The increase of 20mph speed limits in Britain has been sending drivers around the bend. But if an organisation called the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) has its way, things could be about to get even slower – and more frustrating – for motorists. The RSF says that road speeds in cities should be cut to 10mph to prevent deaths and reduce serious injuries. Talk of a 10mph speed limit is preposterous. Does the RSF want to take us back to 1903, when the Motor Car Act of that year first raised the speed limit to what was then a blistering 20mph?
Nearly all of human progress involves trade-offs between advantages and risks
The RSF’s report says, with an apparent straight face, that drivers should not be allowed to go faster than 10mph in any urban street where cyclists or pedestrians are likely to be around, or near any school, hospital or sports ground. In the country, it is true, you could be permitted to let your hair down a bit. But don’t overdo it. On a rural single-carriageway road, the limit might be 20mph, with perhaps as a special concession 30mph where there are no pedestrians or cyclists, and just possibly more where there are ‘fully segregated facilities for any pedestrians or bicyclists’, no T-junctions or crossroads.
Even our remarkably bossy Labour government must surely give this foolish idea short shrift. For all his lack of political acumen, Keir Starmer surely knows that he needs to curry favour with voters who actually want to be able to drive 20 miles on clear roads in something less than an hour, and to be able to do the weekly shop at Tesco on the other side of town without taking up the whole evening.
But even if the report is binned, don’t be complacent: it may be just a matter of time before do-gooders find another way of making driving in Britain even more miserable.
Yes, cars and vans are ugly, noisy and at times dangerous. But they also increase our quality of life immeasurably. Just consider the cities of 100 years ago, where for many the journey to work took two buses and a tram, and shopping involved trudging home uphill in the rain with a burden of dissolving paper bags. Is anyone keen to go back to this?
The RSF appears to be following a slightly dotty progressive international movement known as ‘vision zero’, which, the report tells us, holds ‘the moral position that no death or serious injury should be considered an acceptable by-product of mobility’. Really?
Of course nobody actually wishes injury or death on anyone. But nearly all of human progress – imagine railways, factories, electricity, complex agricultural machinery, or whatever – involves trade-offs between advantages and risks. To take an absolute safety-first attitude and tell the rest of us that we have to eschew the advantages of modern life to reduce to zero the chances that anyone may get hurt is not only anti-progressive. Many would say it was, in addition, deeply immoral.
There’s also an interesting class divide here. Those who run organisations like the RSF are often middle-class and highly earnest. They typically live in leafy areas where stuff comes quickly from Amazon or Ocado; where public transport is good; and where, as often as not, you can genteelly shower off after cycling to work. Things are different for those living in out-of-town estates or tower blocks who need quick transport to juggle their lives – or those who need a van for work. The 10mph speed limit brigade would be wise to listen up to these folk.
There is an unpalatable logic behind calls for limits on what people are allowed to do with their cars or vans: namely, the unspoken idea that ideally private motor transport is something that shouldn’t really exist at all. If we don’t insist today on our right to use our private vehicles, within reason, as we like, in a few years we could well see them being taken away from us entirely. We have been warned. It’s now up to us to see the signs and force a U-turn.
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