By counting as a benefit what is actually a cost:
Setting the default speed limit at 20mph in residential roads in Wales will save £100m in the first year alone as deaths and injuries are reduced, according to research.
Hmm, well, maybe, how have they reached this conclusion?
The new research, from the Transport Research Institute (TRI) at Edinburgh Napier University in conjunction with Public Health Wales, says the direct costs of introducing the ban have been estimated at £32m. But it says the savings that will be made in the first year alone are more than three times this because so much less money will be spent on dealing with the aftermath of accidents.
The report adds: “Evidence suggests that the health benefits of 20mph are far, far greater than casualty savings alone. They include increased physical activity, and therefore less obesity, less stress and less anxiety, as well as other health benefits such as reduced noise and air pollution.
“We know from previous studies that 20mph encourages more walking and cycling and in doing so improves cardiorespiratory health, as well as reducing stress and anxiety, thereby improving mental health. With more walking and cycling comes less car use, improving air quality and therefore improving health.”
Ah, they’re counting as a benefit what is actually a cost. So, folk walk more, cycle more. Because they’ve been administratively persuaded – forced – to do so. That’s a cost of these plans. Folk get to do less of what they’d prefer to do – travel by car – and are forced to do more of what they’d prefer not to do – travel by foot and bike.
That’s a cost to folk, not a benefit. Therefore it has to be accounted for as a cost, not a benefit.
Therefore they’re lying toads, aren’t they? But then Taffy and the truth……
The only benefit is to that clown Drakeford, so he can bleat about how green he is. Most everyone else will see no change. Twat.
Given walking and cycling are a) slower than driving (even at 20mph) and b) take more effort and c) have more inconvenience (in poor weather you get cold and wet, in hot weather you get sweaty) and d) you can’t carry much on a bike or on foot, what on earth makes them think it will make a jot of difference to how much people drive?
@Jim
It won’t of course, but when the lower castes refuse to do what these wannabe brahmins decide is good for them, it just provides a rationale for further hatred.
Not our fault trade in anytown has been destroyed, blame the stupid Neanderthals too lazy to save the planet.
I give up, these stupid apes are so ungrateful. I think I’ll take my obscene index linked pension and price somebody out of a house somewhere.
I take they’ve never been to the Welsh Valleys.
Just because the centre of Cardiff is flat and all their mates say they’d walk more, it doesn’t mean those elsewhere will.
…Setting the default speed limit at 20mph in residential roads in Wales will save £100m in the first year alone as deaths and injuries are reduced, according to research….
Presumably the majority of these savings will result from the Welsh Government employing fewer police, doctors and nurses, and by closing A&E departments.
Now there’s a platform for Mr Drakeford to present to the voters of Wales at the next election.
Assuming that the casualty reduction and health benefits actually occur (I have my doubts) there will be a reduction in government costs at the expense of the public.
Let’s wait a year and find out if NHS Wales stops asking for money.
@ Davidsb
What Mr Drakeford wants is a reduction of the work done by the same number of unionised WelshNHS workers so that the waiting times stop being a political scandal. Latest figures show than 1 in 20 English patients have been waiting for more than a year but in Wales it is nearly one in four (source: Google). Since over 2% of the entire population of Wales is on a NHS Wales waiting list, nearly everyone must know someone losing a year of active life due to the incompetence of the delegated welsh NHS
With slower traffic, people who wish to walk/cycle more may feel they can do so more safely; where it’s an enabling change, it’s a benefit, not a cost.
Many more lives will obviously be saved if a speed restriction of 10 miles per hour were to be imposed on all of Wales. The country is clearly very small, so most places are within walking or cycling distance.
If reducing to 20mph has such a great benefit, imagine the massive benefit reducing to 0mph would bring!
We’ve actually got this in the town I live in. As have neighbouring towns. Quite like it actually. Doesn’t make any difference to how long it takes getting around. Before, one got between one hold up & the next quicker, but sat stationary at the hold up longer. And one does seem to get less hold ups. Only fly in the ointment is that two wheel traffic doesn’t seem to think it applies to them. So you’ve permanently got motorbikes & scooters weaving past you either side. So one needs lightning reactions to avoid them.
proper research would lead to different conclusions. The contention that lower speed limits results in less accidents are speculative assumption! You might reasonably conclude that lower limits result in less intensive injury, although I doubt that the difference between 30 and 20 is all that significant. And in any case according to the RAC most fatal motoring acidents happen in rural areas, whereas most accidents happen in residential areas.
What we have seen is that over the years cars have had more and more safety features, designed to protect the driver. These are probably the single biggest factor in making the roads less safe for pedestrians and cyclists.
The other point to note is the failure of the so called traffic planners. Who design roads so that they cause delay and frustration. Probably the single most effective measure in reducing traffic accidents would be to ban traffic lights!
Incidentally, looks like you’ll probably escape the electric scooter curse, UK side. Be thankful! They’ve proliferated here. And the users are even worse that the lycra cowboys. Basically they regard themselves as simultaneously road users & pedestrians with the privileges of both.
“The Welsh government also published an independent public attitude survey, conducted by Beaufort Research, showing that most people interviewed supported a 20mph speed limit where they lived.
One in three said 20mph speed limits would also make them more likely to walk more, while about one in five said that they would be more likely to cycle more.”
Ah, so they asked people what they would do. And of course, everyone likes to say (even to themselves) that they want to walk and cycle more, if only they could. The reality (based on my observation of cycle paths in the new estates) is that no-one uses them.
For one thing, 20MPH doesn’t make much difference. Drive on a 30MPH road and it’s doubtful you’ll hit 30 or much beyond 20 when it’s busy.
There must be plenty of hard data on the impact of reducing speed limits from 30 to 20 MPH. Lots of cases in London and from my experience of 6 weeks driving round German this year just about every town and village is now 30kph. Over there the reason is mostly to reduce traffic noise but there must but some data on accidents, injuries etc.
Depends whether people actually stick to the limit. Everyone seems to drive at 25-30mph on the 20mph main road near me (granted that’s down from 30-40mph before). Even the buses don’t stick to 20.
Folk get to do less of what they’d prefer to do – travel by car – and are forced to do more of what they’d prefer not to do – travel by foot and bike. . . . That’s a cost to folk, not a benefit. Therefore it has to be accounted for as a cost, not a benefit.
How would you do that? Question, not snark. How would you financially account (that’s what they’re doing here) for people not being allowed to do what they want as much as they’d like to?
How do they figure a 20mph speed limit will get people to walk and cycle more? You still can’t walk in the road with cars going that fast, and it’s still faster than biking. And you don’t have to exert along with having more cargo capacity.
And how many people are these fuckers hitting at 35mph? My small town has a fairly well-travelled road going down the center of it and the main residential roads are 35mph and we haven’t had a car hit a pedestrian or other car here in a decade.
“The Sage
November 7, 2022 at 11:01 am
With slower traffic, people who wish to walk/cycle more may feel they can do so more safely; where it’s an enabling change, it’s a benefit, not a cost.”
It’s a fookin’ cost to the people who can only drive 20, mate. How come they’re never considered?
Such campaigners won’t be happy once they’ve got the 20mph. No campaign is ever happy once their demands have been met since it means that they no longer get money. The next campaign will to have a man, sorry person, walking front of all cars in residential areas waving a red flag. Just think of the benefit – people being employed for each area.
Driving at 20mph means driving in second gear which means that it will harm the climate. So they save lives in accidents but will kill just as many (according to the panic and hyperbole from the climate extremists) with the pollution.
Incidentally, looks like you’ll probably escape the electric scooter curse, UK side.
Has there been an announcement? I don’t see what the fuss is about them. There’re a few around my local town (I see more if I venture more urban) but they don’t seem more or less of a problem than bicycles – except an increased likelihood to have lights. Their illegality means a higher proportion of scrotes ride them, but this profile would change with permission.
Jim, you say Wales is “clearly very small”. Not really; after all, it is the size of one complete Wales. And how many football pitches that is, heaven knows!
Think of all the lovely fines!
I don’t see what the fuss is about them. There’re a few around my local town (I see more if I venture more urban) but they don’t seem more or less of a problem than bicycles – except an increased likelihood to have lights. Their illegality means a higher proportion of scrotes ride them, but this profile would change with permission.
Try living here, mate.
It’s basically the same as push bikes but writ much larger. That they neither stick to the road nor obey the rules when they’re on the road. On pedestrianised streets & pavements they regard themselves as 20 kph pedestrians but expect to be treated as vehicles on the road. Unless they get to traffic lights, when they revert to pedestrians. There no lower age limit. Some have two people on them. Some have a light at the rear. Some have none. It’s not always obvious that the person you think is standing or walking is on one & likely to suddenly zip out in front of you. It’s not like a bike. It’s a plank, 3 inches above the ground seen edge on.
As a driver one’s nervous of hitting one because one can guess who’d get the blame. Like cyclists, they’re honorary pedestrians. As a pedestrian one’s nervous of one hitting you.
That said, it can be amusing watching them hitting each other. They don’t signal, they’ve no mirrors so little situational awareness & they expect all other road users to allow for them. So you can imagine what happens when they meet.
“With slower traffic, people who wish to walk/cycle more may feel they can do so more safely”
I don’t. We’ve had 20mph limits in Jockland for a few years and you never know whether it’s safe to cross in front of a car or not. Is it going at the sort of speed you’ve grown to expect, or is it being driven by some goody-two-shoes trundling along more or less on idle? It’s an absolute pain in the arse.
“Such campaigners won’t be happy once they’ve got the 20mph.”
That’s true. The very first street near me which had the infantile and patronising “20’s Plenty” signs up a few years back has since been converted into a cycle path. (Which is never used, because cyclists much prefer to mow down pedestrians on the footpaths.)
“Edinburgh Napier University”: the old tech college at Holy Corner. Named after one of the most remarkable mathematicians in history, John Napier aka “Marvellous Merchiston”, 8th Laird of Merchiston.
Alas I can reveal that he had links to slavery and therefore the “university” should be demolished. Therefore Drakeford has links to slavery too and should likewise be abolished. The first would be a small price to pay for the second.
@BiS
Sounds a bit like India or Vietnam with the mopeds; the chaos of freedom.
Around here there’re more bikes on the paths and sidewalks than scooters, and the riders do seem infected with a sense of righteous entitlement.
.
I live a 20mph zone, and I can’t say I’ve noticed anyone obeying it (other than incidentally when forced by hazzards). Neither buses nor (non-emergency) police cars take any notice.
That pesky Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane can be hiding anywhere, ready to pounce with his speed gun!
BiND,
“There must be plenty of hard data on the impact of reducing speed limits from 30 to 20 MPH. Lots of cases in London and from my experience of 6 weeks driving round German this year just about every town and village is now 30kph. Over there the reason is mostly to reduce traffic noise but there must but some data on accidents, injuries etc.”
It’s hard to measure because of the low numbers problem. Swindon’s probably a good place to measure because nearly all of it is town roads 30-40 MPH with some bits of 20mph around schools.
Table 3 of this: http://www.travelindependent.org.uk/area_147.html
Number of pedestrian deaths per year is between 0 and 4 between 2005 and 2018. How many of those are because of someone driving like an idiot, far beyond 30MPH? Or half pissed? Probably quite a few of them. Or the old lady who just walked out in front of a car (near me).
I’m not against 20MPH on estate roads. I’m all for it. I don’t think most people even get above 20. It might improve safety. But I doubt anyone can statistically measure it when there’s so few deaths.
Depends where you are PJF. France has 30kph zones in the centres of towns 50kph within the town limits. The French observe them. The fines are startling. But also other drivers can be hostile if you exceed the 50. Attitude’s that it’s their town so behave within it.
Spanish regard speed limits as targets to be exceeded. Being passed on the inside at 120kph limit on the autoroute by someone doing 150’s routine. If they’re not crawling all over your bootlid flashing their lights. The in-town 30kph limit gets enforced by enough observing it to fuck the rest, since the streets aren’t wide enough to overtake.
UK seems a mix of the two. Spanish style driving but french fine levels.
I’m reminded of a 1980s Bloom County cartoon where Opus the Penguin was trying to home his oratorical skills for a “Meadow Party” presidential campaign…
(Bloom County Meadow, candidates on stools before podiums. Sign which reads “toDay: Practice Debate”)
Milo: I understand that my opponent supports the 55 M.P.H. speed limit.
Opus: Saves 500 lives a year! I fully support saving lives.
Milo: Then he’d support the saving of another 10,000 lives by lowering the limit to 40 M.P.H.
Opus: 40?
Milo: Or to 20 … Saving 30,000 lives a year.
Opus: Gee… 20 is pretty slow.
Milo: Apparently my opponent would send 30,000 men, women, and children to fiery, mangled deaths just so he can zoom along to his manicurist at 55.
Opus: I DON’T HAVE A MANICURIST!
Milo: He probably doesn’t. Most mass murderers don’t. Hitler didn’t.
Opus: Stop it! Stop It! STOP IT! (bangs on podium)
Milo: Rebuttal?
Opus: (frazzled) What?
Milo: Give your rebuttal.
Opus: Uh… Bush is a wimp.
“One in three said 20mph speed limits would also make them more likely to walk more, while about one in five said that they would be more likely to cycle more.”
So 2 in 3 will walk the same or less and 4 in 5 will cycle the same or less
Not much of a policy is it?
I wonder how the extra attention you are paying to watch your speed rather than the road around you impacts road safety, most people are conditioned to 30mph going to take them a while to not have to keep checking their speed
Also as mentioned geography plays a part much harder to manage the limit on a steep hill and it’s going to lead to a lot of low gear driving
Deaths in the UK from falling off ladders averages 14 pa. So next week Drakeford bans firemen attending fires above shoulder height.
The Welsh government also published an independent public attitude survey, conducted by Beaufort Research, showing that most people interviewed supported a 20mph speed limit where they lived.
Ah the good old “independent survey”. Anonymised of course for data privacy reasons. Which means they’ve made it up.
A 20mph limit was put in here across the whole town.
Everyone fucking hates it. Some roads it makes sense, on housing estates, etc but as soon as you’re off one, the roads have fields bordering them or houses set 100yrds back. Still 20mph. Feels like crawling.
And after they were introduced, I was going down the main road, copper behind me. So I made damn sure I stuck to 20mph. He was so close behind me, I thought he was giving me a prostate exam.
Most people, from experience, kind of obey it on residential streets and then ignore it on other roads.
Of course the real reason is nothing to do with getting tubbies to exercise or saving the polar bears from the cold, it’s so they can hit more people with speeding fines and make money for the government to piss up against the wall or their pensions.
Therefore Drakeford has links to slavery too and should likewise be abolished.
We can dream. Führer Drakeford is an abomination. I don’t want to overstate my position, but the smug, sanctimonious, moronic, cunt may in fact be the embodiment of evil. The twat is a blight on existence and the earth will be a much better place when he dies.
“Führer Drakeford is an abomination” Yep, he’s come from an academic background so has no sense of real life.
@Nautical Nick: 5129155.936 per the ever handy el Reg converter.
I very nearly, just about, almost, managed to get an invented measure into the El Reg calculator. I didn’t, which was a blow, but that I nearly did was very prideful.
20mph inflicts lower then half the impact to an unfortunate pedestrian than 30mph (as it’s proportional to speed squared).
There is a valid reason for the reduction.
“so much less money will be spent on dealing with the aftermath of accidents.”
This is the worst part of this entire ‘Milkmaid calculation’…!
* if a lot of people ride bicycles/scooters and it gets crowded on dark mornings/evenings in the rush hour, if one person falls, a lot of people following will also pile in.
* People tend to take their dogs along for cycles, this adds an extra layer of nasty problems. Dogs learn to keep to the side of a cycle quite easily, but that does not help much when there is much cycle traffic and more than one dog in attendance, or people with their dogs decide to ride in groups. And not all dogs are well behaved, some get overexcited from the run and territorial at random.
* You can see and hear a car coming much easier than a 2-wheeler.
* Almost no-one has insurance. The NHS is free anyway, so… and those who get mangled beyond trivial repairs can get disability (I guess)
* Once cycling ‘takes off’ as a regular thing to do, people get all sorts of kamikaze rides going: delivery cycles (can weigh an easy 500kg), Rikshas for hire, and the many popular ways of risking one’s offsprings’ life and limb by precariously perching them somewhere on the cycle, or (as seen recently) in a little trailer just at bumper height, to ensure fume poisoning along with nightmares.
* Cyclists’ bodies are the crumpling zone and the flimsy protections that most people hate to wear are nowhere near as effective as people hope. Falling off the cycle produces way more complex breakages needing surgeries than simple falls (and so on). Dentists will also have extra lots of extra work…!
* Things like oil or black ice really are dangerous, but most of the time you don’t see them (not that it helps much, I’ve climbed off the cycle just to fall over on what I was trying to avoid…)
I had to cycle to school every morning as a child, in a country that has lots of rain and ice & snow and it’s cold, dangerous, uncomfortable and just plain nasty, not fun and certainly not healthy at all in the cold or the rain and having your body chilled through feels horrible, it takes ages to warm up again.
Anyone who advocates for that has either no clue or is malicious.
(and, how many accidents does it take to eviscerate the imagined savings anyway?)
A true test of the theory, of course, would be to reduce the budget by around 70 million RIGHTNOW and see how things are touted up at end of year. Any takers?
They say people get the politicians they deserve, but I really can’t fathom what anyone could do to deserve Drakeford
“Ed P
November 7, 2022 at 7:55 pm
20mph inflicts lower then half the impact to an unfortunate pedestrian than 30mph (as it’s proportional to speed squared).
There is a valid reason for the reduction”
2mph inflicts lower than 1/10th the impact to an unfortunate pedestrian that 20mpj (as it’s proportional to speed squared). There is a valid reason for the reduction”
Or, you know, stop fucking hitting people with your cars. We managed to avoid it over here in septicland.
“They say people get the politicians they deserve, but I really can’t fathom what anyone could do to deserve Drakeford”
Presumably voting for the cunt…..40% voted Labour last time, 20% voted Plaid in the 100% knowledge they would back Labour into a government, and 5% voted Lib Dem, who will undoubtedly support all the current bollocks anyway, so at least 65% of the Welsh deserve everything they are getting, good and hard. The other 35% should just leave and let the leftists stew in mess of their own making.
@ Chernyy Drakon – with any luck, your (and our) wish might come true:
“Wales First Minister Mark Drakeford has Covid”
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1589613923334062080
Its possible that the likes of Drakeford et al will have bought into their own BS and will continue to take every covid jab going from here onwards. If they are as toxic as they seem to be the result of which could well be to wipe the political class off the face of the earth. Fingers crossed!
EdP and Agammamon,
Taking the velocity squared means that essentially you consider the problem to be the kinetic energy of the impactor. It isn’t. It’s a simple velocity problem, as the pedestrian impacted has to be accelerated to the velocity of the vehicle in a fraction of his/her body width, and force applied is the mass of the pedestrian times the acceleration (which you get from the velocity change and the distance). You can show that it isn’t KE by comparing being impacted by a 1 tonne car at 30mph, a 10kg weight at 3000mph, or being hit by a big US aircraft carrier at under 2 inches per second.
Of course, the trick is for the drivers not to hit pedestrians, which is better facilitated by drivers looking through the windscreen than being fixated on the speedometer.
You can go to a tool like crashmap.co.uk and see that the vast majority of awful accidents occur at junctions.
Lower speed limit labels on the in between bits are very unlikely to reduce accidents or increase well-being imv.
Many years ago when those in government were expected to think rather than provide soundbites for TV/follow the latest woke fashion, they took evidence from coroners and medical experts and chose 30 mph as the limit for built-up areas as the risk of a child dying as a result of being hit by a car was much reduced at 30 mph versus 40 mph. A further reduction in speed produced very little saving in child deaths because they had already been reduced to a tolerable level by the 30 mph limit.
Drakeford has not done his homework.
I suspect that when a car impacts a pedestrian, in the majority of cases, the pedestrian put themselves in the way of the car rather than the driver steering towards the pedestrian. That is why speed limit restrictions outside schools at the beginning and end of the school day make sense.
So, the important thing is that pedestrians pay attention and stop stepping in front of cars. There is certainly an argument for making it illegal for pedestrians to be using a mobile phone when crossing the road.
Down here in NZ, the Greens have been aggressively pursuing lower speed limits for the last 5 years, not just in towns, but on all roads. Huge sections of highway have been reduced from 100 to 60, almost all in-town roads have been reduced from 80 to 50, residential to 30. They have gone even further in their claims, asserting that every 10 km/h reduction reduces accidents by 20%.
The costs have been enormous. I can no longer deliver my products overnight from Christchurch to Wellington, shipping charges have doubled, this is one of the main drivers of food inflation.
Has it saved lives? Not in the slightest, this year will see another new record for deaths. And they only give us figure absolute terms. With millions of tourists still missing from NZ, the rate of deaths must have gone up far more.
Until the recent cold caused “interesting times” I was a frequent visitor to Shanghai a city of around 30 million. Pedestrians and scooter riders often mingled on the pavements, with little problem, no doubt due to everyone keeping their eyes open, and being sensible,
Tim, you control this site so you can invent any measure you want.
Regarding pedestrian fatalities… ISTR reading a study that found that a rather high percentage (it’s quite a while ago and I can’t remember the actual number) of pedestrians who had been killed in RTAs with motor vehicles had a blood alcohol level considerably higher than that permitted for drivers.
@ Baron Jackfield
If someone is rolling drunkenly along the pavement or across a Zebra Crossing that is no excuse for a careless motorist. More importantly the level of blood alcohol that affects reaction time in a smallish non-vanishing minority of drivers is significantly lower than that which will lead to the average pedestrian rolling out into the roadway in front of a car.
So the relevant question is “How many RTAs/deaths were the result of inebriated pedestrians?” and “Would a reduction in the speed limit to 20 mph produce a significant reduction?”
“If someone is rolling drunkenly along the pavement or across a Zebra Crossing that is no excuse for a careless motorist.”
I think the type of behaviour displayed by drunk pedestrians can go a bit beyond ‘rolling drunkenly across the road’. There was a case a while back of a driver who was prosecuted for driving over (and killing) a drunk who was laying asleep in the middle of the road in the pitch dark, and not stopping afterwards. The driver thought he’d driven over some rubbish. He was acquitted IIRC.
There was a case in my local town of a drunk man walking back from the pub down the middle of the road at night and getting hit by a car, he was seriously injured but survived, I’m not sure if the driver was prosecuted. Only a few months prior to that case a woman was killed locally walking on a dual carriageway in the wee small hours on her way to buy cigarettes at an all night garage having been at a party all evening. And a very good friend of mine was driving down the M4 at night when a man appeared in front of him, who he hit, killing him. The inquest showed the man was drunk and on drugs, it exonerated my friend from any blame.
Drunk people do some stupid sh*t. Sometimes it gets them killed.