Inverse Logic for setting Speed Limits

West Sussex County Council uses a rule to decide whether 20mph speed limits, popular with around 75% of the population according to almost every survey taken, should be implemented.

The rule is:

The urban speed limit can only be reduced to 20mph if the average speed recorded on most roads is already less that 24mph.

This means that WSCC will only agree to install 20mph speed limits if the majority of motorists already drive slowly. Which means the effect of lowering the speed limit can only be small, and it will only happen if there isn't an existing problem with speeding.

On residential roads where speeding is a problem, WSCC will refuse to make any changes to lower speed limits, because drivers are driving too fast! So roads where lower speed limits would have the biggest impact are excluded from becoming safer.

So we seem stuck in a Highways planning system where motorists, and not local people, decide how fast motorists should be allowed to drive. If the residents of a street decide that they want a 20mph limit to make their street safer, quieter, and generally more pleasant to live in, all motorists have to do is speed down that street a lot, and the 20mph limit will not be introduced.

This nonsense is probably because politicians don't want to be seen to upset "the poor beleaguered motorist" who appears so often in our newspapers. Possibly also because for some odd reason the Police don't like 20mph limits as an idea, even though they would surely benefit greatly from fewer road traffic incidents on our urban streets.

West Sussex Highways and Transport would be a whole lot more popular with West Sussex residents if they realised that this rule is absurd, and if they listened to residents as well as motorists when setting speed limits.