Am I the only idiot that sticks to the 20 MPH limit?

[QuiQuaiQuod]

Get cars up my chuff revving, cars speeding past, yet theyre never caught. I go just 1 over and I'd prob get stopped!

But apparently the highway code ISN'T law so why do some people take notice of it and is that why most people do NOT?

and most areas where I live are 20 mph now- its ridiculus and prob causes more emissions!

Plus a lot of people will get very frustrated at being stuck behind a driver doing 20 on a "natural 30" road, and then try to overtake in a risky way. I don't do it myself, but I can believe this might happen a lot, and make the road more dangerous than it actually was before.

I believe some of the limits are to stop pollution that reduces air quality. I was told that is why the M25 is a total car park. I was on it a couple of days ago and there were 4 lanes either doing 40 or stopped.

it's also an emission thing.

just keep to the speed limit. if you don't you deserve fines/points/bans

I ALWAYS stick to the speed limit.

I generally drive at the top allowed speed unless conditions make it unsafe (poor visibility etc). However I'm ALWAYS getting aggressive (typically male) drivers driving cm behind me and overtaking me the first chance they get (sometimes dangerously!). I honestly don't understand it. If I'm driving AT the allowed limit why is there a need to overtake?

It's 20 all around Brum uni, but to be fair the students are a law unto themselves with their headphones on or eyes glued to phone held in front of them.

My local seafront area is all 20mph. I stick to this as it seems to wind up the tourists that flood the area during summer. Roads are narrow enough so they cannot pass me either. One of life's little pleasures.

I lie in bed listening to the cars and bikes zooming down our road and shout slow down... it doesn't help

We are a cut through road, long, straight and quite wide but with speed bumps but doesn't stop them.

We have lots of kids on our road it drives me mad. We keep our gate shut incase toddler makes a run for it.

Sometimes I feel like standing outside with my hairdryer

I get the environmental thing,,so maybe they need to remove all the speed bumps which produce more pollution by drivers driving then slowing then driving then slowing..

Unless there are cameras people will always do it especially if the road is clear

Yes but a seafront makes sense - it's going to be a high pedestrian traffic area even if at certain times of the year. The roads where it makes absolutely no sense are the ones where you have a very straight, wide road with no obstruction to vision, no shops, schools etc and low pedestrian traffic. I'd expect these to be 30.

Why do people insist it's safer when the actual DATA show it's not?
Post-truth?

No - fake news! The sensationalist news stories omit a number of facts to make it appear that 20 mph zones are less safe. It is a fact that a person hit by a vehicle travelling at 20 mph is less likely to be killed. That's got to be a good thing. IF, and it's a big if, the vehicle is travelling at 20mph. The problem is that the majority of them aren't! Because most people are in a rush to be somewhere other than where they are, and they are safe drivers, they know what they are doing (or don't care), so it isn't as though they are going to kill someone by going over the speed limit, are they? Just like it's actually ok to travel at 90mph down the motorway, because most accidents involve vehicles travelling at or below the speed limit. Fake statistics - if most people are obeying the law, then the majority of accidents will involve people obeying the law by the law of averages; it doesn't mean that driving at 90mph is safe or ok.

In fact, the problem with most 20mph zones is that they are introduced on the cheap. The ACTUAL evidence says that when they are properly introduced with traffic calming measures to force traffic to slow down, then accidents are massively reduced. That's the considered view of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, based on a wide number of evaluations and unbiased deliberation. Simply telling people to drive more slowly doesn't work, and anyone driving through such areas (we have a lot of them where I live) knows that. The fact that people ignore them isn't an argument to abolish them. It's an argument to make them more rigorous in order to save lives.

Are you a highways or planning engineer? Are the people in the "my road doesn't need to be 20mph" Gang? No? Ok, so someone with relevant experience and qualifications has looked at the road in question, and the ones surrounding it and decided the limit can be lowered

I wish that it were true that science, engineering and data were driving this, but I really believe it isn't. I have in the past looked up up my LA authority reasons for the new limits and the bit someone posted up-thread rings a bell: they are deliberately trying to make driving so unattractive that fewer people do it. It's about prioritising people who live in the vicinity of a road over people using it to get from A to B.

Many years ago I read a rant by a blogger who claimed that the ideal speed limit for a road was (according to road safety experts like those you imagine are being consulted) something like the speed 90% of motorist would do less than if there were no limit. He said that it was proven that if you set the speed limit significantly below that, it would be utterly ignored by most drivers.

I think he may have been right about the last point, as that is what seems to have happened on the roads near me. Where main through-routes have limits lowered to 20mph, fewer than 1 in 10 cars obey the limits, most still drive (as another poster also said) as though the limit were still 30.

If you think that someone doing 30 in a 20 is a maniac, you need to accept 90% of drivers are maniacs and perhaps campaign for the end of the right to drive on public roads for non-professional drivers. (Actually I think the self-driving car will bring this in out lifetime anyway.)

I have just googled my local authority, and I can confirm that there was a wholesale decision to convert virtually all 30mph roads to 20mph, there was no road-by-road analysis by experts to decide which should be converted. (In fact it seems to be the other way around, a handful of roads were approved to be exceptions to the wholesale conversion. i.e the procedure was to make everything 20mph unless someone had come up with a reason why it should be 30.)

the procedure was to make everything 20mph unless someone had come up with a reason why it should be 30.)

sounds totally sensible to me tbh

It's interesting how many posters freely admit to breaking the 20 speed limit for what ever excuse they deem reasonable and yet a cyclist breaking any road rule at all is jumped upon immediately.

it's much easier to maintain 30 than 20 without having to keep looking at your speedo due to the way car engines were designed.

To accurately maintain 20 means driving in 2nd for me and even then I'm having to constantly check my speedo visually. My emissions have certainly gone up since this was imposed in the Bristol/Bath area.

Bath council, whilst admitting the 20 mph limits have made things worse claim they can't afford to reverse their policy.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/17/20mph-limit-dangerous-costly-reverse-council-admits/

It’s easy to stick to 20mph & a sat nav can be set with an alarm bell to ring if you break the speed limit - better t that than kill a child

I think it is more dangerous in some ways to constantly have to keep looking at the speedometer.

I once read an article about a woman who had inadvertently killed a child. She was driving at the speed limit of 30mph, a child ran out between 2 cars and that was that. She was devastated. The parents didn't blame her, they blamed themselves for not keeping a closer eye on their child. It was a harrowing read, brought tears to my eyes & that doesn't happen very often.
The speed limits are there for a reason & I stick to them. I also drive according to the road conditions. Sadly a lot of drivers don't seem to do either.

Annoys the turd out of me.
My street is a 200mph the whole area has been for a good 15+ years but there's always some muff hole who likes to fly over the speed bumps at 40mph
I have drilled into my children road safety so why aren't drivers having road safety drilled into them.
I agree with pp who said instant ban for driving offences. Your in charge of a killing machine so 1 strike your out should be the rule imo.

I don't stick to 20mph unless outside a school or another legitimate reason. Utterly ridiculous. I don't really believe we should have speed limits at all - people are usually sensible and understand roads so obviously where there is a greater risk of small children being around, drive very slowly, when it's 2am and the roads are empty it's okay to drive a bit faster - common sense.

Our street is 20 mph not 200mph

The 20 signs in circles on rectangular signs are not the law.
They're often in a "when lights flash" place and I do stick to them but they're never clear where it ends! I usually assume it's ended once I turn onto another road without 20 signs.

"woodhill

I think it is more dangerous in some ways to constantly have to keep looking at the speedometer."
Can't you judge your speed?