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  • "20 limits effective? Very debatable depending on how you want to analyse the stats and the official report. (I'm ignoring newspaper reports; Mail and Telegraph predictably anti...)
    Drivers in favour? Not convinced. Which drivers?
    Comparison with drink driving? Flawed logic.
    How many road fatalities in Oxford in recent years have been caused by high speed? And how many by inattention?
    The Council would have had much the same effect by posting signs saying something like "Please Drive Carefully - you share our streets with cyclists and pedestrians". The effect of 20 limits where they are really necessary, eg past shops and restaurants (Summertown, S Parade, Cowley Rd etc) is diluted. There are other, better ways to make Oxford's streets safer."
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20mph limits effective

8:10am Thursday 12th April 2012 in Letters

Sir – The context of the debate about the 20mph speed limits is that more than 5,000 pedestrians are killed or seriously injured in Britain each year while the speed limit in residential areas is routinely exceeded on some roads.

The use of 20mph limits has been found to be effective — for example in a 2010 Department for Transport report on a scheme in Portsmouth — and a majority of drivers are in favour of them.

Clearly, the level of compliance of a scheme is determined by public acceptance, and this, in turn, is influenced by the presentation of the schemes in the media.

A few decades ago when drink-driving laws were tightened, there was vocal opposition motivated by commercial concerns, worries about individual liberty and self-interest. Looking back, it is hard to understand how some in the community expected their “one for the road” to be paid for in the misery of victims and their families.

Bearing in mind the evidence, it is also equally hard to understand the opposition of some to the 20mph limits expressed in recent weeks.

Paul Moore, Oxford

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