Speed limit to be lowered to 20mph in Wales

[Dod101]

[when you are driving through a hamlet of a few people and a totally empty road it makes no sense

Dod

maybe the speed limit in these circumstances should be NSL - the road is empty after all. 60mph seems reasonable then.

I think the standard 30 mph is perfectly reasonable. Few of these places have any form of enforcement and so people will tend to do more than 20 mph anyway and as I said it means that where 20 mph is sensible people tend not to take sufficient notice. Believe me I understand. I live on a small country road which has a 30 mph limit but a number of people use it as a rat run and travel faster than that. Even entering and exiting drives can be a problem even with cars travelling at 30 mph.

Dod

[DrFfybes]

By that argument why not make it 15 mph? 10 mph?

Absolutely. Fine by me. 10mph is cool.

Then cycling is faster and we can get the carbon based monoliths off the road.

Do you really think cyclists will continue to be exempt from the new limits?

Give it 18 months, a cyclist will overtake a car and have an accident, then it will become a fixed penalty with no points.

Paul

[didds]

Absolutely. Fine by me. 10mph is cool.

Then cycling is faster and we can get the carbon based monoliths off the road.

Do you really think cyclists will continue to be exempt from the new limits?

Give it 18 months, a cyclist will overtake a car and have an accident, then it will become a fixed penalty with no points.

Paul

the law would have to change to charge a cyclist with exceeding the speed limit obviously. The example you provide could have happened last week before the speed limit change anyway.

Meanwhile I clearly being facetious previously...

[Breelander]

Note: Nitter in the above link is the Firefox extension I use to circumvent the 'ban' on reading Twitter as I do not and will not have a Twitter account.

I have no wish to have a Twitter account either. On investigating your suggestion I found the simplest way for me to read Twitter freely is to go to https://nitter.net/ and enter the name of the Twitter account I wish to see.

[dionaeamuscipula]

[when you are driving through a hamlet of a few people and a totally empty road it makes no sense

Dod

maybe the speed limit in these circumstances should be NSL - the road is empty after all. 60mph seems reasonable then.

It *is* the NSL. In roads such as those, in Wales, the NSL is 20.

DM

[didds]

Ok. Drop the term NSL.

60 mph, pure and simple. its a clear, open road.

[dionaeamuscipula]

I love Wales and go there a lot, but this whole mess is seriously putting me off ever venturing there again.

It might not be a showstopper but it could well be a tie-breaker in deciding where to go on a holiday trip. If travelling through Wales, don't a number of routes go through towns and villages and thus 20 mph will add to journey times?

Well, yes. But even on my daily commute through the centre of a large Welsh City, I would guess that well over half the distance is on roads where the speed limit is 30 or higher.

Of course there are pretty big swathes of the M4 on this side of the bridge (past Newport, Port Talbot, and Swansea for example) where the speed limit has ben reduced to 50 for air quality reasons.

I do think there is an unstated sub-text in Wales which is to reduce car usage. I think this is generally a good thing, although of course in my own case my and my family's life style preclude making any such changes and we have just bought an extra car*.

DM

*yes, I am fully aware. This kind of attitude is widely held, not just in the UK, and is one of the reasons why (a) governments have to take actions and (b) why referenda are a poor way of choosing public policy. There you go. Governing is hard, unless you are a populist.

[didds]

well at least that pesky meat tax has been dropped now.

[swill453]

It *is* the NSL. In roads such as those, in Wales, the NSL is 20.

Er no, NSL is marked by the black and white sign. Nothing to do with the 30/20 change.

Scott.

[Dod101]

Ok. Drop the term NSL.

60 mph, pure and simple. its a clear, open road.

These days on narrow country roads I seldom drive at 60 mph anyway because of the number of cyclists around, so I would be pleased if didds did not keep quoting that figure. These are supposed to be maximum speeds not minimum.

Dod

[servodude]

Ok. Drop the term NSL.

60 mph, pure and simple. its a clear, open road.

These days on narrow country roads I seldom drive at 60 mph anyway because of the number of cyclists around, so I would be pleased if didds did not keep quoting that figure. These are supposed to be maximum speeds not minimum.

Dod

I'm struggling to see how a "clear open road" could equate to a "built up area"

[didds]

I'll draw a picture.

A point/claim was made wrt dropping from 30 to 20

when you are driving through a hamlet of a few people and a totally empty road it makes no sense

I countered - as reductio ad absurdum - that in that case why have any speed limit at all and used 60 as an example. Make it 120 if you prefer. Or no limit whatsoever.

its a totally empty road after all.

that is all.

[dionaeamuscipula]

It *is* the NSL. In roads such as those, in Wales, the NSL is 20.

Er no, NSL is marked by the black and white sign. Nothing to do with the 30/20 change.

Scott.

https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits

DM

[swill453]

Er no, NSL is marked by the black and white sign. Nothing to do with the 30/20 change.

https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits

https://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/road-si ... rders.html

Scott.

[dealtn]

And if it really makes such a small difference then why implement it at all?

A small difference in time for the driver, a large difference in the chance of a pedestrian being killed or seriously injured if hit by the vehicle.

Scott.

True. But to do the societal cost benefit analysis properly you need to assess the numbers of drivers affected by the change, and the numbers of people hit by vehicles. Big differences to (extremely) small numbers of people shouldn't be the deciding factor in such considerations - sad though those extreme outcome are. Else you would ban drugs that have rare but extreme side effects as an example.

[CliffEdge]

My car isn't built to do 20 mph. It has 72 bhp and is way overpowered.

[swill453]

My car isn't built to do 20 mph. It has 72 bhp and is way overpowered.

Mine has 150bhp and has no problem doing 20mph. Maybe your problem lies elsewhere.

Scott.

[CliffEdge]

My car isn't built to do 20 mph. It has 72 bhp and is way overpowered.

Mine has 150bhp and has no problem doing 20mph. Maybe your problem lies elsewhere.

Scott.

I think your car is even stupider than mine.

[88V8]

Mine has 150bhp and has no problem doing 20mph. Maybe your problem lies elsewhere.

I think your car is even stupider than mine.

Something more suitable.
When new, the limit was .... 20mph...

V8

[DrFfybes]

My car isn't built to do 20 mph. It has 72 bhp and is way overpowered.

Mine has 150bhp and has no problem doing 20mph. Maybe your problem lies elsewhere.

Scott.

Our cars have 80-ish BHP, 120ish, and 340 ish.

All will do 20 mph quite happily, although only in first or second gears. None will manage 3rd without labouring uphill or running away downhill, and the BMW is barely over tickover.

Similarly the bike needs second for 20mph.

So whilst all those studies and models show 20 causes less or equal pollution, they are all based on short trips in stop/start urban areas, modelling cars doing a few hndred yards before stopping again at a junction. I suspect if you re-run them with vehicles doing a sustained 20mph for the sort of distances now imposed then the pollution figures would not be as favourable.

From the relatives in Llandeilo and the environs, there seems to be a lot more road rage between the "Obeyers" and the "refusers".

Paul