I was going to say that.
If you reduce the legal limit more driver will exceed it.
I was caught speeding for the first time in over 30 years of driving in a 20 zone.
Hardly speeding when you are doing 24mph.
They done you for that?!
I also did a speed awareness course after being caught doing 47 in a 40 in Wales whilst on holiday.
Overtook a mobile home that I had been stuck behind for 14 miles all the way from exiting Wrexham.
There was nobody on the other side of the road. There was nobody behind me. There was the only straight bit of road in Wales ahead of me, the weather was fine. There was no f*cking reason to have a 40 limit after roundabout number 176 in the sticks, no houses nearby, no obvious hazards, no street lights, no solid white line, no dips in the road, no hidden exits. It was a perfectly safe bit for overtaking.
Damn mobile home obscured the camera van.
There are now extended 20mph speed limits on 2 roads in and out of my local town and they make zero sense. Zero. Luckily, I have yet to hear of anyone being stopped for exceeding the 20 limit as there just aren't enough police so the 20 limit just restricts us all to 25. And yes, the difference to life/injury between 20 and 24 might be surprising but common sense says there's kids mucking around on the pavement, or the school run is on or there's a bus off loading, there's a whole line of cars in an urban setting where people are going to be in and out and possibly between them so slow down but we have to legislate for stupid. We also have to sterilise life and just exist and not live. H&S interpretation - the risk assessment which pushed a few idiots to do things like banning the egg and spoon race at their school. I used to compile the damn things - rods to beat your own back and have sleepless nights wondering if you'll be sued because someone idiot circumnavigated the H&S and got injured. There's a 40mph limit for trucks along most of the A75. It's hell at times. Hell for the truck drivers and hell for people stuck behind them and D&G is very rural. Senseless. Sense would be here... and here... and there say, not all the f*cking way.
Sure, stick the 20mph limits all over the place and say how many lives you think you have saved and as a cyclist, despite the 1.5m rule and despite the speed limits, I still get close calls and sometimes cars pass me as if I do not exist or they actually haven't seen me or they pull out on me and none of these daffodils ever get stopped let alone think.
I think a lot of the blanket 20-mph limits have been enforced without proper consideration and are arbitrary. Just some suit in an office somewhere will be proud of the number of lives they think they saved by slapping stricter speed limits on roads where there is no clear reason to do so.
Right, that's Wednesday's rant over.