CycleBanter.com - View Single Post - Reducing speed to 20mph â€˜created more deaths than injuriesâ€™ but council canâ€™t afford to scrap them

**Ian Jackson[_7_]** · December 21st 17, 07:42 PM posted to uk.rec.driving,uk.rec.cycling,uk.legal

In message , Nightjar
writes
On 21-Dec-17 11:09 AM, wrote:
...
I doubt anyone expects cars to stick to 20 anyway. I imagine the thinking
behind it is that at 30 cars do anything up to 40 so put 20 signs up and
they'll do 25-30 which is acceptable.

The aim really is to reduce speeds to 20mph, or not much above it. This
is based upon the 1979 findings that pedestrians struck by a car doing
30mph have a 20% risk of dying, as compared to 2.5% at 20mph. More
recently, this has been revised down to 8% and 1.5%, which may be due
to improvements in vehicle design since the first report. However, it
is the most ignored limit of all, with 84% of cars exceeding 20mph, as
compared to 46% exceeding 70mph on motorways.

One problem is that if there is an accident because of 'speeding', there
is often an immediate call to lower the speed limit - with little
reference to how fast the offending vehicle was actually going. I recall
near here there was fatal accident on a 50mph limit main road. Some
people wanted a 40 limit - despite the vehicle's estimated speed being
at least 80mph. The obvious answer might be simply be to enforce the
existing limits.

--
Ian