I see that there are proposals being announced by the government to further reduce speed limits – from 30mph to 20mph in urban locations, and 60mph to 50mph in the countryside. Apparently this is all part of a new strategy to reduce road deaths in Britain by 33% by 2020.
So, the government is still flying in the face of voters’ opinion and the clear facts, and sticking to their ludicrous “speed kills” mantra. Never mind that only 5% of accidents are put down to excessive speed. Forget the fact that before 1992 when the government starting lowering speed limits and banging up speed cameras everywhere, the road deaths total in Britain was falling, and since then it has risen. No, why let facts get in the way? If they drop the speed limit, they can clog up the roads during the day, and catch innocent motorists on their speed cameras at night.
Who is in charge of creating these policies? Have they actually done the math? Let’s examine a simple example shall we…?
We have a stretch of road, 1 mile in length, with a 30mph limit – a perfectly sensible limit for an urban area. Let’s assume that during rush hour, 2400 cars travel this 1 mile stretch every hour. That averages out to 40 cars per minute joining the road and 40 cars per minute leaving the road. Each car takes 2 minutes to complete the mile, so at any time there can be 80 cars on the road. Now 1 mile equals 1609 metres, and the average car length is about 2.5 metres. Assuming that each car keeps a safe distance of 5 car lengths from the vehicle in front, then each car needs 15 metres of road space. If there are 80 cars on the road, that’s 1200 metres. Easily do-able on our road.
Now, in comes an idiot bureaucrat, and drops the speed limit to 20mph, for reasons of “road safety” and reducing road deaths.
As a result, each car will now take 3 minutes to complete the mile, so at any time, there can be 120 cars on the road, which if keeping a safe distance would need 1800 metres of space. Oh dear. We only have 1609 metres available. Something has to give, and that something is the safe distance from the car in front. Now, pop quiz: will this reduce accidents or increase accidents? One thing it will do is allow less reaction time for each driver, and because not all drivers are equal there will inevitably be some late braking. Late braking has a knock on effect in heavy traffic, thus creating congestion and traffic jams, meaning the cars can’t even do the 20mph speed limit. Regardless of this, there are still 40 cars per minute trying to join the road. If there aren’t 40 leaving at the other end, everything grinds to a halt, and now you have thousands of cars sat idle with engines running going nowhere. So, up go the pollution levels, and in summer, up goes the heat. So on goes the air conditioning in the cars, and even more crap belching out of thousands of exhaust pipes all on a one mile stretch of road in a confined urban area.
This example is obviously greatly simplified, because you just can’t bundle road traffic scenarios into nice mathematical formulae any more than you can impose an arbitrary speed limit of 20mph and expect it to work. In reality, chaos theory is in evidence. Some people are late. Some people speed. Some people drive too close. There may be cyclists that cars have to queue to pass.
Also, in our example above, all the traffic is cars. What about vans and lorries?
Being a keen biker, I would note at this point, that the motorcycles would still be able to get through the traffic, using less fuel, less roadspace and generally being much greener. Of course, the bureaucrats aren’t happy with common sense solutions, oh no, they would rather just legislate motorcyles off the road.
In this week’s budget, Alistair Darling announced plans on cutting carbon emissions. How exactly this nonsense will help is beyond me.
Britain’s industry has gone to the dogs due to being taxed out of existence. Hauliers can’t compete with European counterparts due to the excessive tax burden on petrol (which is yet again being increased). Soon, Britains roads will grind to a halt and all business will die. When are people finally going to stand up and protest this rubbish. Is anyone out there still under the illusion that we have a democracy???
As regards reducing road deaths, how is changing a 30 to a 20 or a 60 to a 50 going to make any tangible difference? Are they thinking about pedestrian road deaths? When I was a kid we had the green cross code, and we knew exactly what would happen if we stepped in front of a moving car. Once I was riding my bicycle and didn’t see an approaching car, and rode straight into the front of it. As I recall, we paid for the broken headlight, and I got punished for being so stupid. Nowadays, it’s always the driver at fault and if he dares to object, then he will be sued.
What a pile of crap – and we the British public are expected to live in it. Like pigs.
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