20mph speed limits: what’s the data on pros and cons?

brat

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

Oh, and don’t get me started about the fact that there are downhill roads with 20mph limits, which I respect, but cyclists don’t. Or about the fact that, by law, cyclists are not technically required to respect speed limits other than in royal parks (oh, the hassle of fitting a £5 speedometer on a £ 1,000 pushbike…)..

Heh, give us a break! 20mph is about the only limit we can break easily! :-)

And don't just attack the poor maligned cyclist. 81% of motorists break the 20mph speed limit too. Most car drivers break the other limits too.

Cyclists are not required by law to heed the speed limit, so why should they buy a speedo? They are however required by law to ride with due care.

SouthLondonUser

But that's precisely the point: I don't see why on Earth cyclists should be exempt from speed limits. The objection that bicycles do not come with a speedometer is ludicrous, since it's a very cheap and easy to install object.

Motorists get caught all the time for speeding. Cyclists, whose bikes don't have a plate, only when they cause some serious damage.

Also, why 81? My very detailed data tells me the true figure is, in fact, 79.34587236%

Anyway, we are diverging off topic.

brat

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

But that's precisely the point: I don't see why on Earth cyclists should be exempt from speed limits. The objection that bicycles do not come with a speedometer is ludicrous, since it's a very cheap and easy to install object.

If it had serious worth, it would have been legislated for. At the moment it's merely another thing for motorists to vent spleens against cyclists for.

Motorists get caught all the time for speeding. Cyclists, whose bikes don't have a plate, only when they cause some serious damage.

You seriously need to do some fact checking. Motorists will get caught speeding once every quarter of a million miles or so, during which time they will have broken the speed limit thousands of times. Cyclists get dealt with routinely for offences, but their comparative risk is low, so the majority effort will and should be against the motorist.

Also, why 81? My very detailed data tells me the true figure is, in fact, 79.34587236%

Just quoting research. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/03/drivers-ignore-20mph-speed-limits-official-figures-show/

Anyway, we are diverging off topic.

Why should this thread be different from any other?

SouthLondonUser

@brat,
Saying that if it had serious worth it would have been legislated for doesn’t hold much water. You are basically assuming we have the most efficient lawmaker on the planet, which always legislates in the country’s best interest, and does so promptly, reacting immediately to changing conditions…

As for fact checking, would you care to elaborate why you think that cyclists get dealt with routinely, while motorists only get caught rarely? Are you somehow suggesting that cyclists are caught more often than motorists?

Look, it comes down to very basic logic. A vehicle with a plate can and does get caught (by cameras, by people’s phone, etc) even if it is not stopped, if it tries to run away, or if it has not caused any accident. And rightly so. The same is not true of bicycles, which do not have plates. It’s so self-evident it shouldn’t even be said. Or do you happen to disagree? Yes, cars are more dangerous than pushbikes, pollute more etc etc etc, but none of this changes the point I have just made.

Since you’re a fan of fact-checking, you will be familiar with the Times and Daily Fail (not a publication I’m fond of, I quote it because it references official data from a FoI request) articles which, quoting figures from a Freedom of Information act request, showed that the number of fine issued to cyclists has decreased substantially, despite a massive increase in bike usage. The admission by police forces that they are dedicating their resources to other crimes might potentially suggest that maybe, just maybe, the reason is not a sudden improvement in the behaviour of cyclists.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-giving-rogue-cyclists-an-easy-ride-m0psj7hsg
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4284698/Real-reason-police-stopped-crack-morons-bikes.html

As for the 81% figure, I didn’t mean it’s implausible, I meant that figures extrapolated from small samples should always be taken with a grain of salt. Do you remember when it came out that the official statisticians had grossly misestimated immigration, because one of their data sources was random interviews at airports, done at times which always excluded overnight flights? The results were unreliable because, surprise surprise, most flights from certain destinations tended to be overnight flights. https://www.ft.com/content/1967efce-b62c-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d

If anything, the 81% figure reinforces my argument that respecting the 20mph limit is hard, and sometimes dangerous (at least for us motorcyclists who are more vulnerable than car drivers), precisely because other motorists get mad and may try to overtake dangerously. Oh, and before even more money is spent trying to enforce and police the 20mph limits, it would probably be appropriate to try to understand if that money couldn’t be better spent in some other way to improve road safety (fixing roads, improving road design, etc).

brat

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

@brat,
Saying that if it had serious worth it would have been legislated for doesn’t hold much water. You are basically assuming we have the most efficient lawmaker on the planet, which always legislates in the country’s best interest, and does so promptly, reacting immediately to changing conditions…

All I'm saying is that cycling has been around for 150 years or more. If it was a problem, rather than a perceived unfairness, something would have been done.

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

As for fact checking, would you care to elaborate why you think that cyclists get dealt with routinely, while motorists only get caught rarely? Are you somehow suggesting that cyclists are caught more often than motorists?

Cyclists are targeted by police regularly in operations. Our local units and PCSOs set up campaigns in response to public concerns. But cars are by far the bigger problem, so they will inevitably get much more police attention.
I'm absolutely not suggesting that cyclists are caught more than motorists, but the facts are that if just over 1 million speeding tickets are issued each year for more than 300 billion miles of motoring then a motorist can expect a speeding ticket on average about every 300,000 miles travelled. I bet most motorists exceed speed limits (even marginally) on a daily basis, so I'd comfortably guestimate that most drivers will commit something like 10,000 to 50,000 speeding offences before being caught.

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

Look, it comes down to very basic logic. A vehicle with a plate can and does get caught (by cameras, by people’s phone, etc) even if it is not stopped, if it tries to run away, or if it has not caused any accident. And rightly so. The same is not true of bicycles, which do not have plates. It’s so self-evident it shouldn’t even be said. Or do you happen to disagree? Yes, cars are more dangerous than pushbikes, pollute more etc etc etc, but none of this changes the point I have just made.

I don't disagree that cars drivers are easier to trace. But if there was a supreme need for cyclists to be more identifiable surely some country in the world would have made bike riders identifiable.

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

Since you’re a fan of fact-checking, you will be familiar with the Times and Daily Fail (not a publication I’m fond of, I quote it because it references official data from a FoI request) articles which, quoting figures from a Freedom of Information act request, showed that the number of fine issued to cyclists has decreased substantially, despite a massive increase in bike usage. The admission by police forces that they are dedicating their resources to other crimes might potentially suggest that maybe, just maybe, the reason is not a sudden improvement in the behaviour of cyclists.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-giving-rogue-cyclists-an-easy-ride-m0psj7hsg
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4284698/Real-reason-police-stopped-crack-morons-bikes.html

Police resources are strapped at the moment. In times like this, many of the lower level issues - those that cause least concern - will be allocated less resource time. Give them more of your tax money and they may well do as you wish. Unfortunately, between 1996 and 2005, road policing resources diminished significantly with the combination of remote prosecution, demands for other specialisms, and a perception that road safety could 'manage' itself. so that less resources are available to deal with these issues. Unfortunately, the consequence is that the real issue - namely a bad attitude to road courtesy and etiquette - will increase because the road referees are fewer and farther apart. This can be clearly seen by what I term 'the fatality gap' which is the loss in trend of road fatality reduction during the years in which road policing was replaced by remote enforcement.

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

As for the 81% figure, I didn’t mean it’s implausible, I meant that figures extrapolated from small samples should always be taken with a grain of salt. Do you remember when it came out that the official statisticians had grossly misestimated immigration, because one of their data sources was random interviews at airports, done at times which always excluded overnight flights? The results were unreliable because, surprise surprise, most flights from certain destinations tended to be overnight flights. https://www.ft.com/content/1967efce-b62c-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d

...yet if the figures match our experiences, it's easier to accept them as fairly representative of the truth.

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

If anything, the 81% figure reinforces my argument that respecting the 20mph limit is hard, and sometimes dangerous (at least for us motorcyclists who are more vulnerable than car drivers), precisely because other motorists get mad and may try to overtake dangerously. Oh, and before even more money is spent trying to enforce and police the 20mph limits, it would probably be appropriate to try to understand if that money couldn’t be better spent in some other way to improve road safety (fixing roads, improving road design, etc).

I think we're on the same side of the argument on this point. It just gets my hackles up when people start to vilify cyclists. I cycle 10,000 miles a year excluding commuting, and I don't commit road traffic offences, Not one. No need. I commit hundreds more offences in my car, by virtue of exceeding speed limits marginally. I know where the danger lies, and it is not by riding bikes, or by exceeding speed limits marginally in my car.

It's when the wrong attitude is taken on to the road.

SouthLondonUser

@brat,
Cycling has been around for more than a century, but cycling as a means of urban commuting, especially in a large city like London, is a rather new phenomenon. By your logic, one could have said: cycling is more than a century old, we have never had cycle lanes until now, so we don’t need them. Whether we really need them or not is a separate point, but one which cannot be determined on the basis of this flawed logic!

As for identifying bicycles, some Swiss cantons implemented plates for bicycles a while back, then abandoned the idea.

Look, I am not saying that cyclists kill lots of other road users, nor that it would be the best use of stretched (thank you, Theresa) police resources to place policemen at every corner to catch out dangerous cyclists. All I am saying is that even cyclists can be dangerous, and catching a dangerous cyclist is way harder than catching a dangerous motorists precisely because pushbikes have no plates. Realistically, not much can be done about it – let’s simply not deny this self-evident fact.

Also, what do you mean by vilifying cyclists? Generalisations are always wrong and misleading, but I don’t think anyone here is doing that, I don’t think anyone is saying that one category of road users is entirely made up of lunatics or inherently more dangerous than another. It’s always the tiny, unrepresentative minority of road users that cause problems.

In my daily motorcycle commute it’s the minorities of idiot pedestrians and cyclists that cause me lots of problems; a lot probably has to do with the fact that I ride a motorcycle: I don’t see as many pedestrians and cyclists pulling the same stunts on cars they try to pull on me. Maybe it’s because a motorcycle is smaller than a car, not sure, just something I have noticed. I also noticed that cars do not behave particularly dangerously towards me (I also don’t filter aggressively), but I do see lots more dangerous behaviour towards cyclists. Maybe I am taken more seriously because I have a biggish, loud and powerful bike, maybe it’s because a motorbike is fast and doesn’t slow down the rest of the traffic (except when I respect the 20mph limits others don’t want to), maybe it’s because I can be seen and heard more easily than a pushbike, but I do notice this big difference – which confirms my opinion that commuting in London by motorcycle is safer than by bicycle.

You hate it when cyclists are vilified. Well, what I hate are two things:
1) When a lot of money is spent on initiatives without any type of cost-benefit analysis, and when more of the same is done without even studying the impact of what’s already been done. This applies to 20mph limits and to segregated cycle lanes; great idea, if it weren’t for the fact that lots of bus lanes have been removed to make way for them, the other lanes have been narrowed, so the result is more traffic and more pollution for everyone, especially outside of rush hour, when the cycle lanes are empty but the rest of the road is not. This is not about bicycles vs cars, it’s about cyclists vs everyone else (pollution affects everyone else), especially bus users who cannot cycle. To be clear, I do not even own a car, am totally in favour of reducing private car use in central London, but a lot of the current traffic is a combination of minicabs, HGVs, delivery vans, etc.

2) When a category of road users does not take responsibility for its own actions. I am not aware of any other road user lobbies, other than those of cyclists, lobbying so vehemently and successfully against measure that would be for their own safety, like helmets and hi-viz. Remember when Charles Boardman was filmed cycling at night with no helmet and no high viz, and went on a rant saying they’re both irrelevant? There are loonies who don’t want a motorcycle helmet to be compulsory, but no one takes them seriously. Another example is that cyclists have successfully campaigned to have the “cyclists and motorcyclists stay back” stickers replaced with something like “danger, blind spot”. The fact that more energy is spent trying to change wording perceived as offensive, than to actually educate fellow cyclists about the dangers of not staying the hell back, is, well, baffling. For the record, as a motorcyclist, staying the hell back from large vehicles is what I do all the time, I didn’t find those stickers offensive, and if I see a fellow motorcyclist who doesn’t I can only think he’s trying to Darwinianly improve the gene pool.

Anyway, all of this is off-topic