A NIMBY writes: twenty is plenty

Picture: Brake

At the age of 53 I am officially middle aged. I also live in a London suburb that is officially classed as having a predominantly middle-class demographic. This, by the way, is the same borough in which The Good Life was set. Sundry other TV sitcoms, featuring middle-aged, middle-class characters have been filmed around here, most probably because their writers and producers were drawn from the very same population. So with those credentials established, I’m at liberty to launch into full NIMBY mode, and support the growing campaign to change the default 30mph speed limit on local and residential roads to 20mph. 

To set the scene, our street forms part of a labyrinth of roads built at the end of the 19th century and beginning to the 20th to accommodate railway workers constructing the London to Southampton and Portsmouth lines that cuts through the town. My great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather worked on that railway, having moved from a Hampshire hamlet to this area for the work. Not that long ago I discovered that the Poulters lived in a house in the next street to ours, where my grandfather was born. This is not exactly germane to this post, but it gives me a strong sense of the area’s history, the area in which I was born and was proud to return to last year when I moved in with my girlfriend. That was shortly (and luckily) before lockdown rendered me largely imprisoned in the living room for the working week, from which I’ve had a unique vista on the traffic going past the front door. And plenty of it goes too fast.

In particular, I suspect, some of the traffic is rat-runners trying to avoid the congested high street at one end, and another side, the parallel main road that connects us to our borough seat, Kingston-upon-Thames. Being a street built in the Victorian era it wasn’t designed to be a sprint course for 21st century cars, to that extent that you daren’t park outside your own house for fear of losing a door mirror, or worse. You go to excess lengths to prevent pets from going out through the front door for fear that they won’t come back alive, and you hold your breath at the sight of the elderly or children trying to cross the road. Some of these speeders, it must be said, are delivery vans, and as someone who has come to rely on home deliveries over the last year, I share some of the guilt for the speed with which they dart from one dropoff to the the next.

There is, though, no ignoring the fact that given the chance, and the appeal of a supposedly straight road, drivers exceed the 30mph limit. I may not have use of a radar speed gun, but I can see with my own eyes when a vehicle is too fast, and can’t help feeling that a lower maximum speed limit (or - horror - more speed humps) might be the answer, especially when considering that a car travelling at 30mph is five times more likely to kill a pedestrian crossing the road than at 20mph.

20mph zones in built-up areas have been increasing, and quietly so. More than a third  of the UK has them, and at least half of London’s roads. Wales is trialling eight pilot schemes ahead of 20mph becoming the national limit in April 2023, and the counties of Cornwall and Cambridgeshire voted for wider use of the 20mph limit in this May’s local elections. Even the United Nations is promoting 20mph as the international default for residential streets. However, the lack of national uniformity impedes acceptance, according to the road safety charity Brake. “Breaking the speed limit is breaking the law and those who do so should be punished,” says Joshua Harris, the charity’s campaigns director. “We must make a success of 20mph limits, but to do so we need more enforcement, which is delivered consistently across the country.”

Picture: 20’s Plenty For Us

The government has now been called upon to make 20mph a national speed limit to bring down numbers of road deaths and injuries. TRL, the body previously known as the government’s Transport Research Laboratory, says that the 30mph is out of date and the casualty figures point it not being fit for purpose. However, campaign group 20’s Plenty For Us  believes that bureaucracy and cost impacts are getting in the way of local councils implementing the lower speed limit and even install new speed limit signage. campaign group, said that as long as 30mph is the default, any local authority that wants a 20mph limit must obtain individual traffic regulation orders and install expensive repeater signs.

20’s Plenty For Us has calculated a financial benefit to local authorities from reducing speeding casualties through a 20mph limit, estimating that for a borough like London’s Westminster, it would cost £1 million to impose a mandatory 20mph limit, but that this would cut annual casualties by a sixth and, ultimately, save almost £12 million every year.

While it sounds like a simple solution to reducing deaths, there are doubts that 20mph is all that effective. To start with, compliance with the 20mph limit is poor: a government-commssioned study found that the majority of drivers break 20mph speed limits, and I must admit, on a 20mph stretch of main road, ironically, adjacent to ours, you need cruise control to maintain the correct speed, as even careful accelerator pedal control isn’t always effective. The study found that just 47% of motorists comply with the 20mph when driving near houses, with better compliance of 65% in city centres. 

Figures have found that 87% of motorists caught speeding in a 20mph were doing so by more than 5mph. Technology, says the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, a charity which advises MPs and peers on transport safety, is the answer, and has encouraged the government to make a system called Intelligent Speed Assist, which automatically reads speed limit signs, mandatory on all new vehicles.

There are differing views, however, on the effectiveness of 20mph limits. In Manchester, a 20mph scheme rolled out on all minor residential roads has been scrapped after it was found the restriction made no difference to the number of accidents - or drivers’ speeds, which had even gone up. There is also the counter view that speed limits aren’t the answer, but so-called Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are the answer to to reducing casualties. Last Friday figures from the first London-wide study of the capital’s 70 or so LTNs found a dramatic improvement in road safety, with the average casualties falling by more than half. Motorists, of course, loathe LTNs, claiming that they add to congestion and pollution on main roads, but researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College and the University of Westminster, who carried out the study said that LTNs were “associated with a substantial decline in road traffic injuries”, on a par with 20mph speed limits.

Punishment remains one of the measures traffic enforcement teams hope will deter speeders. Earlier this year it was announced that fines for drivers caught speeding above the legal limit would rise by half under new rules issued to courts. The most serious offenders will have to pay the equivalent of 150% of their weekly pay, an increase on the previous penalty of a week’s earnings. A £5,000 cap on fines will also be abolished when the new guidelines take effect, but for the wealthiest offenders, it could mean a fine of many thousands of pounds as there is no upper limit.

Edmund King
Picture: AA

Drivers do, though appear to accept lower speed limits. “Most motorists accept the use of speed cameras and most support lower speeds where appropriate,” says Edmund King, president and head of public affairs at the AA. However, he adds, “Blanket 20mph zones can backfire.” King’s organisation advocates evidence-led self-explanation, saying: “The AA would like to see more signage to explain why a 20mph speed limit is in force, such as outside a school, hospital or pedestrian area, instead of the blanket approach which inspires little respect”. 

To be effective, King says, speed limits must reflect the roads they’re applied to, such as school zones, so that motorists can clearly understand the reason for a restriction. “We need more variable speed limits linked to time of day. For example, in the US, most drivers slow down outside schools with flashing yellow lights, but not at 3am when there are no children around. Research suggests that blanket 20mph zones dilute the speed limit’s effectiveness and compliance.”

For now, though, there are no plans to introduce a national 20mph speed limit, with Department For Transport sources recently pointing out to The Times the “simplicity of the current system”, pointing out Rule 124 of the Highway Code which states: “The presence of street lights generally means that there is a 30 mph (48 km/h) speed limit unless otherwise specified.” 

Local councils can set their own speed limits in certain areas, however, but these must be clearly signed, with the government’s own guidance saying that this could be a 20mph zone in a built-up area near a school. Perhaps I need to redesignate our house a seat of learning.