Lancashire County Council popped a leaflet through our door today announcing that our road will have a 20mph speed limit to improve safety and improve the local environment. The leaflet says that the objective is to make driving at 20mph second nature.
One solution to this irritation is to stop voting in local elections because no-one asked for this and yet here it is. To let us know we are in the 21st Century and consistency is a thing long forgotten the motorway speed limit is expected to go up to 80mph and red tape and regulation is to be reduced. Obviously a significant number of these incidents aren’t on roads that will be part of this exercise.
The leaflet contains no data or targets for improvement. Yet searching the internet it seems that in the last 5 years the number of serious injuries and deaths on Lancashire roads has reduced from about 1100 to around 800 although deaths seem to fluctuate around 60 people.
Who’d deny that saving one life isn’t worthwhile and yet this seems like another handcuff for decent people being spread broadbrush. Let’s face it there are jobs at stake here, jobs creating rules and how proud you’d feel to have brought in such a rule. How proud you’d be that having landed a job in safety you improved it even though the environmental department got a pasting with increased emissions that created a demand for further restrictions and the NHS got more asthma cases in hospital. Bravo!