20s Not Plenty

Get rid of them. Stupid, pathetic things.

So logically…as moderator I would have assumed your stance would have been to provided a balanced view.

The point is to apply the right speed to the appropriate road. A far more progressive view rather than blanket speeds across whole districts.

I’m not totally against some limits, however more thought has to be applied to why and where these are applied.

Should a four lane road like London embankment be limited to 20mph?

Quick google search
Camden, City of London, Hackney, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Richmond, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster . Islington will have nearly all local and TfL roads limited to 20mph by the end of next year.

Much of this is a cost saving game.

We are still using the EU regs that say any road rated at more than 80kph ( 50mph ) needs to be inspected 3 x per year.
Roads rated at 80kph ( 50mph ) and less only need to be inspected once per year.
The councils have now saved the cost of 2 inspections per year just by reducing the 60 zone to a 50 or lower zone.

Scottish Borders Council introduced a 20 limit in 90 towns and villages from early 2023, the rationale is set out in the link below.

I wish we were. But the deal that was signed seems to have us tied in to EU regs on many things.

Cars WILL be getting black boxes fitted as of July this year - in accordance with EU regs

The black boxes WILL need to be active from July 2025 - in accordance with EU regs.

Honestly I hadn’t seen your link.

Well, if someone hadn’t moaned this thread would not exist and your reply would not be indexed into the search engines. So, a positive? lol

Point taken, 30 mph is far too fast for this type of A road…

If a council is the highways authority then the decision about speed limits is theirs alone. Highways England (previously the Highways Agency ) is responsible , typically, for motorways and some other major roads.

A statement is made that half the staff at someone’s local council don’t drive Evidence ? And even if it were true , which I doubt, so what ? Shouldn’t we encourage people to use other means of transport if they can ? If I lived and worked in Leeds. let alone London, and wasn’t interested in driving I wouldn’t want, or even need a car.

I worked as a lawyer for a large County Council and spent a lot of time with highways engineers. Many of them were very keen drivers -one even drove to Le Mans every year in an Austin Seven special. The road safety boss was a keen biker and the one time chair of highways committee turned up to meetings in a Ferrari and had a Group C racing team.

Stereotyping people is temptingly easy to make a point but is often very wide of the mark.

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All the best with your campagining.

I can’t help but feel knocking 10pmh off a 30mph is not going to make the slightest bit of change from and environment point of view.

Time and resources would be much better spent on other incentives such as mass introducing solar panels across the country.

We certainly need more solar but I doubt we will ever get enough . Judging by my local area , no planned development for anything , anywhere will go unopposed . Housing , road improvements ,retail , wholesale, any farming except pretty wheat fields, wind power, solar power is all met by howls of protest. NIMBY-ism is the new religion.

Looks like the huge 1/2 MILLION signatories in Wales, plus maybe new personnel, might be seeing them roll back some of that stupid law.

The high street in our local town is a 20mph zone, yet if you come in off a side street which is 30mph, there isn’t a single sign anywhere saying you’re in a 20 zone.
The only time you would know is when you leave the 20 zone and see a 30 sign.

Wales’s blanket 20mph speed limits will be dropped by September, the nation’s new Labour transport secretary has said.

Local councils can start raising limits in six months’ time, Ken Skates told the devolved Senedd parliament on Tuesday.

“We all agree 20mph works really well where it matters most. Outside schools, hospitals, heavily built-up areas, where children are coming into contact with motorised vehicles,” he said.

Funny how there’s an outbreak of common sense within a few weeks of council elections and within 12 months of a General Election.

"where children are coming into contact with motorised vehicles,”

Whenever you cross the road use the Green Cross Code. Children leaving school are invariably with their parents. About time the onus was put back onto them to teach their children road sense instead of demonising motorists. There’s a First School near me. Every day some parents park on the zig-zags. They never get a ticket.

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if people have been ignoring the 30mph zones, then they will also ignore 20mph. The problem as always is enforcement. I live near Cambridge City and the police admitted that they do not have the resources to enforce the 20 limits; my assumption is that the 20 limit only comes into play if someone has a crash and the assessment shows that they must have been doing more than 20.

I think we’ll also see more criminal cloning of number plates because motorists will have a much greater incentive to avoid speeding fines.

The ABD wrote about this

Wide-area 20mph zones are proliferating, despite sound evidence presented to the DfT that these zones do not improve road safety, but can: (1) actually increase fatal and serious injury risk for vulnerable road users, (2) do increase vehicle emissions, (3) do waste valuable productive time by lengthening every previously 30mph journey by up to 50%, and (4) do impede the progress of emergency service vehicles.

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Any government has to balance the freedom for people to live their lives as they wish and the imposition of rules so that individuals freedoms don’t impinge on the safety of everyone else. Of course 20mph reduces the risk of serious injury as sped is reduced. However, you could ban all cars and that would reduce risk still further. It’s about the balance of what is reasonable. What is reasonable depends on your perspective.
I think it makes imminent sense to have 20 mph (or less) limits around schools, particularly at the start and end of the day.

What is officially ‘reasonable’ has totally nothing to do with my perspective, it is what the Gov’t’s perspective is, as inferred in tour first comment.

I live near Carlisle and over the border in Scotland the 20 mph limit has been imposed by the administration in all villages and town centres. However no one seems to obey this speed limit unless a camera or speed gun is deployed and it’s not the will of the people but purely political. So you can only presume it’s a potential money spinner in fine generation . However I do agree with this limit near schools or parks. To be honest when you drive an open top car your behaviour changes and you become more considerate to other drivers maybe it’s my age but I do obey the 30 mph limit in all areas.

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I don’t object to most 20 limits either, it does tend to slow people down to 30. If they would observe limits we might have fewer 20’s.

Cushions, platforms, sleeping policemen - too often they are badly designed or constructed, and cause tyre and suspension damage.

Truthfully most drivers are inconsiderate, tailgating and driving too fast in residential areas and too slowly some decent NSL roads where they are rolling road blocks.

Other people, eh?

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I don’t object to any speed limits or cameras wherever they are necessary or warranted, but just because the electorate are generally compliant and law abiding people it doesn’t mean government need to take advantage of this and get so used to seemingly imposing whatever they want with increasing frequency.

Can’t argue with that. However it’s right I think that, other than NSL provisions, speed limits are generally in the control of the local authority, who should be in touch with local needs.

I think it’s fairly common for people to think that the speed limit outside their house is too high, and the limits where other people live are a darn nuisance.

More than disagreeing with speed limits, I often think that the lower limits extend too far and become an “ambush” for people accelerating away from a settlement. And guess where they are most likely to put the speed camera van?

I usually manage to get caught infrequently enough to be offered speed awareness training. I must be one of the best trained drivers around:)