The trouble isn't the cars going quickly (30mph) but the pedestrians thinking they can get away with not paying attention... Speed Humps don't work (there is evidence that deaths actually rose after their widespead implentation in London as more people died on the way to Hospital as the ambulances had to go slower and take the humps). Chicanes don't always work, but can do if used appropriately (a rare thing in City Planning offices). And a lower speed limit just for the sake of it will increase pollution.
I say leave it as it is, and try to teach people to be more wary of the dangers. I've been clipped by a car (and it hurt), and my brother was killed in a car accident a few years ago, so I kind of have a vested interest in the motoring safety world. But I don't beleive that blanket speed limits, or GPS controlled car speeds are the way forwards at all. The people that do the real damage, the real speeders that do 50 in a 30, won't slow down because the limit has changed, they drive as the roads seem fit.
For example. A couple of miles from me is the Lotus Road (actually Lotus is on a little side road off it, but we still call this bigger road the Lotus Road. It's a great road, with a tight, hilly section (40mph corners) to long sweeping corners, blind corners, esses, and more. It's awesome. But a few Lotus employees (who think they can drive cos they work for Lotus) and a few mental motorcyclists got killed in a relatively short period, so they put in a 50mph limit along the whole road (before it was the national limit of 60mph (~100kmh). As far as I know, and I don't have exact figures in front of me, the number of deaths has barely decreased. Maybe 5%. The majority of the deaths are the same number of stupid people who ignored the first limit (and ignored the theoretical limit of the road, believing themselves to be driving Gods or whatever), and they ignore this limit too. Me? I use that road for test driving at work. I know the road and every bump like the back of my hand. I do one run at 50mph to make sure no police are around and that the road surface is good. Then I am willing to go faster. But I never get close to a cars (or my) limit yet I can take corners along it at 100mph.
The issue is not Speed. Speed does not kill. Speed has very rarely killed anyone. And I say this despite the fact I was nearly accused of man-slaughter for my brothers death by 'encouraging' him to race. In fact, that day, we were NOT speeding at all, and neither were we driving too fast for the conditions. But, especially in my mothers eyes, I was convicted because I was young.
No, the issue is not speed. It is INAPPROPRIATE speed that does the majority of the damage. Blanket speed limits do not change the appropriate speed, only the lawful maximum. Reducing the limit so that people just do 20mph without actually thinking isn't necessarily safer, it's just short sighted. Fixing an effect rather than fixing the cure. If everyone is forced to ride a motor cycle, even a moped, they would learn how to read a road, how to understand traction and road surfaces. But people, as a whole, don't. They climb in their cars, which they take for granted, and drive a speeds which are frequently inappropriate. Putting 20 signs won't change them. They will do 40 or 50mph regardless of what the legal limit actually is.
Unfortunately, political correctness and the nanny state means that it's not allowed to think like this. We have to agree that lower limits == safer roads. But the people that obey them are the people that KNEW to go slower as road/weather/traffic conditions dicate. The people that ignored the higher limit will continue to ignore lower ones and deaths will still occur with pretty much the same regularity.
illepall
