Many strange conspiracies gain traction on (anti-) social media. 5G phone masts controlling the microchips we were all injected with in our Covid vaccines is my favourite for sheer brainless non-scientific idiocy. But there are plenty of others. And in these fertile, generally right- to far-right- breeding grounds, the followers mindlessly swallow and regurgitate their anti-woke, anti-tolerence, basically anti-everthing messages. Some of the things which are complained about noisily are, frankly, laughable.
The more strident complaints about the 20mph speed limits in Wales fall into this category. Much of the vocal opposition comes from the Welsh Conservatives, which is ironic really since so many of them were instrumental in the introduction of the wider use of 20mph zones in Wales. You can read all about that support here, complete with photographs showing their active support. Just look at the proposer of this, and the cross-party support. Funny how it is now portrayed as having been forced upon Wales unwillingly by just one party.
Across most of Europe, the speed limit in urban areas on residential roads is 30kph. That’s LOWER than the 20mph roads we have across much of the UK – 20mph = 32kph after all.
Within large cities, in particular, across the whole of England and Wales, there are many such zones. I find plenty of 20mph zones in London and Manchester, for example. Not so very different from Wales, really.
I hope that the people driven completely apoplectic by 20mph zones here in the UK don’t drive around Europe much, because the 30kph zones are not the lowest speed limit you’ll find on European public roads.
I suspect they’d actually EXPLODE or have some sort of seizure if they come across one of the many areas within Europe containing 20 kph zones – that’s about 12.5mph! I’ve personally experienced these in France, Belgium, Spain, Croatia, and others.
The science behind 20mph zones is clear cut. I’m not even going to describe it here; anyone who believes science will either already understand it, or is quite capable of reading about it on their own – the link at the start of the paragraph is to a meta-study, so fill your boots and follow onward links to as many individual studies as you like. Anyone who does not believe scientific facts is not going to take any notice of what I say anyway. So there is no point in covering it directly here.
Conclusion
I’ll just leave with this thought. I often ask people this question:
Q: What are Car Parks for?
I get all sorts of answers, but fundamentally, Car Parks are for PEOPLE. Were it not for the people, there would be no need for the Car Parks at all in the first place. So people rather than cars should have right of way in Car Parks, really.
So this begs another question:
Q: What are Roads for?
We are all pedestrians at least some of the time. People who are horrified by limits to their freedom in terms of driving speed really need to think about when THEY are pedestrians – trying to cross roads in urban areas, or maybe have children (or elderly parents) of their own who need to cross roads alone in urban areas.
Seriously, there are many thing more worthy of getting upset about (starving people, climate change, war, corruption etc) than speed limits.
Sophie Baskerville 