Police veering wildly on 20mph limit
Tens of thousands of drivers have been penalised for speeding in some areas. But other forces fail to punish a single offender
Susie Webb and her husband received four tickets in a fortnight when a 20mph limit was introduced near their home without warning last year. It cost them six points each on their licence and £400 in fines.
When she posted her story on a neighbourhood social media site, about 400 people responded with similar tales of frustration. “It would be justifiable if it was near shops or schools but there is woodland on either side and 20mph feels like tortoise speed. We felt cheated,” said Webb, a singer-songwriter who lives in Barnes, southwest London.
They are not alone. The 20mph zones, introduced in Sheffield in 1991, are a source of simmering frustration among motorists.
Many are usually cautious drivers who rarely speed but still find themselves caught out on roads with Britain’s lowest speeding limit.
Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, which represents 10,000 drivers, said that his association is being inundated with requests for legal assistance from drivers with previously clean licences, given penalty points for breaching the 20mph limit.
He said there had been an 800 per cent increase in the number of notice of intended prosecution (Nips) issued to his members in the past six months, compared with the previous six months, with 80 per cent of those offences at 20mph.
McNamara blamed a zealous approach on “young, white educated men who cycle everywhere ... trying to build London in their image.”
The Metropolitan Police wants to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries from the transport network by 2041, under a strategy called Vision Zero. It is deploying twice the number of patrols in 20mph zones year-on-year.
Lilli Matson, who oversees the strategy for Transport for London, said there was a target to enforce against one million speeding motorists by 2024-25. She said the fines went to the Treasury and no profits were taken from speed awareness courses. “We receive no revenue from enforcement,” she added.
Local authorities covering about a third of the country’s built-up areas by population want to introduce 20mph zones, and this will expand further when it becomes the default on a third of the roads in Wales from September 2023. In Cornwall, it is due to become the default speed limit for built-up areas.
But how many people actually get caught for speeding in 20mph zones? The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Action Vision Zero, a campaign group, reveal huge regional variations. Last year, Avon & Somerset issued 23,338 Nips, South Wales 8,372 and Cleveland 1,644.
In Cumbria, Humberside, Lincolnshire and Thames Valley, however, police failed to issue a single prosecution notice to motorists for breaking the 20mph limit. It was not much better elsewhere.
Bedfordshire issued one notice, West Mercia two, Staffordshire three, Dorset five and Kent six.
Relative to the number of casualties, the level of enforcement at 20mph is about half the rate of those caught speeding on 30mph and 40mph roads and motorways, and less than a fifth of the rate at 50mph and dual carriageways of 70mph.
Only roads with the national speed limit of 60mph have a lower level of enforcement relative to the number of casualties in collisions. Less than 2 per cent of penalty notices are issued for 20mph offences, compared with 53.2 per cent for 30mph.
It would be easy to increase the number of fines. Take the example of what happened during a trial in Plymouth.
When the first camera in a 20mph zone was installed in the city last spring, 1,100 drivers were caught on the first day.
Within eight weeks, the trial had trapped 23,500 offenders.
Last year, not a single motorist was penalised for breaching a 20mph speed limit in either Devon or Cornwall.
The punishment escalates from a fixed penalty, typically three points, from 24mph, with the possibility of going on a speed awareness course for those caught driving at 24mph to 31mph if they are eligible.
Above 35mph an offender should expect to be summoned to court and fines can rise up to 700 per cent of weekly income, to a maximum of £1,000.
Those who have been caught often feel aggrieved. Research for the RAC found that 49 per cent of those who admitted speeding in a 20mph area sought to justify it by saying the limit was not appropriate for the road.
Alan Tapp, a professor at the University of the West of England in Bristol and an adviser to the Welsh government on 20mph limits, said there was an inherent tension between the speed people wanted in their neighbourhood, and the speed they expected to travel when trying to reach their destination.
“If people look at the world through the windscreen of a car, they arrive at a certain answer,” he said. “The argument around 20mph is fundamentally not really about driving at all but about people being able to live their lives in a way that is free from danger, where they can talk to their neighbours and there is less noise.”
A study by Edinburgh University into the impact of a reduction in the speed limit on 80 per cent of the city’s roads to 20mph found that road deaths fell by nearly a quarter and serious injuries by a third. Scotland Yard says that if a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle at 20mph, they are about five times less likely to be fatally injured than at 30mph.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, urged the authorities to make greater efforts to explain that the 20mph limit involves a trade-off where motorists agree to “slow down a bit” to “eliminate the risk of a member of your family dying in a road crash”.
@nicholashellen
When she posted her story on a neighbourhood social media site, about 400 people responded with similar tales of frustration. “It would be justifiable if it was near shops or schools but there is woodland on either side and 20mph feels like tortoise speed. We felt cheated,” said Webb, a singer-songwriter who lives in Barnes, southwest London.
They are not alone. The 20mph zones, introduced in Sheffield in 1991, are a source of simmering frustration among motorists.
Many are usually cautious drivers who rarely speed but still find themselves caught out on roads with Britain’s lowest speeding limit.
Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, which represents 10,000 drivers, said that his association is being inundated with requests for legal assistance from drivers with previously clean licences, given penalty points for breaching the 20mph limit.
He said there had been an 800 per cent increase in the number of notice of intended prosecution (Nips) issued to his members in the past six months, compared with the previous six months, with 80 per cent of those offences at 20mph.
McNamara blamed a zealous approach on “young, white educated men who cycle everywhere ... trying to build London in their image.”
The Metropolitan Police wants to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries from the transport network by 2041, under a strategy called Vision Zero. It is deploying twice the number of patrols in 20mph zones year-on-year.
Lilli Matson, who oversees the strategy for Transport for London, said there was a target to enforce against one million speeding motorists by 2024-25. She said the fines went to the Treasury and no profits were taken from speed awareness courses. “We receive no revenue from enforcement,” she added.
Local authorities covering about a third of the country’s built-up areas by population want to introduce 20mph zones, and this will expand further when it becomes the default on a third of the roads in Wales from September 2023. In Cornwall, it is due to become the default speed limit for built-up areas.
But how many people actually get caught for speeding in 20mph zones? The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Action Vision Zero, a campaign group, reveal huge regional variations. Last year, Avon & Somerset issued 23,338 Nips, South Wales 8,372 and Cleveland 1,644.
In Cumbria, Humberside, Lincolnshire and Thames Valley, however, police failed to issue a single prosecution notice to motorists for breaking the 20mph limit. It was not much better elsewhere.
Bedfordshire issued one notice, West Mercia two, Staffordshire three, Dorset five and Kent six.
Relative to the number of casualties, the level of enforcement at 20mph is about half the rate of those caught speeding on 30mph and 40mph roads and motorways, and less than a fifth of the rate at 50mph and dual carriageways of 70mph.
Only roads with the national speed limit of 60mph have a lower level of enforcement relative to the number of casualties in collisions. Less than 2 per cent of penalty notices are issued for 20mph offences, compared with 53.2 per cent for 30mph.
It would be easy to increase the number of fines. Take the example of what happened during a trial in Plymouth.
When the first camera in a 20mph zone was installed in the city last spring, 1,100 drivers were caught on the first day.
Within eight weeks, the trial had trapped 23,500 offenders.
Last year, not a single motorist was penalised for breaching a 20mph speed limit in either Devon or Cornwall.
The punishment escalates from a fixed penalty, typically three points, from 24mph, with the possibility of going on a speed awareness course for those caught driving at 24mph to 31mph if they are eligible.
Above 35mph an offender should expect to be summoned to court and fines can rise up to 700 per cent of weekly income, to a maximum of £1,000.
Those who have been caught often feel aggrieved. Research for the RAC found that 49 per cent of those who admitted speeding in a 20mph area sought to justify it by saying the limit was not appropriate for the road.
Alan Tapp, a professor at the University of the West of England in Bristol and an adviser to the Welsh government on 20mph limits, said there was an inherent tension between the speed people wanted in their neighbourhood, and the speed they expected to travel when trying to reach their destination.
“If people look at the world through the windscreen of a car, they arrive at a certain answer,” he said. “The argument around 20mph is fundamentally not really about driving at all but about people being able to live their lives in a way that is free from danger, where they can talk to their neighbours and there is less noise.”
A study by Edinburgh University into the impact of a reduction in the speed limit on 80 per cent of the city’s roads to 20mph found that road deaths fell by nearly a quarter and serious injuries by a third. Scotland Yard says that if a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle at 20mph, they are about five times less likely to be fatally injured than at 30mph.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, urged the authorities to make greater efforts to explain that the 20mph limit involves a trade-off where motorists agree to “slow down a bit” to “eliminate the risk of a member of your family dying in a road crash”.
@nicholashellen