Well There’s a Surprise

November 23, 2018 Longrider Driving Instruction, General News, Transport 11

The plethora of 20mph speed limits in urban areas has had no noticeable effect on road safety.

There is “insufficient evidence” that a 20mph speed limit has led to a significant reduction in the number of crashes and casualties in UK residential areas, a government-commissioned study has found.

There has been a substantial growth in the number of 20mph limits following the Department for Transport’s decision in 2013 to encourage local authorities to consider the measure in a bid to reduce casualties and boost walking and cycling.

Those of us who take an interest in such things – as opposed to fake charities such as BRAKE who are little more than parasites with an agenda – have been aware of this probability since the whole twenty is plenty bollocks started to show its ugly face. We live in a society that thinks speed is lethal. A hard of thinking society that is obsessed with speed limits.

Speed limits do not make a road safer because speed limits are an arbitrary limit that bears no relationship to the prevailing conditions. A safe speed may be above or below the posted limit and drivers are instinctively aware of this – so an empty road with a posted 20mph limit is an absurdity. It is perfectly possible to traverse it safely at 30mph or even more – providing the driver can stop in what he sees to be clear. And that is the crux – can you stop in what you can see to be clear? Are you paying attention to the surrounding road and pavements? Are you assessing the hazards? These are the things that make the roads safer, not stupid absurd low speed limits designed by cretins.

The report also found that a majority of vehicles break the speed limit in the 20mph zones in residential areas.

Well, duh! What did you expect? If the posted limit is obviously absurd and bears no relationship with the prevailing conditions, drivers will treat it with the contempt it deserves. I see this regularly. A road near here was once national speed limit. This reduced to 40mph through the village then back to national speed limit. So drivers would travel at around 50mph as this is probably the right speed for the road, reducing a bit for the village. Now the whole road is 40mph , rising to 50mph for the final mile or so. And what happens? Pretty much everyone ignores the 40mph because it is clearly inappropriate for the road. It’s what happens. People will take the calculated risk of getting caught because the speed limit is clearly political and they choose to ignore it, undermining the whole concept. As for 20mph for any sustained distance, it is painful to maintain as modern vehicles simply do not work well at such a low speed. That said, the Kawasaki copes better than the two BMWs. The car can be set to a maximum speed using the speed limiter and as it’s an auto copes better than a manual where dodging up and down between second and third gear becomes tiresome. And doing that increases fuel consumption and fumes. Yet we have the self-same cretins campaigning for a reduction in those.

The AA president, Edmund King, said speed limits must reflect the nature of roads so drivers can “easily understand why the limit is set”.

Indeed and the road out of Keynsham is an example of not getting it right and where no one travels at 20mph unless the speed trap is set just on the approach to the 30mph limit. It is stupidly slow and does not reflect the hazards except when the schools are coming and going, where a temporary limit would be fine.

“The research suggests blanket 20mph zones dilute the speed limit’s effectiveness and compliance.”

Yes, quite. But don’t expect the cretins at BRAKE or the useful idiots who listen to them to take any notice of pragmatism and common sense.

Joshua Harris, the director of campaigns at the road safety charity Brake, said: “Breaking the speed limit is breaking the law and those who do so should be punished. We must make a success of 20mph limits but to do so we need more enforcement which is delivered consistently across the country.”

See?

11 Comments

  2. Indeed, idiots who are a real danger to life and limb take no notice of speed limits, nor do they alter their driving to take account of cold wet salted or icy roads.

    Most of us long experienced drivers had and still have an inbuilt sense of what is a safe speed at any particular time depending on conditions, the vehicle we are in control of, road layout, terrain, obstacles and the likelihood of danger presenting itself, but then we may well have learned just how little grip there is under tyres in adverse conditions and learned to respect that, before all the electronics got put into modern vehicles which actually take control from the driver now, bikers learn this very quickly as did lorry drivers when they still had to control artics themselves.

    We see people in fast cars flooring it as they exit wet slippery roundabouts regularly, when in reality if they switched off all the electrics and floored it they would probably end up in the armco like they did so regularly 30 years ago in fast 2wd cars especially.

    • @Judd

      …we may well have learned just how little grip there is under tyres in adverse conditions and learned to respect that, bikers learn this very quickly…

      +1

      If they don’t – Darwin Award.

      imo all these electronic “safety” features encourage lack of responsibility and skill. Big problem is when vehicle exceeds electronic limits, driver has no chance of recovering.

      Back to bikes, highsiders didn’t happen until big sticky rear tyres. I’d rather have a slide than a highsider.

  3. Jimmy Carr: “Say what you like about paedophiles, but they do drive slowly when going past schools.”

  4. And is there any hope that (in the light of this evidence) councils will stop wasting our money on more schemes, and better still, remove the existing ones?

    I think we can guess the answer…

  5. These twenty zones are often festooned with all kinds of so called traffic calming measures which are potential hazards in themselves. Being both a driver and a cyclist I would say that these things are not helpful to either. In some parts of Hull the speed bumps are a joke anyway due to the appalling state of the roads. One stretch that I encounter regularly on my commute is best described as the remains of a road.

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