I pose this question as a way of illustrating how uncontroversial the proposition is that, if you can get motorists to drive slower in built-up areas, you will make the roads less dangerous, cut down the number of accidents, and thereby reduce the burden on the NHS. Not only that, but it would help make our urban environment more congenial for residents, pedestrians, cyclists and, indeed, motorists themselves.
Here’s another question. If you’re in favour of making the roads near schools and hospitals subject to a 20mph limit, why wouldn’t you support extending the restriction to all residential roads? It doesn’t make any sense not to, and hard evidence supports the basic proposition. Transport for London’s monitoring of roads in the capital that have been reduced to a 20mph limit has shown that the number of collisions have been reduced by 25 per cent, with an equivalent decrease in injuries and deaths.
I find it scarcely credible, therefore, that when Mark Drakeford announced this week that he was to resign as first minister of Wales, there were suggestions that the determined and personally wounding campaign against his introduction of 20mph zones throughout the principality was a factor in his decision to quit.
Mr Drakeford denies this is the case, but when his legacy is assessed, it most likely won’t be the cautious, undemonstrative leadership of his nation through the Covid pandemic (during which time he lived in an outbuilding in his garden to protect his at-risk wife and mother-in-law) that will be remembered, but his battle to get Wales to accept that a uniform 20mph limit on the country’s roads was a progressive move.
Of course, it doesn’t chime with these solipsistic times: I’m such a busy, important person, and who are the Government to tell me that I have to drive slower? Even though studies show that reducing the speed limit from 30mph to 20mph adds an average of only one minute to most journeys (while saving up to nine lives and preventing 98 serious injuries each year), some 430,000 people signed a petition opposing the move.
Mr Drakeford told the Welsh Senedd in September that he’d been subject to “vile messages” and physical threats from opponents of the new speed limit. This is egregious. The 30mph limit in built-up areas was introduced by the Road Traffic Act of 1934 (which also made driving licences compulsory), and was a completely arbitrary figure, not based on research or evidence. In 1934, there were 2.5 million cars on Britain’s roads. There are now 33.5 million, so it’s not unreasonable that we have to change with the times.
Many countries in the world have the equivalent of a 20mph limit in urban areas, and advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) is that “a safe speed on roads with possible conflicts between cars and pedestrians, cyclists or other vulnerable road users is 30 km/h (20mph)”.
So, what makes the drivers of Wales so oppositional to a measure that protects others and doesn’t, actually, cause them any difficulty or inconvenience?
Is it an anti-woke protest? Do they think that a reduction in how fast they can drive represents an infringement of their personal freedoms? Or is it just that a high proportion of car drivers are, by nature, selfish and inconsiderate? Either way, it’s as illogical as the protests over compulsory seatbelts once were.
Before too long, a 20mph limit in built-up areas will be introduced as standard across the United Kingdom, and Mark Drakeford’s place in modern history as something of a visionary will be secure.