Statistics published today by the U.K. Department for Transport (DfT) show that in 2022 85% of the car drivers in Great Britain broke the law by driving faster than the speed limit in 20mph zones. On roads with a 30mph maximum, 50% of car drivers broke the law, reveals the annual DfT report on speed limit compliance.
The measurements are based on speed data from a sample of Automatic Traffic Counters (ATCs) around the country. These exclude locations where external factors might restrict driver behavior, such as at junctions, on hills, beside sharp bends or where speed cameras are visible, says the DfT report.
This is just wrong. Studies show people drive the speed they feel is safe.
Which is why councils just slapping a 20mph sign on a road isn’t enough.
Unsurprisingly, roads are designed and built with certain speeds in mind, and - excluding national speed limit country roads - this broadly means that the wider the road the faster you’re able to go safely.
If you want an old 30mph road to be 20, and people to actually stick to it, you need to make people less comfortable driving at 30 on that road. Which means making it considerably narrower.
It’s the same reason that 70 can feel incredibly slow on a motorway, but 40 can feel incredibly fast elsewhere.
There’s a road here that’s relatively modern as roads go… it was built when I was a child to take traffic out of the centre. It’s wide, straight and has no houses or anything along it that would attract pedestrians. It was clearly designed and built as a bypass.
The council recently made it 20… I’m still scratching my head (a) why and (b) whether they really expect anyone to take any notice.
But then they’ll leave a road as 30 and cover it with speed bumps… including the main route to the motorway…
Unsurprisingly, roads are designed and built with certain speeds in mind, and - excluding national speed limit country roads - this broadly means that the wider the road the faster you’re able to go safely.
It’s been really driven home (sorry, no pun intended) by me looking after my brother’s house which is on a very long wide, pretty straight road with lots of off-street parking. It and another similar road running at 90 degrees are key connecting roads that form a rectangular box for the area but two are 30mph and two are 20 with no rhyme and reason for it (one of the 30s has a much narrower stretch).
