Safe Speed Forums

I don't know about anyone else, but when I cycle on the roads (very rarely these days) my fear of traffic doesn't come from speed but from idiots. 20mph limits are going to cause resentment and impatience and IMO the biggest danger to a cyclist is impatience.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Personally I always feel safe when walking on the pavement, no matter what speed the traffic is going at.


I always feel safe when cycling too. I take full responsibility for my own safety when riding a bike. The speed the traffic is traveling at is somewhat irrelevant.


Nope. It will probably lead to higher CO2 emissions and more pollution in general - particularly on streets where the traffic previously flowed freely at 30 - 40 mph.

Car engines are not efficient at 20 mph so each car will be pumping out more pollution. However, if more people do walk and cycle there'll be fewer cars.

I'm not sure we'll ever know, whatever happens it'll be heralded as a success and probably copied in other towns and cities.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

Have you ever walked young children to school along a narrow pavement next to a road with no speed controls?




My roadcraft is as good as it can be but that doesn't give me complete protection against poor drivers. Fear of traffic is given by non-cyclists as being the main reason for not cycling.




A road has it's maximum carrying capacity at slightly below 20 mph. I can't prove this.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

Yes, every day in fact.



Yup... and poor drivers are still poor drivers at 20mph.

It does worry me though that 20mph zones are more dangerous than 30mph zones (as evidenced by the DFT). So I always take extra care when cycling in 20mph areas.

Which would means more cars running less efficiently so more pollution surely

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Only if more people started travelling. If the number of journeys was the same, but more people walked and cycled, the amount of motor traffic would go down. This might be what the burghers of Portsmouth are hoping for.
The roads would be operating below their maximum carrying capacity. Motorists should find themselves spending less time in jams which might offset the inefficient engine thing; if air quality has been monitored up til now then it'll be something to watch.
If there is a marked decline in air quality don't expect anyone to volunteer this information; like the congestion charge in London the reduced speed limit is something that can't afford to fail.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

In my town there are several 20mph zones, all of them asked to be installed by the local population to reduce noise pollution and help protect those using the streets on foot from those who would use the area as a race track.

In some streets as well as the 20mph limit, there are also traffic calming 'speed bumps' aimed at forcing the traffic to obey the limits.

Now the $64,000 question...do they work?

Do they hell as like....those that used them as a race track before still do, but in shorter bursts than before... speeding up after a traffic bump and braking at the next one ...(well those who bother do anyway)..others simply tear down the road depositing copious amounts of glass fibre from their front spoiler/air dams and mild steel filings from the exhaust as the cars bottom out after their 'flights' over the bumps!
Personally I find it is noisier now after the traffic calming than it ever was before!

The 20 mph zones in Barnet are neither enforced nor observed.
One of them seems to be entirely in the wrong place.

I have never seen any form of engineered traffic calming that doesn't directly give rise to poor driving practices.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

So surely the money wasted on a scheme that is neither enforced or observed would be better spent on education for all road users...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Is it? I bow down to thee...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Probably because the zones are deemed stupid/un-necessary and worthy of contempt...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

If the amount of traffic went down then the road will be below max capacity so the traffic can surely move faster without encountering jams. The faster moving vehicles will also be more fuel efficient.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

How might this be implemented?

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

As I said, one seems to be in the wrong place. No-one takes any notice of it, not even careful drivers. 20 mph just feels so slow and is in between the gears, as it were.
The other is where many school-children need to get across the road and where the layout of the road makes high speeds quite unnecessary and inadvisable. Most drivers slow down for this bit without even being aware of the limit, but there are a few idiots who like to throw their cars around.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

Higher speeds discourage cycling (according to people who don't cycle because they're afraid of the traffic) so you'd be back to square one.

Check this link. Please note that I disagree with BRAKE's conclusions.
http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?stor ... d_to_cycle

I don't mind sharing the roads with traffic at 30 mph myself; it's sharing 30 mph roads with traffic travelling much faster than that that I find unnerving.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

I wonder if in Portsmouth they've found a legal way of enforcing them.
They say that they intend to.

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Occasionally slightly trollish.

I don't know, I'm not in charge of road safety in Portsmouth. But I'd really like to see a move away from these 'quick fix somethingmustbedone' solutions into something more workable long term.

Maybe we could start by going back to proper public information broadcasts, posters and the like and try to breed a little bit of cooperation and tollerance.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

SO they've re-writen type approval standards for speedo's then?

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Just found this:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/si1999/draft/19992430.htm

So they can impose a 20 mph limit.

To watch: Will "my speedo isn't accurate below 30" be accepted as a defense?

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Occasionally slightly trollish.