Scottish Data Says~ Lowering Road Speeds Reduce Crashes

Rod King holds  an MBE awarded by the Queen (Member of the British Empire) in Great Britain for his work as  Founder and Campaign Director for “20 is Plenty.”  He has been an advocate for default vehicular driver speeds of 20 miles per hour in cities and towns in Great Britain and Europe,and he has the support of the  United Nations Assembly and the World Health Organization.

With metric conversion Mr. King likes  30 kilometers per hour for municipal driver road speeds too.

Mr. King has been actively campaigning since 2007 assisting communities in a more liveable street environment, encouraging  mandatory 20 mph (30 km/h) speed limit for most roads. His advocacy group does not “represent any particular sector of society or mode of transport and supporters include children, adults and the elderly.”

In 2018 the City of Edinburgh lowered driver road speeds around the city to 20 mph to make the city safer, walkable and more sociable. I have previously written about  Edinburgh experiencing a 25 percent reduction of  cyclist and pedestrian injury rates in the first year of the reduced road speed.

In an extensive study published in the Urban Analytics and City Science Journal, researchers looked at the  impacts of reduced speeds in the City of Edinburgh. The researchers at St. Andrew’s University  found that the lowered driver speed limits of 20 mph reduced crashes by one-third in the two years since the lower road speeds were implemented.

As reported by The BBC St. Andrews University’s Dr. Valentin Popov of the School of Mathematics and Statistics says that the research indicates that the 20 mph lower speed policy was effective.

He stated ” This shows that 20 mph limits are worth considering in cities where there is a concerted will to reduce road traffic collisions and make roads safer for users.”

While also stating that there may be a “cultural” bias in that vehicle drivers are driving slower because it is the right thing to do, Twenty is Plenty’s Rod King disagrees. On his twitter feed he points out that reducing road driver speed in the British cities of Bath, Bristol, Calderdale, Cheshire West and Chester has also directly reduced casualties.

You can take a look at the 20 is Plenty website here.  This vimeo webinar below has Rod King at 17:00 outlining  his work, as well as describing the outcomes from adopting the 20 mph driver speed limits in municipalities.