85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport
85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport
On roads with a 30mph maximum, 50% of car drivers break the law, says the annual DfT report on speed limit compliance.
Statistics published today by the U.K. Department for Transport (DfT) show that in 2022 85% of the car drivers in Great Britain broke the law by driving faster than the speed limit in 20mph zones. On roads with a 30mph maximum, 50% of car drivers broke the law, reveals the annual DfT report on speed limit compliance.
The measurements are based on speed data from a sample of Automatic Traffic Counters (ATCs) around the country. These exclude locations where external factors might restrict driver behavior, such as at junctions, on hills, beside sharp bends or where speed cameras are visible, says the DfT report.
I've tried driving at 20mph on some of those roads and you get so much traffic up your arse that it feels dangerous. I assume they just want you to slow down below 30mph. I will say I think it's a lot more than 85%.
The data shows 70-90%. However, about half are no more than 5 mph over the limit.
It also details the caveat that almost all of the 20 mph roads measured are free-flow areas without traffic calming, and it doesn't represent the majority of 20 mph roads where traffic calming is present and traffic will naturally be slower. So, basically they're measuring compliance in 20 mph zones that don't really feel like 20 mph zones.
Compliance is much better for 30, 60 and 70 mph limits.
The only safe way to deal with tailgaters is to slow down gradually. If you fall into the trap speeding up to create more distance, then your braking time will inevitably reduce and they will have less reaction time. This will also result in a harder collision if one occurs.
it's simple. asking people to do the right thing (i.e slowdown), out of the kindness of their hearts, is laughable.
if you build the street in such a way that driving above it's design limits is impossible, then people wont do it. surprisingly, the threat of their car being damaged or totaled will force compliance with the intended speed limit. if this was done correctly on a large scale, speed limit posts wouldn't even be required - the street layout would naturally dictate the speeds you can drive at.
for UK streets, this can be retrofitted with chicanes, curb extensions, raised pedestrian crossings, etc. increasing the amount that a driver has to think to drive down a street, automatically makes them slower. oh, and none of those stupid painted chicanes and bumps either, you think anyone cares about those? lol. actually build the damned curb extensions
That is how you kill people.
The design of the road, the street furniture, things like pedestrian traffic, parking, etc.. will all affect how people drive along the road.
If you just drop the speed limit people will have to actively concentrate on their speed. If you don't actively enforce the speed limit people will concentrate on driving over speed adherence.
Adding chicanes, speed bumps, etc.. will slow people down but change how people drive a roads and can introduce new hazards.
I know of roads with no deaths that added speed bumps which now kill a person each year, a road that added chicanes that immediately suffered multiple crashes per day until they were removed.
Heck traffic calming where I currently live, was perfectly safe and brilliant until a new housing estate opened. The housing estate has increased traffic which has slowed the road but the traffic calming now suffers alot of near misses and emergency breaking because of the increased traffic. The road would now be safer without it and a speed camera placed at a key point.
Road Safety isn't something you can magically solve by dropping the speed limit or just adding chicanes. You need to think about alot.
85% of the UK are criminals, I thought Australia was supposed to solve that for us.
My understanding is most 20mph zones are simply advisory, as they don't have traffic orders.
They are not.
Used to be years ago, but law changed some time in the last few years
There are quite a few caveats in there, like it was usually through roads with no traffic calming measures and they're often the ones I see people get narked about complying with. I do think some of these should be reconsidered as 30mph.
Make them 30mph and then 85% of people will break the new speed limit. Keep it low and at least their speed is likely to be lower.
Edit: This is not true as far as I can tell. Sorry.
Yeah they cover that in the report:
On roads with a 30mph maximum, 50% of car drivers broke the law
I mean that's still too high and there's no need for it.
edit: I presume the thinking is that if want 30mph, then you say 20 and the average speed is then under 30, which makes sense on small, narrow side streets but less so on the through roads they were surveying.
Most modern cars have speed limiters you can adjust on-the-go. By modern I mean made in the last five years or so.
No excuse for speeding.
If there’s a question of how appropriate a speed limit might be, that’s still not an excuse for speeding - that’s grounds for presenting a case to the local authority and campaigning for change via the legal route.
Residential street speed limits (20mph, 30mph) have to be the most poorly followed laws in the UK.
Edit to add: more expensive cars have had this feature for even longer; operating a vehicle within a given speed constraint with or without technology to help shouldn’t be hard for a competent driver. So: why the downvotes?
Both of my family's cars are 20 years old.Not everybody is rich.
I brought up the tech because I see a lot of newer cars being driven in violation of the speed limit.
Should still be possible to hold to 20mph, with or without the tech.
Not sure that wee need people fiddling with car controls rather than looking where they are going. I get your point though, but even more cars have Bluetooth. So why are people still holding their phones? Probably because they can't be bothered or 'It's too much faffing about'.
Ware High St was reduced from 30 to 20 a while ago. I don't know when as it wasn't that publicised. Loads of people ignore that as well. Speed limit signs the size of a side plate don't help either. Maybe some massive '20 mph' letters on the road? A few raised areas wouldn't hurt either.
A lot of these areas have just had 20mph limits slapped on them with no thought or reason.