20 MPH speed limits, legal or not?

[Avocet]

All of those graphs are showing a downward trend. How can you say new safety measures have not worked?

Not really. As Motorbiking says, you need to ignore the effect of the lockdown, because clearly, there would be a drop if there aren't any cars around, but you've already said you don't want to stop cars...
What you're left with, is a VERY slight reduction, which is easily explained by changes in vehicle technology. If you step back and look at the bigger picture, you can see the rate at which deaths and serious injuries have fallen historically, and you can see that when you look at that same bigger picture leading up to the last decade's graphs that Motorbiking posted, they have effectively "flatlined" for over a decade now.

 

[JP_]

So what are you going to campaign for when all the limits are 20

Nobody suggested that will happen, and i never said i want that!

 

[JP_]

You also appear to have made the assumption that I'm somehow in favour of killing children

Nope.

 

[Avocet]

Nobody suggested that will happen, and i never said i want that!

So just to be clear, what DO you want?

 

[Avocet]

...You only need to Google child deaths in roads by schools to see how many have been killed in collisions. It's unacceptable that we still put impatient drivers before the lives of children.

Slow down!

...You also appear to have made the assumption that I'm somehow in favour of killing children, or perhaps indulge in a spot of child killing myself. I can assure you that I haven't killed (or seriously injured, or slightly injured, or even touched any children with any vehicle I have ever driven).

Nope.

OK, so you don't regard me, (or any other driver who is not in favour of the use of 20 MPH speed limits other than in a few, very specific and restricted areas and at restricted times), as wanting to "put impatient drivers before the lives of children", then, and your exhortation to "Slow down!", wasn't directed at anyone who might hold that view?

 

[Munroast]

the only reason KSI figures are not continuing to fall is down to the slashing of police budgets and the fact that 'road policing' has become a low priority for the police.

But as I have said before, the 20mph limit is also aimed at making the roads more plesant for all, walkers, cyclists, horseriders, children going to school. If we could get the 20 mph strictly enforced then may be we could get people out of these ridiculous metal boxes. It would be a win win for most normal people, apart from the jeremy clarkson type clowns who JUST - WANT- TO - DRIVE - FAST (with a loud exhaust pipe)

 

[motorbiking]

All of those graphs are showing a downward trend. How can you say new safety measures have not worked?

Ignore the covid years - we were all in doors. Look only at Fatalities. KSI is statistically dodgy, because there are relatively few K compared with SI. The term SI (seriously injured) is also misleading and does not align with what we would think. i.e. seriously injured. It simply means injuries that might/need hospital treatment. Not the legal definition of serious injury, which aligns with what most people think. I myself have appeared as a KSI statistic.

(a) an injury for which a person is detained in hospital as an in-patient
or (b) any of the following injuries (whether or not the person is detained in hospital): fractures, concussion, internal injuries, crushings, severe cuts and lacerations, severe general shock requiring treatment
or (c) any injury causing death 30 or more days after the accident;

So a suspected broken arm, needing a trip to A&E resulting, Xray shows unlikely to be broken, but gives a cast/sling for a week anyway - welcome to KSI statistic.

Imagine 100 K and 1000 SI. KSI = 1100. K is then reduced to 50 (halved) and SI increases 10% - KSI 1150 "getting worse". The only safe statistic is K. Improvements in hospital treatment should improve K and vehicle safety should give a downward trend to both K and SI.

Killed - is flat, has been for the last 10 years.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

the only reason KSI figures are not continuing to fall is down to the slashing of police budgets and the fact that 'road policing' has become a low priority for the police.

Correct. I live alongside a 20mph through road. For the past month it has become a shortcut for a diversion, because a parallel road has been completely closed to allow the installation of new gas supply pipes. So for now at least, I live on a rat run...

Some drivers are sticking to the 20 limit, many are ignoring it - if you are ignoring why worry, there is no policing - might as well do 50 as 40. Trying to cross the road, you expect them to be doing 20, then suddenly one comes round the corner doing 50.

 

[JP_]

Ignore the covid years - we were all in doors. Look only at Fatalities. KSI is statistically dodgy, because there are relatively few K compared with SI. The term SI (seriously injured) is also misleading and does not align with what we would think. i.e. seriously injured. It simply means injuries that might/need hospital treatment. Not the legal definition of serious injury, which aligns with what most people think. I myself have appeared as a KSI statistic.

(a) an injury for which a person is detained in hospital as an in-patient
or (b) any of the following injuries (whether or not the person is detained in hospital): fractures, concussion, internal injuries, crushings, severe cuts and lacerations, severe general shock requiring treatment
or (c) any injury causing death 30 or more days after the accident;

So a suspected broken arm, needing a trip to A&E resulting, Xray shows unlikely to be broken, but gives a cast/sling for a week anyway - welcome to KSI statistic.

Imagine 100 K and 1000 SI. KSI = 1100. K is then reduced to 50 (halved) and SI increases 10% - KSI 1150 "getting worse". The only safe statistic is K. Improvements in hospital treatment should improve K and vehicle safety should give a downward trend to both K and SI.

Killed - is flat, has been for the last 10 years.

Even if you ignore covid, there is a downward trend. Something is helping, lots of factors at play, but maybe lowering speed limits in areas where accidents are more likely, and more likely to be fatal, has helped.

I am not suggesting all speed limits everywhere are lowered, but there are plenty of dangerous roads where people still get killed even with a 30mph speed limit.

 

[motorbiking]

You seem to need to include covid, to make that argument. The official report concludes the rate is flat.

Reported road casualties Great Britain, provisional results: 2020

www.gov.uk

Fans of 20mph zones say they reduce accidents by 40-50% and fatalities by 5% per 1mph speed fall. https://content.tfl.gov.uk/review-of-20mph-zones-in-london-boroughs-full-report.pdf

That simply isn't reflected in the data at a national level. Why?
I suspect the benefits are short lived and people simply avoid driving on the screwed up roads. The net result, is millions of pounds is spent on traffic calming only to move the accident somewhere else. Why should the residents of one street suffer to make another street "safer"?

I would personally like to see the money better spent. For example the changes to emphasis on pedestrian priority and a decent publicity campaign would probably make a huge difference. How many of us have been nearly run over crossing a side road, because a driver turns in to it and think he has priority because it's a road.

 

[Avocet]

the only reason KSI figures are not continuing to fall is down to the slashing of police budgets and the fact that 'road policing' has become a low priority for the police.

But as I have said before, the 20mph limit is also aimed at making the roads more plesant for all, walkers, cyclists, horseriders, children going to school. If we could get the 20 mph strictly enforced then may be we could get people out of these ridiculous metal boxes. It would be a win win for most normal people, apart from the jeremy clarkson type clowns who JUST - WANT- TO - DRIVE - FAST (with a loud exhaust pipe)

We can agree that the road policing policies that gave us the safest roads in the world, are no longer in place. That's because they're very expensive. Cameras, on the other hand, are very lucrative. Unfortunately, as can be seen from the figures, they're not really working. This is because despite all the BS about "one third of accidents having speed as a factor", when you dig down into the figures, you find all sorts of peripheral reasons (like the speed being within the limit but excessive for the conditions, or "failing to judge another vehicle's speed correctly"). Once you actually strip it back to accidents where exceeding a speed limit was the primary CAUSE, you're down to about 5%.

So... what do we do? We go out and target the 5%... and then, when we don't get the massive 30% reductions that were based on BS to start with, we start lowering speed limits even further, and enforcing them with even more cameras, and then we get even more surprised when the anticipated benefits are not realised, and instead of trying to tackle the real causes, we just clamour for more of the same... outstanding...

On your second point, I trust you do not drive a "ridiculous metal box" yourself?

Oh, and please don't assume that you speak for all walkers, cyclists, horseriders, children going to school, by the way. I was out on my pushbike yesterday evening, and I can assure you that I do NOT want cars to get any quieter. A bit louder, in fact.

 

[Avocet]

Correct. I live alongside a 20mph through road. For the past month it has become a shortcut for a diversion, because a parallel road has been completely closed to allow the installation of new gas supply pipes. So for now at least, I live on a rat run...

Some drivers are sticking to the 20 limit, many are ignoring it - if you are ignoring why worry, there is no policing - might as well do 50 as 40. Trying to cross the road, you expect them to be doing 20, then suddenly one comes round the corner doing 50.

Do you drive at 20 past every other house that you pass, or is it just *your* house that you want people to drive past at 20?

Clearly, if "one comes round the corner doing 50", neither the 20 nor the 30 MPH limits are doing their job...

 

[Avocet]

Even if you ignore covid, there is a downward trend. Something is helping, lots of factors at play, but maybe lowering speed limits in areas where accidents are more likely, and more likely to be fatal, has helped.

I am not suggesting all speed limits everywhere are lowered, but there are plenty of dangerous roads where people still get killed even with a 30mph speed limit.

View attachment 278580

Those red lines (certainly on the "fatalities" graph, at least), look like you might actually have averaged the totals over the decade? If so, you are still counting the lockdown period figures, you're just "smoothing" the curve. Also, as Motorbiking says, you need to be careful about counting anything other than fatalities, as the goalposts for "serious" and "slight" move periodically, so direct comparisons are very difficult to make accurately. I therefore think your 7% figure should be closer to about 5% (perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it's also about the percentage of road deaths that have exceeding the speed limit as the primary cause).

Of course, working in the car industry, I would be quick to claim that same 5% for advances in vehicle safety, and I daresay a medic might justifiably claim the improvement as being a result of medical advances, while a highways engineer, might want to claim they were down to improvements in road layout. All I can say with certainty, is that compared to the years before automated enforcement (primarily of speed limits) replaced what I would call "proper" road policing, it is a very poor reduction indeed. My guess, is that if all the speed cameras were turned off tomorrow, that trend would continue, practically unchanged. In fact come to think of it, some years ago, most speed cameras were turned off for a while, when the government decided to stop the so-called "safety camera partnerships" keeping all the revenue they generated. Maybe around 2007? Around about then, most safety camera partnerships lost a lot of their "enthusiasm" for road safety, as their gravy train hit the buffers, yet mysteriously, the fatality reductions continued...

Anyway, if you're not in favour of reducing speed limits everywhere, where ARE you in favour of reducing them?

Also, I don't believe in the concept of a "dangerous road". They're like kitchen knives, really. It's the drivers who make them dangerous.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Do you drive at 20 past every other house that you pass, or is it just *your* house that you want people to drive past at 20?

No I consistently drive at 20 throughout the area of the 20 limit, as do many others - it's the exceptions which cause the issues.

 

[Diver Fred]

I'd like to see a sign board a distance after a section of road that has an Average Speed camera system place that posts up the Reg.No. and speed of any offending cars / lorries* / bikes. That might actually have some effect on slowing some drivers down! It would also re-assure us that try to follow the speed limits that something will be done about the speeders. Effectively 'Name n Shame'.