Reuters reports London mayor Ken Livingstone, currently locked in a battle for re-election, is seeking to further alienate motorists from his campaign by saying that if re-elected he would institute a 20mph speed limit in all residential portions of London. Reuters reports that Livingstone's follow up to a proposed hike in congestion charges is justified as a life-saving measure. "I'll work with all London boroughs to designate all residential streets as 20 mph zones," said Livingstone in a public statement. "Nine out of ten pedestrians will be killed if hit by a car traveling at 40 mph," Livingstone asserts without citing anything in the way of sources, "but only one in forty will die if hit at 20 mph." And we thought the federal double nickel was bad in the 70's and 80's.
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This is all assuming he gets re-elected. Hopefully, he’ll accidentally get lost in rural China.
What a dick, as only 1 in 70 will die if the limit were 10 mph!
Livingstone needs to look at the big picture. For every car that hits 40 on a residential street there are two in the city center creeping ahead no faster than a Roman ox cart. Therefore, average vehicle speeds are already within 20 mph. The real problem must be that pedestrians are walking too slow.
Losing sight of the ball…
Cars are meant to move. This type of logic is in the same area as, “if cars are completely stopped, we’ll have a *zero* death rate.”
Reasonable speed limits are fine. The lower limit of these needs to be where the benefit of a car is not negated. In the above example, we might as well return to the said ox-cart.
Same thing for artificially low highway speed limits. It is not incorrect that 45mph crash will release less energy than a 75mph crash; but it is not right to make the speed limit 45mph.
If you have been to London, this doesn’t seem so ridiculous. Residential areas often have narrow, short streets with densely packed cars parked parallel, many with a lot more foot traffic than you’d find on an equivalent US street. It is also legal to park facing in either direction, so it is possible for traffic to pull out in front of you from the opposite side of the road. As a result, you have more opportunities for speed variance, and lousy lines of sight.
Cars are meant to move.
Yes, of course, but people are also meant to move, and it’s a good thing if they don’t get run over while they’re doing it.
This is not American suburbia that we are talking about here, but a densely packed city with a residential street plan that largely predates cars. The city was designed around foot traffic, and it is up to city planners to figure out how to make the cars work in harmony with the pedestrians who live in it.
“Nine out of ten pedestrians will be killed if hit by a car traveling at 40 mph,”
I’m pretty sure those nine pedestrians would be alive if they looked both ways before crossing, and went on the green, and not inbetween.
How many times do I have to say it?
It’s not the high speeds that kill people. It’s the incompetent drivers that kill people. It’s small consolation that this is not just a US problem.
Incompetent bus, taxi, and train RIDERS kill far fewer people than incompetent car DRIVERS, so the good mayor should seek to remove incompetent drivers from behind their wheels.
Maybe they can bring back the old rule where a car had to have a man walking in front of it waving a flag …
Pch101: I’ve been to London several times and it still seems ridiculous to me.
That said, it is hard to go over 20 mph with those stupid three foot wide rubber speed bumps every 12 inches.
The real solution might be just to leave London.
Also — would the 20 mph apply to the buses?
Maybe diesel fumed crazed cyclists who ignore red lights could be ticketed as well.
I’m glad I don’t live in London…
Pardon my ignorance as I have never been across the pond, but I would have thought the UK would measure speed in kph rather than mph. I though the US was the only major user of the (ironically) English system anymore.
These photos are examples of the kinds of residential streets that I believe that we are talking about here:
http://english.la.psu.edu/undergraduate/TheEternalCityandSedediRoma_clip_image004.jpg
http://www.diblings.com/journal/london/images/Image010.jpg
In the US, these types of streets would already have 25 mph limits, if not lower. But in the UK, these are set at 30 mph.
For some reason, unlike the US, they don’t set their speed limits using 5 mph limit increments, so there are no 25 mph limits. For them, lowering the limit to 20 is the next notch downward.
would the 20 mph apply to the buses?
I doubt that you could even a fit a bus on streets like these.
The English Channel is wider than it looks on the map.
Maybe the mayor will be hit by a car and problem solved. :-)
Just kidding.
I’m pretty sure those nine pedestrians would be alive if they looked both ways before crossing, and went on the green, and not inbetween.
Is there something I’m missing? If a car is going 10mph or 60mph, if you didn’t look, you’ll get what is coming. I know there are always exceptions like children and those with diminished mental capabilities, but 20mph or 80mph, it comes down to those responsible for their welfare to make sure they’re not around the street. It said it was a close election, and I hope he loses by 4 votes from the 5 swing voters who have some semblance of half a brain common sense.
On second thought, maybe we’ve merely exported “Big Brother,” and he is theirs.
One is left wondering why cars made people, given what a nuisance people are for drivers …
30km/h is not that much of a novelty across Europe, in residential areas and certain urban zones with lots of pedestrian traffic. For people who live in their cars, and use their legs to prop up dinner trays, that may seem like a whacked out priority – but you’ll be seeing more of it. Urban planners are reclaiming city centers, and the only way of achieving that is by making them liveable.
The measure specifically states that “residential streets” are those affected – hey, good for the kids.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the-road-ahead/
Sorry, but I think there are too many knee-jerk reactions here. Looking at the facts, we see that contemporary European cars are designed to make low-speed impacts with pedestrians survivable. The higher the speed, the lower the survivability.
Another point to ponder is that pedestrian injuries and deaths are a major issue: safety technology has helped to reduce injuries to car drivers and passengers, but not to reduce damage to pedestrians. The balance is missing.
The Livingstone-is-a-jerk argument may feel good, but it doesn’t wash when you look at the guy the conservatives have set up as candidate. Good luck with him.
How much travel time is lost due to 20mph speed limits in residential areas? On an average commute, it’s probably better measured in seconds than in minutes. Do you guys really mean to say this is worth a loss in life?
BTW, I wrote about pedestrian protection a few weeks ago:
A single question for the good Lord Mayor:
WTF is the pedestrian doing in the middle of the road?
Could it not be argued that pedestrian deaths are Darwinian, in the sense that they improve the “breed”? Could we not argue that for the survival of the species (i.e. ours) it would be wiser to INcrease speed limits?
30mph limit was chosen as the safest after extensive research that showed that 20mph was not safer than 30mph because drivers concentrated less.
Politicians should stick to what they know best… can’t for the life of me think what that is…
Somehow, I can’t quote the link here, but if anybody is interested in the article, just enter “pedestrian” in the search box.
driving course: interesting information. Could you kindly name your source? Thanks!
Lots of comments here based on, well, bugger all really.. Yes, Livingstone is a bit of a dick, but as others have pointed out here, London is a very particular case. Small roads, small cars, bad visibility since roads are short, high numbers of pedestrians….Also, a much larger percentage of the population actually don’t own cars, since they’re no use – it’s faster to take public transport. I’m with Martin and Pch101 here.
Making the speed limit 20 on wide open motorways would be stupid. Making the speed limit 20 in narrow populated residential streets isn’t.
And as for all the flippant comments about darwinism…
Responding to cars are meant to move, yes they are, and they may move faster on average if fewer people were driving faster, braking hard etc. Slow things down, and the flow can become steadier. helps your economy too. :-)
I’m surprised that traffic even hits 20 mph in London.
It’s a beautiful city, but not one in which I would like to drive a car.
I think that one thing that galls a lot of Americans seeing this is that in the US, the speed limit in residential areas is typically 25 mph. By US standards, 20 mph would be awfully low.
But in the UK, there are no 25 mph speed limits. Unlike the US, where limits are set in 5 mph increments, this is not legal in the UK.
The standard urban speed limit in the UK for both commercial and residential districts is 30 mph. So if the 30 mph limit is considered to be too high for streets like those, the next notch down would be 20 mph, not 25 mph.
30mph limit was chosen as the safest after extensive research that showed that 20mph was not safer than 30mph because drivers concentrated less.
I frankly doubt it. It’s a blanket national speed limit that they apply to virtually every urban street, in both commercial districts (that the US would typically post at a higher limit of 35 mph) and residential (that Americans would usually limit to 25 mph.) There’s no way that they sent traffic engineers to study every street to determine whether those limits were optimal in each case.
I can’t imagine an American candidate running on a promise to bring back the double nickel.
But I fully expect some bureaucrat to propose it any day now.
Captain Neek : WTF is the pedestrian doing in the middle of the road?
Bird watching… Of course!