20mph for Edinburgh - who'd have thought?
Discussion
Well, despite the objections, Edinburgh have decided to push through their proposal to blanket Edinburgh with 20mph limits.
It remains to be seen if this applies to trams, buses and cyclists, and I remain to be convinced that 20mph at 04:00 is any safer than 30mph, but then I don't have to try and "encourage" more people to use public transport.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-ea...
It remains to be seen if this applies to trams, buses and cyclists, and I remain to be convinced that 20mph at 04:00 is any safer than 30mph, but then I don't have to try and "encourage" more people to use public transport.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-ea...
Disappointing, although not particularly surprising. I still feel better for at least contributing to the consultation, though. They appear to have dropped 20mph for a handful of streets (notably London Road) but made others 20mph which they had not originally planned to.
http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/info/20089/roads_and_p...
I genuinely cannot conceive of driving along a road like Queen Street at 20mph, it will just seem stupidly slow. Hell, a bicycle ridden hard does around 30mph. In 5th my car does around 23mph at idle with no throttle whatsoever!
I remain optimistic that the majority of drivers will ignore the new limits on stretches where it is appropriate to do so, but doing so will bring the constant risk of 3 points and a fine, and possibly worse if you are caught doing “almost twice the limit”.
The only consolation I can draw is that this will further normalise speeding and may, in time, lead to a political sea-change on the whole issue.
ETA: I see that the BBC are now reporting Police Scotland as saying that they "will not routinely police the 20mph zones" but "will respond to any particular zones where there is a casualty reduction requirement". So, you probably won't get done, but you might.
http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/info/20089/roads_and_p...
I genuinely cannot conceive of driving along a road like Queen Street at 20mph, it will just seem stupidly slow. Hell, a bicycle ridden hard does around 30mph. In 5th my car does around 23mph at idle with no throttle whatsoever!
I remain optimistic that the majority of drivers will ignore the new limits on stretches where it is appropriate to do so, but doing so will bring the constant risk of 3 points and a fine, and possibly worse if you are caught doing “almost twice the limit”.
The only consolation I can draw is that this will further normalise speeding and may, in time, lead to a political sea-change on the whole issue.
ETA: I see that the BBC are now reporting Police Scotland as saying that they "will not routinely police the 20mph zones" but "will respond to any particular zones where there is a casualty reduction requirement". So, you probably won't get done, but you might.
Edited by Lil'RedGTO on Wednesday 7th January 16:03
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