Living and thriving with 20mph in Wales

In reply to JimJam

Given that you are "a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers" and are someone with " more than a passing interest in this matter," I'm surprised that you are under the misapprehension that there is to be a "blanket solution". https://www.gov.wales/introducing-default-20mph-speed-limits Provides information on the introduction of 20mph limits - reasons, maps, draft plans, details of the roles of local authorities and the need for consultations. Maybe you've (and others in seems) have confused "default" limits with" blanket" limits. Default means that there will be exceptions "blanket" means no exceptions. If it comes down to residents on a street by street basis I can't see them not going for a 20mph limit for their street as it's in their and their families interests. It might not be in the interests of other motorists using that street but it's likely that their views won't have primacy. As a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers you might already know that some streets in the Netherlands have speed limits the equivalent of 19mph or even 9mph. Maybe motorists in Cymru haven't go so much to get agitated about.

In reply to JimJam

"For every credible source promoting the cause, I can list an equally credible resource that shows a negative impact." I have to comment on the absurdity of this statement. Please provide a link to evidence that shows that being hit by a car travelling at 30mph causes less injuries and fatalities than being hit by a car travelling at 20mph!

In reply to Alex

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately I can't find the research paper it came from which means that it throws up a lot of questions. A main point that the summary hinges on is the "engineering recommendation" of a road which I assume is the speed limit that someone decided historically that the speed limit should be. It suggests a scientific approach but isn't totally as it would be incredible if the science always determined that speed limits were multiples of 5. So the speed limits we have aren't set by some physical law or constant and they are adhered to in a large part by familiarity and habit. A lot of people don't like the unfamiliar and changing their habit but habits can change. The' right' for drivers to drive at 21 -30mph everywhere where a speed limit of 30mph was set 90 years ago will probably go.

In reply to Alex

"this law doesn’t prohibit people driving genuinely dangerous speeds more," A different law punishes that - The Road Traffic Act 1988 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/2A Give me strength!

In reply to CapM

The assumption being made that motorists are incapable of driving at a speed that's appropriate for the conditions while simultaneously expecting them to slow down because the limits have been changed is counterintuitive. Speed limits aren't meant to be a target speed, they're meant to be the fastest you can go under ideal or at least favorable conditions. If there's plenty of non-compliance with it, either the limit is wrong, or the design of the road is, something has to give. The way the limits are increasingly being set with indifference to the road's design is in and of itself what causes apathy towards limits. Where the 85th percentile method has been used, compliance is very much higher but speeds aren't. Some of the limits on main roads in Cardiff just come across as beyond contempt, that's not how you get people to respect laws. Look up the "Pygmalion Effect".

In reply to CapM

The perfectly realistic capability of an old mass-produced Ford 8 to hurtle irresponsibly through the residential streets of 1935 at twice the long-established speed limit that is now to be reduced by 10mph shows merely that there were fewer cars then, so that the notional threat was seen as too remote a possibility to have become a concern. Experience nonetheless, unfortunately, shows there are now so many high-performance vehicles available to the general public which are capable of easily accelerating far beyond even 60mph that stricter policing is necessary than was the case pre-War. It is clear also that public trust in motoring standards is very low, based on the not unreasonable assumption that excessive speed tends to injure and kill too often. At the highest speeds this is true on all roads in all conditions. Speed becomes statistically less risky as it drops, of course. The crucial question, then, is how practically to regulate the speed of the private motorist in all conditions and on all occasions? The solution has always been to impose speed limits that reflect actual road conditions. Speeds of less than 30mph have always been possible to legislate for and have for some time taken account of dangerous conditions such as poor visibility, treacherous weather or road conditions and the presence of much slower traffic including pedestrians. Even when no particular speed limit has been set, motorists have always been made fully aware of the offence of dangerous driving which makes recklessness punishable by law. Speed limits are simply a convenient way in which to avoid subjective interpretations of any motorist's driving style. I do really think that the standard urban limit of 30mph gives sufficient scope to catch the really reckless driver. Special 20mph provisions - and in places actually even lower limits - already exist for the neighbourhood of schools, Old Folks' Homes. housing estates and residential streets that are narrow or poorly provided with safe pavements and good lighting. The requirement that local authorities or communities must seek an exception from the new, generally applicable and very low urban limit now decided upon is in my view extreme and unnecessary. It smacks of a doctrinaire paranoia about motoring per se and an excessive suspicion of drivers. The present measure is in serious danger of unbalancing the basic principle of all highway management, which is to achieve a sensible compromise between safety and the actual function of any road, which is of course to permit the efficient passage of traffic, in order that journeys should proceed without undue hindrance and delay. The 'Green' justification for discouraging widespread motoring cannot seriously be maintained in view of the 'sunset clause' now rendering ICE vehicles obsolescent in favour of 'clean' EV's. Nevertheless, the much more relevant Safety issue can, is and should continue to be addressed on the basis that 30mph remains the sensible base-measure of safe urban driving, in view of the fact that pragmatic exceptions are always more acceptable than the sort of costly and onerous bureaucratic overreach we are now about to endure in Wales. The sweeping 20mph restriction, that is coming, will only save the huge notional number of injuries and deaths which statistical modelling has predicted if the assumption that careless speeding is the norm here is correct. I find it difficult to believe that Britain's drivers are unusually dangerous, since Government figures show that only Scandinavia and Switzerland have a better road safety record, with British fatalities only slightly higher than those others. These, our near-equals in road safety, have comparable traffic density which suggests that the performance of those at the top of this table is difficult to substantially improve upon. I cannot see that the cost and inconvenience of the 20mph crusade can be justified by any objective analysis of cost-benefit. Tragedy can and does result from any human activity in this dangerous world, however desirable may be the purposes of even our most benign activities: At random, for instance, one must observe that ocean-liners, ferries. merchant vessels, fishing boats, canoes and inflatable lilos regularly and in horrifying numbers are involved in accidents and sink with loss of life. Yet, does anyone seek to regulate these activities out of viable existence in an access of grief for those who perish on the sea? No: It has always been sanely and sensibly recognised that some risk must always be accepted whenever and wherever we venture forth in this hard world. The current persecution of the motorist is the result of subjective emotionalism and political virtue-signalling, imho. The 20mph restriction has an only marginal utility in terms of road safety; it is essentially a political warning to the public, signposting our way to the end of private motoring. It turns our roads into a funeral cortege for a way of life that has been a convenience, a commercial necessity and a generally harmless pleasure for over a century. Motoring is a casualty of doctrinaire political bureaucracy. Our profoundly negative age is generally fond of Zero as a target: Unreal ambitions of this nature are ultimately a doomed enterprise. Utopias must be enforced in the teeth of human nature and consequently their misguided devisers only ever realise intolerable, intolerant Dystopias for us. This is the depressing, illiberal pattern of restriction and prohibition throughout contemporary Britain.