20 mph speed limit

We had a power cut 2 days ago, the near by town was off and we had some power but at a very low rate ie our cordless phone were still working the fans were moving very slowly so we had a big voltage drop, was like it for 2o minutes then it all came back on

 

It's probably similar to the law that states how much untreated sewage water companies can pump into rivers.
Declare it a breakdown or emergency and they can do what they like.

 

It's not that the grid can't supply power to charge electric cars, it's that the reserve supply comes largely from coal fired power stations, which they're trying to phase out.

We occasionally see a news article that the UK has broken its own record on number of consecutive days without needing to use coal to generate electricity, and other broken records for the percentage generated from renewables. It's great to see such articles, as it's a big step in the right direction for the environment. I fear that if electric car ownership grows more rapidly than our ability to generate renewable energy, then I'm effect we're just moving from burning fossil fuel in a car to burning the worst fossil fuel (coal) in a power station.

 

I didn't know that, it happened when they were switching the town back on, as we were speeking to the man on the phone things were happening there and then and he know from what we were saying that we had a voltage drop, so it may have been that someone turned the wrong switch on/off any way it was only 20 minutes not like it used to be when we would get lots of power cuts, even when we had a power cut in the winter (farmer cuting down tree and a branch fell on to wires and blow the fuse in the tranformer) we phoned up and with in a hour we were back on so i can't complain

 

Who would have guessed?

Cutting speed limits on urban roads to 20mph does not significantly improve safety, a new report suggests.

Comparisons with streets in the surrounding area and elsewhere in Northern Ireland that retained their 30pmh or 40pmh limit showed there were “no statistically significant differences” in terms of the number of crashes, casualty rates or average traffic speed.

I've got an idea. In this time of rampant inflation - why don't we spend a load of public money changing all the road signs - throughout Wales - to 20 mph? How could the money be better spent?

 

How long has this study been going on?

Have they only looked at accident rates? Or have they looked at pollution, traffic flow, changes in use (eg more, fewer cyclists and pedestrians, changes in peak time, local traffic Vs commuter traffic etc)?

Just trying to guage the credibility of the study because statistics are a powerful tool for painting any picture with any agenda and only become credible when backed by details of methodology and sample size.

 

I understand a trial area was set up in Buckley (?) for a year I think, and there were so many protests with people complaining about traffic crawling along and causing more pollution etc, that most of the roads have now been put back to 30mph.

There was no reduction in accidents, and no reduction in the number of speeding idiots,
yet the Welsh government in its wisdom have not taken any of this into account.

And yes the money could be better spent on other things.

 

Citizen science at it's best then.

Basic secondary school level physics. It takes more energy to accelerate a mass to 30 mph than it does to accelerate the same mass to 20 mph. More energy, in the case of a car, means more fuel burned. More fuel burned means more pollution, not less.

This is before we even consider flow. Many argue that a car is more efficient at 30 than at 20. This may well be true, once it's at 30, and assuming it can maintain exactly that speed. The reality in most urban environments is that traffic does not maintain a constant speed, so what you have is a choice between accelerating lots of masses repeatedly to 20 mph, or 30 mph.

Sadly, when it comes to ANY attempts to tackle the growing number of issues around road traffic, elementary physics, and even plain old common sense, seems to go out of the window.

 

I love driving in the 20 mph zones in Edinburgh. The main roads have no humps that you find in residential streets and I get brilliant mpg. I have a ScanGauge which gives me an instantaneous readout of my mpg and I can drive at 20 mph in 4th gear and get 50-55 mpg. And I love holding up all the drivers that want to go faster!

 

I've noticed speed limits have been coming down all the time around here, all 60s are now 50s and 40s have become 30s.
We have more and more 20s coming along as well.
Its all about health and safety, everything is these days, from closed roads because someone digs a hole in the pavement, to a level crossing, on the news a couple of days ago, where the gates stay closed for half an hour at a time.

Wish they would apply the same health and safety to fixing potholes.

 

Who on earth is going to think of all that when they're going about their daily lives ?

In some places it is dangerous to go even at 20! and I can understand the reduction in speed limits for those places, but in some places where the road is straight and wide it does not make sense to reduce the limit to 20.

Around here where there's a lot of ribbon development you can go for many miles in a 30mph zone. When I go to my brother's house 8 miles away, it is all at 30mph (except for about half a mile of 40)

You could all try driving 8 miles at 20mph and see how you feel after it. And during it where the road is straight and wide with few houses and little traffic, and no humps.

Other roads which are dangerous, with lots of hills and sharp bends will still have no limit, even when the council have put up signs saying how many accidents have been there in the last year. These are the roads where the limit should be reduced.

I actually never go more than about 45 mph on any roads, and usually under 30 on the 30mph roads, but I think 20 is too slow in most places.