A campaign against blanket 20 MPH speed limits has been launched.

The reason for doing this is that there is much misinformation being spread by campaigners for such speed limits. What has been happening is that the anti-car activists encouraged by those campaigning for 20 MPH speed limits are now wasting millions of pounds nationwide when that money would have been better spent on other road safety measures – such as road engineering and education of younger drivers.

The Department for Transport (DfT) published the most authoritative study to date on the impact of wide-area signed-only 20 mph speed limits last year. It showed that there is no road safety benefit whatsoever from such schemes. In addition they have negligible impact on modal shift or on traffic speeds.

This was the long-awaited evidence that enormous amounts of money are being wasted on implementing 20 mph schemes which could have been spent instead on more effective road safety measures. In London alone, it is estimated that tens of millions of pounds have been spent on 20-mph signed-only schemes to no effect and nationwide it must run into hundreds of millions of pounds.

We have long called for “evidence-based” road safety policies. The evidence on 20 MPH schemes should not be ignored.

The DfT report can be read here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/20-mph-speed-limits-on-roads . Key paragraphs from the report are:

“The evidence available to date shows no significant change in the short term in collisions and casualties, in the majority of the case studies (including the aggregated set of residential case studies).”

“Journey speed analysis shows that the median speed has fallen by 0.7mph in residential areas and 0.9mph in city centre areas.”

Note that we are not opposed to the use of 20-mph speed limits where it might be of benefit or where compliance will be high but it is not the solution to all road safety problems and simply sticking up signs is a waste of money. The simplistic solutions proposed by advocates of wide area signed-only 20 MPH schemes do not work to reduce the Killed and Seriously Injured (KSIs) on our roads to any significant extent. Money is being wasted on them that could be better used to reduce KSIs in other ways.

20 MPH speed limits should be opposed by all road users. They are indeed SENSELESS.

For more information contact: Roger Lawson on 020-8295-0378
Ends