'Impose 20mph limit across capital'
Discussion
This from the Evening Standard. Follow the link and note the voting box. Once again PHers, I bid you make your voices heard...
'Impose 20mph limit across capital'
By David Williams, Motoring Editor, Evening Standard
27 August 2003
London could face a city-wide 20mph speed limit following new figures which show a huge rise in the cost of pedestrian deaths and injuries. Deputy Mayor Jenny Jones is urging all boroughs to slash the limit from 30mph on residential roads immediately.
She claims the move will save many lives and that a blanket 20mph limit for the capital is now "inevitable". The Association of London Government, which represents the capital's 33 boroughs, backs the move but has called for extra funds to help introduce it.
The Transport for London figures reveal that more than 20 people are knocked down every 24 hours in the capital, mostly by speeding drivers.
In addition to the personal grief suffered, the price paid by London in terms of insurance and medical costs, lost output and police time tops £460million a year.
TfL research shows that 20mph zones halve accident rates, and the authority has begun an investigation into how the limit should be imposed.
Ms Jones said: "This alarming evidence shows we need 20mph right across London immediately. Lower limits would save more lives and we hope to embarrass local authorities into acting straightaway on residential roads.
"Ideally, we would have 20mph across London now with certain roads able to opt out and have 30mph. We are starting with residential roads and the rest of London will follow."
The TfL study shows London has a far worse pedestrian casualty rate than the rest of Britain. More than 100 in every 100,000 Londoners are hurt yearly - nearly half as bad again as the national average.
The TfL figures reveal that more than one in 10 pedestrian accidents involve 10 to 14-yearolds and accident rates in inner London are twice as bad as those for outer London. The most dangerous time on the roads is between 3pm and 7pm.
However, the RAC Foundation said it would oppose a move to have blanket 20mph zones.
www.thisislondon.com/traffic/articles/6392237?source=Evening%20Standard
'Impose 20mph limit across capital'
By David Williams, Motoring Editor, Evening Standard
27 August 2003
London could face a city-wide 20mph speed limit following new figures which show a huge rise in the cost of pedestrian deaths and injuries. Deputy Mayor Jenny Jones is urging all boroughs to slash the limit from 30mph on residential roads immediately.
She claims the move will save many lives and that a blanket 20mph limit for the capital is now "inevitable". The Association of London Government, which represents the capital's 33 boroughs, backs the move but has called for extra funds to help introduce it.
The Transport for London figures reveal that more than 20 people are knocked down every 24 hours in the capital, mostly by speeding drivers.
In addition to the personal grief suffered, the price paid by London in terms of insurance and medical costs, lost output and police time tops £460million a year.
TfL research shows that 20mph zones halve accident rates, and the authority has begun an investigation into how the limit should be imposed.
Ms Jones said: "This alarming evidence shows we need 20mph right across London immediately. Lower limits would save more lives and we hope to embarrass local authorities into acting straightaway on residential roads.
"Ideally, we would have 20mph across London now with certain roads able to opt out and have 30mph. We are starting with residential roads and the rest of London will follow."
The TfL study shows London has a far worse pedestrian casualty rate than the rest of Britain. More than 100 in every 100,000 Londoners are hurt yearly - nearly half as bad again as the national average.
The TfL figures reveal that more than one in 10 pedestrian accidents involve 10 to 14-yearolds and accident rates in inner London are twice as bad as those for outer London. The most dangerous time on the roads is between 3pm and 7pm.
However, the RAC Foundation said it would oppose a move to have blanket 20mph zones.
www.thisislondon.com/traffic/articles/6392237?source=Evening%20Standard
This is obscene. The woman is an anti-car freak; she also wants to raise the congestion charge to £10 and extend it massively in area covered. 
Since one of the main requirements to get drivers to obey new limits is for them to make sense, unless people are experiencing everyday carnage throughout the suburbs and inner city (which as Fish points out 20 people per day in a city of 10m isn't) people won't respect them in theory or practice.
Don't know about the rest of you but for me 20mph feels like going backwards (and the Griff doesn't like it either
). Concentration levels will plummet and I wouldn't be surprised if RTA's went up as a result. Still, they'll be able to nick lots more people for speeding... 
Since one of the main requirements to get drivers to obey new limits is for them to make sense, unless people are experiencing everyday carnage throughout the suburbs and inner city (which as Fish points out 20 people per day in a city of 10m isn't) people won't respect them in theory or practice.
Don't know about the rest of you but for me 20mph feels like going backwards (and the Griff doesn't like it either
). Concentration levels will plummet and I wouldn't be surprised if RTA's went up as a result. Still, they'll be able to nick lots more people for speeding... What was that statistic that's been quoted on here before about the percentage of pedestrians who are at fault in a collision with a vehicle? About 85-90%, isn't it?
Last Sunday, I watched a lad of about 8 (easily old enough to know better) step off the pavement without looking and straight in front of a car. Car manages to stop, but kid's father screams abuse at the driver, then turns to the kid and says, laughing, "Hey, that was close, wasn't it?"
How about scrapping speed limits in urban areas and letting natural selection rid us of the terminally stupid?
Last Sunday, I watched a lad of about 8 (easily old enough to know better) step off the pavement without looking and straight in front of a car. Car manages to stop, but kid's father screams abuse at the driver, then turns to the kid and says, laughing, "Hey, that was close, wasn't it?"
How about scrapping speed limits in urban areas and letting natural selection rid us of the terminally stupid?
AlexH said:
This is obscene. The woman is an anti-car freak; she also wants to raise the congestion charge to £10 and extend it massively in area covered.
its the congestion charge thats CAUSED the higher speeds and deaths!! if the roads were clogged, no one would get to 20mph in the first place! raising the charge will INCREASE speeds!
I wish these people actually think before speaking...
london commuters have got so used to slow cars, they dont know how to react when cars go faster! Im quiet sure the stats will show they were all killed while standing in a road, not on a pavement,.
With apologies to Londoners on the board...
DrSeuss said:Whilst I was 'learning' to drive on the mainland (I'm from the CI originally) I was at the wheel of my father's Wolsey 16/60 and pulling away from a Zerba Crossing when an 8-year old boy ran out from a sub-post office straight in front of me. He hit and dented the front bumper, the bonnet, the roof and the boot lid. He was very shocked and brusied. The crayons he'd just bought were unbroken. I was a trembling wreck, but my father made me drive to the police station to give a statement and then drive home (a case of getting back on the tightrope after falling off).
What was that statistic that's been quoted on here before about the percentage of pedestrians who are at fault in a collision with a vehicle? About 85-90%, isn't it?
Last Sunday, I watched a lad of about 8 (easily old enough to know better) step off the pavement without looking and straight in front of a car. Car manages to stop, but kid's father screams abuse at the driver, then turns to the kid and says, laughing, "Hey, that was close, wasn't it?"
How about scrapping speed limits in urban areas and letting natural selection rid us of the terminally stupid?
That evening the boy's father called at home to sympathise with me and to tell me he'd given his boy a real roasting. "But," he said, "The fright you gave him will last for ever!"
The boy's g=father was a lorry-driver!
I don't know about the lad, but (as you can tell) the memory has lasted 38 years with me!
I never want to feel as I did at the time ... that I'd killed someone.
Streaky
Mon Ami Mate said:
This from the Evening Standard. Follow the link and note the voting box. Once again PHers, I bid you make your voices heard...
'Impose 20mph limit across capital'
By David Williams, Motoring Editor, Evening Standard
27 August 2003
London could face a city-wide 20mph speed limit following new figures which show a huge rise in the cost of pedestrian deaths and injuries. Deputy Mayor Jenny Jones is urging all boroughs to slash the limit from 30mph on residential roads immediately.
She claims the move will save many lives and that a blanket 20mph limit for the capital is now "inevitable". The Association of London Government, which represents the capital's 33 boroughs, backs the move but has called for extra funds to help introduce it.
This woman is a piece of human plankton. It really is a further measure of the sort of Mayor that Ken Livingstone is that this unrepresentative moron has been made deputy mayor and is able to start thinking about imposing diktats on the whole of the capital city of this country. As far as I know she wasn't directly elected by anybody she got into the GLA as the result of some sort of PR fudge. The Greens of whom she is a member polled some stupidly low amount of the vote and yet Ken by virtue of his rotating the deputy mayor post to leaders of other factions in the GLA has given her this power. Actually this is a good point I'm not sure how much power she has to do this, but in the current climate anything is possible. This almost certainly won't save a single life but will just bring the law into even greater disrepute, anytime anyone sees a justified 20 limit they will now ignore it. It just devalues all speed limits. Still people like this don't let common sense get in the way of their dogma.
Interestingly further on it talks about the main problems being in inner city areas. This ties in with previous stuff I've heard where the brunt of road casualties falls on the poor. No shit, you don't often see middle class 5 year olds playing chicken in the road do you. So let's punish everyone, regardless of whether they are part of the problem.
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