The latest IAM poll is on 20 mph speed limits, pedestrian areas, and so on. It also asks about woonerfs (areas with no signage, based on a Dutch idea, which I have discussed before).
Have a go here (you don't need to be a member, etc.).
For what it's worth, I have no problem with 20 mph limits in the appropriate areas (residential districts, outside schools and so on). There is a direct connection between the limit and the reason for the limit, and the limited area is clearly defined. France (where I am until tomorrow morning) has many of these limits: in fact, villages without the huge, soft speed cushions and the 30 kph signage are quite rare. Compliance seems to be very high, as you might expect where a law is sensible and restricted to the immediate need.
"Compliance seems to be very high" - yes, but also fairly approximate. Nobody seems to get particularly exercised over a few k's plus or minus (or even, in our case, when we were sometimes doing more like 30mph than kph). I guess you can do that when you have low population and traffic density and even on the main roads, 30k limits are brief and fairly sporadic affairs. It simply isn't the tooth-grinding inconvenience it would be in the more crowded parts of the UK.
ReplyDeleteI maintain that we really don't need any more emphasis on speed limits, any more drivers staring fixedly at their instrument panels or any more arbitrary lowest-common-denominator rules enforced with draconian zealotry.
What we need are better and more courteous drivers, perhaps even encouraged to be so by less distractions from concentrating on the road itself and less heavy-handedness in distributing blanket punishments.
Rather like the woonerf idea, in fact - although I'm extremely doubtful about the inclusion of pedestrians in mainstream traffic flow, particularly if all liability rests with drivers by default. Youngsters, oldsters, people who don't drive - how are any of them expected to understand vehicle behaviour and react accordingly? Shared and unsigned vehicle space only, which I've also seen piloted, seems a far more appropriate idea: leave the peds on the pavements.
Cheers for the link - for what it's worth, I've presented my views to the IAM via extensive use of the "Other - Please Specify" option!