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Brake Hysteria Won't Save Lives
In another irresponsible knee-jerk approach to press and media, Brake are calling for widespread 20mph speed limits.
The problem is that 'wide area' 20mph speed limits have not been studied AT ALL as a safety intervention. We don't know what the results would be. Safe Speed points out that it is extremely irresponsible to promote unknown and untested road safety interventions.
Paul Smith, of SafeSpeed.org.uk, said: "20mph zones have higher average crash severities than 30mph zones, [1] and we don't know why. To roll out more 20mph zones without much better information would be irresponsible."
"National figures show with perfect clarity that skill and attention are our most precious road safety assets [2]. Widespread 20mph zones are to be expected to squander skill and attention and may well increase overall road dangers."
"I don't believe that Brake or Department for Transport has the first clue about how road safety works as a system."
"Department for Transport (DfT) is claiming success for recent policies - including so called 'speed management policies' (humps, cameras and speed limit reductions) but they have not explained why our overall road safety results are so bad. Road deaths haven't fallen as expected since 1994 and for each of the last four years road crash hospitalisations have increased [3]. These policies have failed.
We're still waiting for DfT to admit that their policies have failed. Presently they would rather save face than save lives."
"We have also fallen to 20th out of 27 European countries for rate of improvement. [4] With our traditions and our culture we should still be number one." "Road safety must deal with the human factors that cause accidents. Fiddling around with speed limits and speed enforcement has been tried and has failed to deliver the promised improvements. It should have been obvious because almost all crashes are caused by human error."
[1] http://tinyurl.com/3eyff5
[2] http://tinyurl.com/2qxg5p
[3] Chart 6b in: http://tinyurl.com/3crbgg
Note that you have to expand the chart widthwise to see the actual figures. For example, 16,066 were admitted to hospital for 2 or more days in 05/06.
Unexpanded the table erroneously shows '1606'.
[4] Figure 2 in European Transport Safety Council 1st report: http://www.etsc.be/documents/PIN_Report.pdf
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