20mph roads near me abide by the speed limit (that has not active enforcement) and this prevents quite a few others from speeding.
>inb4 pitchfork raising amongst the anti-car rabble
I don't know why you think anti-car people would raise pitchforks at that. In fact this was my criticism of the proposal when I lived in Wales; there seemed to be little attempt to alter the street environments to match the lower limits. I want effective 20 mph zones and that can't happen just by changing a few speed limit signs.
My prediction was that it would backfire: motorists behaviours wouldn't change, so the speed limits would be flouted even more than they are now. Councils wouldn't enforce it consistently, giving credence to the view that it's simply a revenue-generating scheme and/or a way for police to punish people arbitrarily. This is already the case for parking offenses; Cardiff motorists can park on double-yellows with almost complete impunity. Then, populist backlash, law gets repealed, making it even harder to get support for real street safety measures in the future.
Well I'm sure that's the case for some of them but you shouldn't let jokers and extremists poison your opinion of what is in reality a quite sensible policy.
Redesigning entire streets is tricky; setting lower speed limits is easier.
If you look at the data for speed limits vs deaths they show pretty convincingly that what drivers think are "completely normal speeds" are actually "reckless driving".
Once in a while I have to travel to one of the other districts of the city I live in, and I'm reminded that I happen to live in the district which once had tram lines, and you can really tell. My friend moved his young family further out, rationalising that young kids need more outdoor space (their new house is physically smaller, but in an area with woodland) and he didn't like his old neighbourhood (students, drug addicts), but every time I visit the first thing I have to do is risk my life, crossing a busy road with no pedestrian crossings, because everybody there (including them) drives everywhere.
For a while the nice people I buy pizza from owned a restaurant (they began, and now continue, as a food truck, wood burning oven inside a converted vehicle) and it too was in a district that was converted to car-focused urban living in the 1970s or so. That time I at least discovered an intersection with a crossing, albeit low priority (ie arrive, press button, wait 2-3 minutes to cross) and their restaurant faced the river so that's quiet.
I tend to think of the whole city as being like where I live -- rat runs diverted to a few arteries, heavy use of mandatory (Zebra or sometimes Puffin) crossings with moderate urgency for pedestrians or where I work (the city refused permission to close the road through our university, but authorised speed bumps and four very high urgency Puffins, so in effect it's faster to drive around it even though the road exists straight through it) -- but that's actually not true which is sad. I know where our existing MP lives, it's near me, I wonder where the next one (well, the candidate from the same party who will stand next time) lives ?
Amazing amount of effort spent on preventing the occasional superfluous vehicle stop when the pedestrian is gone for some reason. Would be surprised if the sensors did not raise a lot of false negatives for pedestrian presence, forcing them to keep begging at the knob?
I wonder what drivers would have to say to lights that are always red unless they press some button and wait?
Pedestrians stop being there like all the time. Typically they cross on red, either because they saw a gap (and there's no law requiring them to wait, just politeness) or else they risked it anyway because they were impatient. Having crossed, the pedestrian no longer needs the lights so unless there's a pedestrian cycle anyway (as there may be at a junction) it should be elided.
I've literally never had to "keep begging". I believe them that the sensors exist, but the event you seem to think would happen frequently has never occurred in my experience.
I've met in southern France car sensors - a metal plate on the road making the equivalent pedestrian crossing request button. As a tourist you had to be told about it.
All London's crossings, which tourists are more likely to be familiar with, are Pelicans, although sometimes modified with countdown timers in busy areas.
London doesn't use Puffins by policy, I'm not sure exactly why - in very high density areas I can see that the Puffin features aren't helpful, but that doesn't explain a full policy.
[Differences: A Puffin's cross/ don't cross indication is local, your side of the road, next to the button and angled such that you're looking at oncoming nearside traffic as well as the indicator; whereas a Pelican has indication atop a post on the far side of the road. The timers work differently meaning Puffins can react faster if unused for a period and then called, initiating a walk cycle very quickly in this case if able; if you're road traffic the difference is that Pelicans use flashing amber and Puffins never do IIRC]
There are definitely puffin crossings in London. But I think you're right - central London tends to have pelicans. The policy must not apply throughout greater London though.
Sometimes in the west end you'll have a hundred people waiting to cross - higher pedestrian signals on the other side of the road are probably more visible to everyone in that situation. And I guess it's helpful if crossings are consistent in an area: particularly in areas with lots of visitors.
To be fair, if huge numbers of people want to cross, it's actually mere politeness which keeps them from just doing it. If you just walk into a busy street, you'd perhaps be hit by a car and injured or killed, but, if a hundred people do it the cars are forced to stop by the literal weight of the obstacles.
I remember thinking about this on my way back from a London fireworks display (Richmond maybe? Somewhere that way) because obviously an entire crowd of thousands want to cross a street suddenly and they're not going to politely queue up and wait for light changes, they just all cross, because there's nothing car drivers can do about it. A few minutes away, with the crowds dispersed, it was necessary to actually use crossings, but outside the park where thousands of people had just watched the display a crossing was completely superfluous.
I don't know either way whether 20mph makes sense in places like Wales, but at least in central London I think the shift to 20mph speed limits is great. Based on what I've seen, I'd be shocked if it isn't providing a meaningful improvement in safety for cyclists and pedestrians and lowering the severity when there is a car crash. And it seems like it also provides an extra nudge towards people using public transit rather than driving/ubering.
UK over the years has been destroying something immensely valuable that you can't get back quickly. For example, there are barely any speed cameras on local roads in the UK (compared to other European countries) and yet almost everyone drives under the limit. It's the same with police not needing guns. I think people just don't understand how valuable (and unusual) this is.
Edit: As has been pointed out to me, there are a lot of speed cameras in the UK, but half of them are in the London area where I don't drive (and the rest are mostly motorways) which is why I had that impression.
What?! I experienced this vastly differently. I drove from Dover to Lands' End and back this year, and the route was absolutely riddled with speed cams, compared to the Netherlands.
I should clarify, there are cameras on motorways but hardly any on local roads where the 20 speed limit is used. Also, all cameras are signposted and there are obvious lines on the road so you can see exactly where the measurement is taken.
There are three speed cameras in 20mph limits near me in my area of London. Whenever I'm near them I see someone flashed by them about once every 5 minutes (one is opposite a bus stop that I often wait at).
It's surprising just how many people will continue to speed past these very visible cameras.
Possibly, but it's a dangerous long game to play. You're at the mercy of pretty much every Police patrol car with ANPR once the cloned plates are tagged as such. Getting caught with cloned plates is far more serious.
That's a "consent of the governed" thing; they're unpopular enough already, but making them sneaky, hiding them round corners, etc. was even more unpopular, so in a spirit of British fair play they are fully visible and if you get caught it's your own fault for not paying attention.
When they were first being installed, drivers got all whiny and said it wasn't fair. They were being tricked and local authorities were using them to raise cash rather than enforce speed limits. Cameras were placed where speeding was very common, and councils were supposedly hiding them behind foliage to catch as many people as possible. If they were really about stopping speeding, shouldn't they be visible?
Basically, drivers didn't want to have to obey the speed limit all the time (God forbid!). But they could just about put up with being forced to obey the limit where it was particularly dangerous. So to mollify the car lobby a rule was introduced that the cameras had to be highly visible.
Thats factually incorrect. The uk has the third largest number of speed cameras in europe, below only russia and italy. It’s quite annoying having cameras everywhere frankly.
Wow, do I feel silly now but in my defence I'm talking from experience, not having checked the stats. Maybe all those cameras are in London because wherever I drive I only see speed cameras on motorways.
Because drivers should be trusted to drive to the conditions. Those that speed stupidly will do so regardless of cameras (they will just slow down when they see one which actually makes things more dangerous) and those that drive to the conditions will speed when they believe it’s safe to do so and won’t speed when it’s not safe to do so, which means cameras are actually making driving less safe because they need to drop down for 400m and then speed up again.
Every speed limit purist reply to this argument is that without cameras everyone would be going mad at 120mph no matter what. This just isn’t true and our country roads being mostly 60 mph is proof of this. 60mph is too fast for many of those country roads, everyone knows this and so most will drive 50/40/30 etc depending on the conditions.
I’d say considering the state of many roads speeding wont be an issue anyway.
My issue is with the government being literarily _everywhere_ to the point where it’s creepy.
It really only shows that either the british society is in fact quite “uncivilised” and requires massive amounts of policing in order to “behave” or that the frog is getting boiled for something bigger.
Agree, the “see it, say it, sort it” tannoy announcements on the trains drives me mad - we are getting treated like children. I don’t buy in to “government control” conspiracies but clipboard warriors overly bothered about rules and everyone behaving just like them seem to have been able to push through a lot of this stuff.
Country roads also have a) considerably less traffic and pedestrians b) often have obvious blind spots which drivers cannot speed around without very obviously rolling the dice. Its why you see traffic calming measures in Belgium and the Netherlands which are in the form of straight avenues having lots of bends[0] in to ensure drivers have to pay much closer attention to the road.
Further to that, putting signage on a lot of these rural areas isnt economically viable for a road that has very little thoroughfare and associated accidents. That said, having 60 everywhere and trusting drivers sound insane
I agree, for roads clearly separated from pedestrians and cyclists. You can barely see what's around the next corner on those fenced in country roads, you'd be insane to drive 60 mph even tho that's the speed limit.
In residential areas however I'm totally fine with low limits + many cameras. A collision with a pedestrian at 20 mph might be survivable, at 40 it's a death sentence. And in residential areas, on well-asphalted straight roads, people will speed like maniacs.
I agree that 40 is too fast for urban settings, but 30 isn’t and that’s the most common speed limit and what would be moved to 20.
I drove at 20 the other day for a bit assuming that this Wales rubbish would make it to England and it’s hard to stick to due to the drive train config (I drive a very boring Volvo as well), 25 is much easier.
Which brings us to the point another commented made: design the roads as such lower speed is the only sensible way to drive. No straight 4 lanes through town, but... is "chicanes" the correct word? Tree islands, roundabouts, curves, parking spots, crossings, yes even bumps, many things can be added to force lower speeds and sometimes even make the neighborhood look nicer.
Well they don't put cameras where you can't exceed 60. That would be stupid. Where they do put them, people get caught at over 60. So I still don't see the problem.
I suspect they mean the number of CCTV cameras in the UK rather than road safety cameras specifically. If you are concerned about the erosion of privacy in public spaces then that would be a valid point.
> there are barely any speed cameras in the UK (compared to other European countries) and yet almost everyone drives under the limit
As a UK resident who spends a lot of time in France and Italy this statement really surprised me, and really isn't my experience. I had to read it twice as I assumed you meant the opposite
I recently drove from Brighton to Glasgow vis Nottingham. I'd easily passed through 10 before I reached the M25 south of London, including one on the street I lived on. The M25 itself easily had 10 possibly way more. The M1 must have had another 10 or so. I passed through about 5 or so driving through Nottingham. Similarly there about 5 before I hit the A1 which now has dozens. There were 3 or 4 on the A66 and even the M74 and M8 have cameras now. I keep Apple Maps on the whole journey even though I don't need it, specifically to beep and warn me when I'm approaching one.
I can't recall seeing cameras in France, but I'm sure they are there somewhere, plus I rarely drive through the large cities. I've never seen one in Italy, but maybe I don't know what they look like and I tend to drive the same routes. I have seen the police at the side of the road with a handheld radar.
Are we maybe driving different parts of Europe?
A quick check (after writing most of this) gave me this graph which, as a non-member, I can't see the sources for, but looks believable.
Which, ignoring Russia, has Italy #1 and the UK #2. So, clearly, I'm not driving the parts of Italy with lots of cameras, but the UK has more cameras than most European countries.
> yet almost everyone drives under the limit
Is also something I haven't observed. We have 'boy racers' shooting up and down our street, the M25 has giant expensive cars aggressively pulling up behind you and flashing their lights and driving through speed camera without a care (or weaving through traffic by undertaking). The right-hand lane of most motorways is people driving 90-100 mph when they can. My experience is that it's congestion, not British good manners that keep people under the speed limit. On the M11 which, last I checked, was still camera free, the fast lane was people driving at 100mph. The 6 lanes on the A1(M) between Huntington and Peterborough was even faster. I recently got an early-morning Taxi from Brighton to Heathrow, and the taxi driver drove at 125mph between cameras.
Yes, plenty of cameras on motorways. I set my cruise control on motorways and ignore them so maybe that's why it didn't spring to mind. But the article is about local roads and at least where I drive I never see any. I drive in Europe occasionally and I think they have more cameras on local roads but again, it's my experience and not stats. I don't drive around London so maybe my experience is not representative.
I have only seen a mobile speed camera van once in my life. Even that was signposted. If you want to avoid tickets and keep speeding it's super easy. I don't see people speeding. Again, I imagine it might be different around London but isn't everything different over there?
The UK has tons of speed cameras and people certainly don't drive under the limit due to free will. Most GPS units display where the speed cameras are located so UK drivers know where to speed and where not to.
Policing by consensus. People respected the rules because they agreed with the rules and trusted the rulemakers. Now the trust in rulemakers is gone and some people disagree with some rules.
I wonder what the impact of this policing by consensus was. Did the UK spend a lower percentage of GDP on policing than peer nations ? I don't think they have lower crime numbers. Surely not in London.
The "faster to bike" is a sign that may be driving isn't necessary after all.
This article is kind of silly, and it's even worse seeing it from the BBC. I remember as a young person thr BBC felt more impartial than US news orgs but this article reads like a "news" piece from a sinclair owned station ranting about bikes and blacks.
It quotes people's opionions and experiences from both sides so it's impartial. Some of the quotes are actually pretty funny, particularly "proper tailback". There's certainly no ranting and no one critising cycling or minorities. Are you sure you're not projecting your general opinions of the BBC onto this piece?
People don't intuitively understand the difference between phase velocity and group velocity. Often you will see people speeding between stoplights, never to actually break away from the same "wave packet" that you are within. When these limits are introduced there is often no affect on journey times whatsoever.
The towns in the part of France where I am also have this limit (30kmh). Hardly anyone obeys it of course. But it's interesting how they try to enforce it. On small roads they install speed humps and/or alternative-side parking. On through roads they cannot do that, since they would slow down emergency vehicles. So they put those fyi radars, which don't seem to have any effect anymore. The real automated camera+radar installations are rare and signalled ahead (by law?), and cars always obey the limit in those areas.
Isn't is wonderful how vehicle owners are entitled to break the law, and nobody seems to care? Driving drunk, ignoring the speed limit, are all actions that directly endanger unrelated citizens. And all that vehicle operators have to say is "of course".
I'd say that's lack of enforcement "of course". And I really couldn't care less about people now claiming "ohh but that's stupid" - it's your country, vote against those speed measures if you don't like them. Or just follow them, because your own mates and not some reptilians voted for them.
I am a pedestrian. I am the one put in danger by reckless vehicle owners. No surprise that you "couldn't care less". Do you even realize that there is a demographic of people who don't own nor operate a car?
Could it be you are answering to a different comment? Edit to rehash my point: drivers will say they don't follow the speed limits because "they are stupid" but all in general, if somebody thinks a rule is stupid they shouldn't keep voting for the creators of said rules. Ignoring rules should be punished and there's an obvious lack on this side, if the people can safely ignore rules they aren't really rules are they. Anyway having those speeding rules means you as pedestrian seem to have a majority right now, and if somebody wants to fight against that majority they should motivate a different majority. All democratic innit.
In an nearby area where they have introduced 20mph for many streets the police have said that they have very low resources to properly enforce the limit and instead will be enforced "voluntarily". The council actually wanted more streets as 20mph but the police said that they really couldn't support the larger area effectively blocking it!
Good question as it's somewhat counter intuitive. I think that all roads are not equally looked at by the police.
So you would have lets say 10 major roads that get a patrol twice a day, and a deployable manned speed camera between them. If we add 20 minor roads to the jobs, then the police would need extra manpower to drive down these roads and another couple of speed cameras and crew to cover this increased demand. The assumption I am making is that many of the 20 mph roads were not previously under active patrols / enforcements when they were 30mph.
Perhaps it's a kind of active enforcement versus a passive kind.
A lot of 20mph limits as enforced simply by some motorists driving at <=20mph. This prevents anyone behind from speeding unless they go for some stupid overtaking manoeuvre.
So, yes, simply sticking up a sign and not actively enforcing it (Police, speed cameras) can have a pretty good effect.
The point I'm making (albeit glibly) is that the perception of the public is that we shouldn't be imposing speed limits to our roads that appear too slow. However the reality is that in many places we can't even travel at the maximum speed allowed on them because of the sheer volume of traffic. I don't care either way tbh.
Should change the name of the place to "whales", then the whole world would join in trying to save them all. (No point in blubbering about it, there's strength in numbers!)
> I went on a road trip a month on from the controversial change... with an open mind.
It's not possible to have an open mind about it. If the law is based on large-number population statistics, an individual driving around talking to people will have zero basis to question the statistics. If the judgement is to be based on personal preferences, well then you don't have an open mind, you have your mind.
There's nothing wrong with voting on policy based on personal opinion and preferences, but why tell me you have an open mind, as if other people don't?
There are numerous references to increased congestion as a result of the reduced speed limits in built-up areas, but the UK has a fairly strong "You should always be 2 seconds behind the car in front" element to driving rules, and naively if there's two seconds between every car then the number of cars passing a particular point in a given amount of time is going to be the same regardless of how fast they're travelling, so is there a real model where a lower speed limit reduces throughput in a meaningful way without violating this constraint?
In New Zealand the government has been working to drop many urban speed limits to 30kmh or 40kmh. Luckily a new government has just been elected who will reverse many of these reductions.
This will impact the driving tests as well. A typical practical driving test lasts for 35-40 min. But with 20mph it will cover less distance. Interesting to see how the DVSA (the body which conducts these tests) handle this.
Increasing test duration means the backlog (which is already huge) will increase. Keeping same will mean less road features will be tested.
Refresher tests every 10 years would do more to solve the current driving standards problem in the UK. But it'd be political suicide for any Government that tried to introduce it.
Hmm, I don’t really know what “British English” is, here in Britain we speak English!
I am reliably informed that our language has spread to other countries who have their own interesting and sometimes peculiar variations. We give these variations labels such as “American English” to distinguish them from the original.
Every car sold at the moment lowers the speed shown on the speedometer algorithmically. Therefore I can believe that although 20mph=32kph and I have problems reaching 32kph constantly on a gravel bike - when cars go 20mph they will go probably around 27kph which is the speed I can maintain on my bicycle.
For something different - cars going at slow speeds emit more fumes and consume more fuel.
"
Do slower speeds cause congestion and pollution?
Imperial College London's research into the impact of 20mph speed limits suggests they have no net negative impact on exhaust emissions. Results indicated clear benefits to driving style and associated particulate emissions. The research found that vehicles moved more smoothly, with fewer accelerations and decelerations, than in 30mph zones, reducing particulate emissions from tyre and brake wear. We have undertaken an Environmental Evaluation and are satisfied that the lowering of speeds will not have an adverse impact on the environment or air quality. The Environmental Evaluation recommendation was that no air quality modelling was therefore required.
"
> Every car sold at the moment lowers the speed shown on the speedometer algorithmically.
? Do you mean "raises"?
The legal requirement is that it MUST NOT under-report your speed. So generally they over-read by about 10% compared to GPS ground track speed measurement.
Central government has said they want to be pro "the motorist" and constantly threaten the BBC / put GB News types in charge and now we get articles like this.
This is worse than the both sidesism of before, this is like reading an article from any of the right wing press.
Traffic volume is reduced with more people choosing walking and cycling. Speeds are reduced only a little (you weren't going as quickly as you thought anyway) but potentially reducing accidents. The Edinburgh data shows a dramatic reduction in accidents, down almost a third.