pwa wrote: ↑10 Nov 2022, 9:52pm
Pete Owens wrote: ↑10 Nov 2022, 3:21pm
....The number of exemptions will be tiny compared to the number of streets that currently subject to an inappropriately high limit and there is no rush. The exemptions do not have to be put in place by next September; councils will continue, as they always have done, to have the power to set local speed limits. In the Borders a handful of limits were adjusted a year after the initial implementation. It really isn't a big issue.
It is impractical to convert all existing 30mph limits to 20mph,
Of course it isn't - it has been done already in plenty of places.
because some existing 30mph sections of road already seem as if they have too low a limit.
That is only because you have become used to being allowed to drive through towns at lethal speeds - after next September it will seem normal to drive at a safe speed. In a few years time, when you visit England and walk around a town or village the high speeds will seem abnormally reckless to you.
Perhaps from your perspective, sitting in a metal box, secured by a seatbelt, and protected by airbags, blasting through towns at high speed represents little personal risk to yourself. From the perspective of a parent waving off their eight year old daughter as she cycles to school along that road the presence motor vehicles passing at lethal speed seems much too fast.
The choice of speed needs to meet the needs of that eight year old - not what appears reasonable to someone protected from the danger they are causing.
I think it is practical and sensible to have 20 on all purely residential streets, and that is already the maximum I would drive at on streets like that. I'd say the same about some main roads where the hazard level seems high. But if we do not exclude some existing 30mph main roads where hazard levels appear low, we risk provoking widespread disregarding of the law. The limit changes should make sense or they won't be respected.
The hazard levels are objectively highest on the busy through roads you would exempt. Which of course deep down you must already understand. If you were going to give a young child a first on-road cycle lesson then you would choose a street where (in your words) "hazard levels appear low". Are you seriously expecting us to believe you would choose the busy through road ... I thought not.
The very fact that there are some motorists who cannot see the sense in restricting speeds to to sub-lethal levels demonstrates the need for the reduced limit. Indeed, more generally, if we could rely on motorists to drive safely then there would be no need for any traffic laws at all - and there would be no pedestrians killed on our streets.