Glasgow to impose legal 20mph speed limits

[thomas]

2) WTF is the "natural" speed of a road?? That statement makes no sense at all to me.

If a road didn't have any speed limit signs, the natural speed would be the average speed people would go down the road. It's generally around what the speed limit is anyway.

 

[John the Monkey]

If a road didn't have any speed limit signs, the natural speed would be the average speed people would go down the road. It's generally around what the speed limit is anyway.

The way they blat down the roads with parked cars both sides near me suggests that "natural" != "sensible".

 

[automatic_jon]

It has had a difference in Portsmouth as in many areas the avearage speed has dropped. Admittedly there are the idiots who can't get the concept of speed limits (and the fact that taxis are apparently exempt), however on an overall basis I prefer the restricted Portsmouth to the unrestricted

Fair do's, taxi's seem to exempt from the rules of the road in general.
I do feel that lowering speed limits is preaching to the choir, if people were driving safely on residential back roads then they wouldn't be doing 30 as they weave in and out of the parked cars and corpses of children and cyclists.

 

[GrasB]

I personally think 20mph should be the standard limit for residential roads, though of course there are issues as to what is a residential road under certain conditions. I think the biggest issue at the moment is that most drivers see the speed limit as a target not a maximum, this means they'll put caution to the wind to achieve that 30mph limit regardless of it being safe or not.

 

[StuartG]

The London experience is that 20 mph zones have reduced average speeds by about 10mph to 17mph. Or rather the enforcement has - sleeping policemen. Casualties have dropped around 40% and more for younger children.

Humps are a pain and the next step to be trialled by Southwark are zone average speed cameras. Again, with these results it is hard to see anyone with an ounce of compassion can object to 20 mph residential zones after they have gone through the statistics.

These can be found here: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec10_3/b4469

 

[GrasB]

On the subject of speed bumps, I wish they'd put proper ones in not these 'speed cushions'. Both the Alfa & Lotus can easily handle full width speed bumps without issue but because of the track, ride height & damping properties the sump/undersurface on both are very vulnerable to grounding, in the worst possible way, on the cushions. Normally I end up going down the middle of the road to protect these surfaces.

 

[Origamist]

Sinusoidal humps are better:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tpm/tal/trafficmanagement/sinusoidalhsroadhumps?page=2

 

[HJ]

That's about the only way. Rightly or wrongly, 20mph feels incredibly slow in a car and is below the 'natural' speed of most roads.

Like I mentioned in Norwich, some of the roads that are...I wouldn't say I would have realised by the average speed of most cars.

This show the typical ignorance of the average driver, who never thinks about why there are speed limits, and who shouldn't have a licence in the first place. There should be more emphasis on the responsibility a driving licence brings with it and an understanding of the meaning of duty of care! There is no such thing as a 'natural' speed.

I often wonder if these 20 limits actually manage to achieve a 30 limit - i.e. people still break the speed limit by (say) 10 mph, so a 20 limit has the effect of achieving a 30 limit, whereas if the signs said 30, many people would drive at 40 (if you see what I mean...)

Therein lays the problem with the 30 mph limit, it is supposed to be there to "protect vulnerable road users", the slower drivers are moving the less likely they are to kill people they hit:

• Hit by a car at 20 mph, 3% of pedestrians will be killed – 97% will survive
• Hit by a car at 30 mph, 20% of pedestrians will be killed – 80% will survive
• Hit by a car at 35 mph, 50% of pedestrians will be killed – 50% will survive
• Hit by a car at 40 mph, 90% of pedestrians will be killed – 10% will survive

two-thirds of crashes in which people are killed or injured occur on roads with a speed limit of 30 mph. So why is it that the police are reluctant to prosecute drivers unless they are exceeding the speed limit by more than 10 mph?