Road Peace campaign

[bikerkeith]

This subject has been raised before but a letter appeared in my local newspaper last week from a Road Peace member. The letter put forward a (not very well argued) proposal to impose blanket 40mph speed limits on all unclassified roads that currently are subject to NSL.
I have replied to the editor pointing out the inadvisability of such a policy and quoting the research that shows accident rates actual increase under such a regime.
I am posting this to alert all PHers to keep an eye on your local press and ensure any such suggestions are followed rapidly by an appropriate response, putting a sensible argument forward.

[hornet]

Why don't they just go the whole hog and suggest we turf over all country roads and buy horses or something? People would still fall off a die from time to time...what them, satellite controlled horse limiters?

I don't think these people are quite as bad as certain people within BRAKE, but suggestions like that don't do them any favours. A blanket 40 limit would be totally unreasonable and would likely be pretty much ignored. The knock on effect would be to devalue genuinely necessary limits elsewhere, which these sort of groups never seem to take into account.

[mrsphill]

I seem to recall some talk last year (or maybe the year before?) that Mendip District Council were looking at doing the same thing...

Nothing has come of it yet, fortunately.

[Kurgis]

said:

A blanket 40 limit would be totally unreasonable and would likely be pretty much ignored. The knock on effect would be to devalue genuinely necessary limits elsewhere, which these sort of groups never seem to take into account.

Not to mention the massive economic consequences this sort of policy would have..

[deltaf]

Lets look at it like this.
If they implement unreasonable limits then compliance will be?...yup!..LOW.

If theyre reasonable then we'll all be happy.
If theyre unreasonable we'll ignore em like we already do.

They really should get a grip on reality.

[gh0st]

Yeah deltaf, but then the hopefully-soon-to-be-ousted-blunderbus and his anal men will be sitting there with the lasers out.

It all comes round to the same thing unfortunately. lower the limits, raise the cash!

[Peter Ward]

deltaf said:

Lets look at it like this. If they implement unreasonable limits then compliance will be?...yup!..LOW. If theyre reasonable then we'll all be happy. If theyre unreasonable we'll ignore em like we already do. They really should get a grip on reality.

deltaf, you're right that, unaided, the compliance would be "low". However, add in the speed cameras and compliance would be higher. Until every road in the country has a Gatso every 1/2 mile the Scamera people will always claim that the "carnage" is happening away from the cameras and if only there were more it would be ok. When we get to that point and deaths are still high, the limits must come down as the only other obvious cause. When we've got cameras, low limits and still deaths... it'll be another government's problem to explain.

[nonegreen]

The effect on the economy makes this ammount to treason. We still have hanging/dissembowelment for that don't we?