20mph in Wales…..

Someone on a Facebook post claimed that on Sunday morning their usual 15 min journey to the swimming pool took an hour and a half, due to the lower speed limit.

Which means either / or

– They have been driving everywhere at 40mph in a 30mph zone.
– That they are driving 15-2o miles to get to a swimming pool – completely on residential streets and busy lanes?

I am struggling to think of a city in Wales that is over 15 miles in diameter….?

Or they were in Swansea and failed to take into account the long announced road closure on the seafront for the 10k (and roadworks elsewhere…)

do not agree public transport is the same as an autonomous vehicle.  No way it will ever replace a good chunk of peoples journeys even with massive investment.  for commuting or getting into a city I can see it replacing the car especially for solo journeys For a good chunk of other journeys nope.

and that vid, that black bmw1 series looked suspiciously like he might be doing faster than 20 and had to hit his brakes to not rear end the van,  that type of driving is all down my road all the time at the moment.

@molgrips – that looks perfectly normal, maybe even slightly better as everyone’s moving freely. Pity you turned the comments off, would have been fun to watch people explode 😁

Probably was flowing better than normal. Look how evenly spaced everyone is, apart from black BMW. To be fair it’s easy to forget when accelerating – I found myself at 25mph a few times even in our local streets yesterday and had to check myself.

roll on automated vehicles where choice on speed is taken away from people”

People keep saying this, and even if it wasn’t straight out of The Jetsons if fills me with dread.

I have a one-year old Seat, the “infotainment” head unit keeps crashing and getting stuck in a boot loop. It’s done it intermittently since new. The only way to reset it (man, I miss “off” switches) is to stop the car, get out, lock it up, wait like 30 seconds for everything to actually shut down and then get back in and start over.

Now cross out “infotainment system” and write “self-drive system.” I for one don’t want a Blue Screen Of Death in the third lane of the M6.

There are quite a few places where villages have had bypass roads built, with the connecting roads that are often long and with no pavement as nobody’s walking that way. They’re usually an extension of the village’s 30mph zone as presumably that was easier to do than having a bit of 40/50 between a 30 and a 60. Now they’re 20, it’s a bit annoying.

Also where 30s have been extended out of the villages to slow down traffic earlier (good!), now these are 20. It would be better if the extension bits were 30 or 40. Especially in the direction leaving the village, but I don’t think we can have different speed limits on each side of the road.

Generally going down pretty badly in rural Wales with people on the ground (rather than social media) I’d say.

Now cross out “infotainment system” and write “self-drive system.” I for one don’t want a Blue Screen Of Death in the third lane of the M6.

You should know enough about IT to know that’s no more likely than your engine ECU suddenly flooring the throttle. Yes, it happened in a few cases with Toyotas, but the fact it made the news and your infotainment going wrong did not should demonstrate that there are different standards applied to safety critical systems.

There are concerns – personally, I think it will be a long time before such systems are ready for UK roads – but they won’t be rolled out until they are. Not least because these things will be held to a much higher standard than human drivers because people will be nervous of them. I just went on a bike ride and as I was coming home someone pulled up to a roundabout in the right most lane of three, as I was in the middle one. I went straight on, they went LEFT. It was only because I hung back a bit to see where they’d go that I wasn’t knocked off. So given the stupid dangerous things that human drivers do I think that self driving cars should be able to do better.

Generally going down pretty badly in rural Wales with people on the ground (rather than social media) I’d say.

If you have a problem with a certain bit of road, then talk to your council. The WG didn’t say all roads MUST be 20. It’s just the default.

I’m aware of that option. It takes time and effort, so given it involves the council then that’s pretty bad odds that anything will get done. Much less when it means someone has to put their neck on the line to sign off an increase, when it’s just easier and safer (for their arses) to just say no. The gov will have known how unfeasible fixing these problems will be, so they didn’t do it beforehand, just slap it everywhere and let other people sort it out over the next 10 years if at all.

There are quite a few places where villages have had bypass roads built, with the connecting roads that are often long and with no pavement as nobody’s walking that way. They’re usually an extension of the village’s 30mph zone as presumably that was easier to do than having a bit of 40/50 between a 30 and a 60. Now they’re 20, it’s a bit annoying.

That’s the exact situation where you contact the council and they have the power to change where the 20 limit starts, been working well in Cardiff during the trial period for making areas 20 as well as upping bits to 30. Was driving through the whole of Mid Wales and some of North Wales last week and the signs were already changed, didn’t come across anything that was obviously wrong. Saw a lot of posters for protests etc but they were all to do with new windfarms and pylons, nothing at all about the new 20 limit. I’d say that in a lot of rural Wales the traffic doesn’t actually go much faster than 20 in the areas where the 20 limit will apply anyway!

Generally going down pretty badly in rural Wales with people on the ground (rather than social media) I’d say.

Again haven’t heard much moaning about it when I was in a pub in Dolgellau last week or around Crickhowell where my parents live, probably down to both areas being used to a slower pace of life in general. The moaning in the city is definitely greater!

I would expect a lot of councils to get together and rubber stamp a load of sensible improvements. After all, they’re motorists too, and it’s in their interests to sort out any daft local situations that this is bound to throw up. Especially Labour run ones.

Re rural Wales – tbh the proliferation of 50 limits on open roads is more annoying, but hey ho. It’s for the greater good. And no I don’t break them.

WTF!  Rampant generalisation and agreement with law-breaking from Daveylad.

The usual leftists looking forward to being governed harder, as expected.
Hopefully there will be some local bladerunner types as per London ulez who will destroy any enforcement cameras.

I hope they throw the book at them for criminal damage.  We wouldn’t need fixed cameras if only people wouldn’t chance breaking the law – speed, emissions and driving without a license or VED.  Driving is a privilege not a right.

In Edinburgh there has been a lot of 20 mph limits for a while.  I would say average speeds have dropped and thoughtless overtakes when I am on my bike are less common.

there is literally no downside to 20mph limits – done properly traffic flows actually increase

This will be quickly another Seatbelts / Drink Driving / Unleaded Petrol / Smoking Ban / Plastic Bags / etc. and will have fizzled out in days not years as those arguing against it sound increasingly detached from people’s actual experience. Already those frothing off about it have to pretend they’ve misunderstood what has been introduced or deny the democratic elements of this so they can call it undemocratic, or quote made-up science or tenuous whatiffery to suggest it might not achieve it’s ends.

My wife says her car commute was unaffected. According to the car app her average speed yesterday was 35.7mph, last Monday it was 30.5mph 🙂

After all, they’re motorists too, and it’s in their interests to sort out any daft local situations that this is bound to throw up. Especially Labour run ones.

This is true, and the pragmatic answer is to engage thoughtfully with councils.
Unfortunately the opposition to this is based on nothing short of a fundamental belief that there should be no 20mph zones and dominated by extreme views and false claims.

As much as I think autonomous vehicles are an answer I actually cant see it ever happening in this country.

I mean a prime use case is the underground / trains and thats just not happening due to people / unions resisting it.

The road has way more variables and situations so the tech needs to be outstanding.  That said I really don’t think its far off.

Rollout, if you can get acceptance, would be an interesting challenge – its not like the 20 zones, you can’t just restrict the cars to specific areas.  I can’t see how it could work

As some one said above I think it will be accepted as people get over themselves.  There will still be large amounts of speeding, as there was when the limits were 30, but instead it’ll be 30ish rather than 40ish

I mean a prime use case is the underground / trains and thats just not happening due to people / unions resisting it.

None of the rail or underground network was built with the idea of autonomous running. There’s a lot of automation built in (same as with aircraft) but make no mistake about it, it needs a person there to manage it all. It would cost hundreds of billions to convert the rail to full autonomous for a very limited (arguably zero) benefit.

This from a Government that already can’t pay train drivers properly, can’t upgrade the rail to full electric and can’t build a new railway line.

Even the DLR, which was built from scratch to enable at least partly autonomous running still needs an “assistant” on board able to take over if required. The one system that is autonomous is the small airport monorail shuttles such as Gatwick but that’s tiny and has no other interactions with anything.

Full autonomous is just a distraction – everyone goes on about “oh soon we won’t need speed limits/cameras etc cos everything will be fully autonomous” and “oh well we can keep building new roads cos soon everything will be electric so no more pollution” and both those arguments are a) bollocks and b) a complete distraction from what is actually needed.

I live in Manchester and the problems with 20mph zones are that it is not clear what is a 20 and what is a 30. People don’t obey them because there is no enforcement. There are some anomolies in speed limits like a short section of Wilbraham road which has a 40 limit where all the surrounding roads are 20 or 30 zones.

The basic problem is that a significant number of car drivers only obey speed limits if they think they will get caught and a minority think the roads are their personal race track.

Maybe it’s time for cars to have a black box which record driver behaviour?

Fully autonomous requires a special environment where no erratic variables are present to function safely. The amount of money required just for motorways and major  trunk roads would probably allow HS2-10 to be built with change. (TBC I have no idea where HS 3 to 10 will go).

On the plus side we would get all the segregated cycling facilities required to make autonomous cars redundant. Which is nice.

Well I’m for every car being mandated a black box then, and fines being auto pinged out for naughty drivers.   That is relatively easy to implement.  What will the excuses be this time?  Big brother watching I imagine

I’d prefer to take the choice away completely, as I think computers will be much safer than your average human, its not *just* about speed at the end of the day.  You could still drive dangerously at 20.

Rural Wales dweller  here. I support the move to 20 and not heard much local grumbling about the actual principle but more to do with the implementation and signage. I think the communication of the ‘why’ has been poor and should be improved. On a parochial note the big accidents here are usually involving motorcycles and dangerous overtaking. The problem is that performance car and sports motorcyclists often see wales as some sort of playground, and imitation racetrack.

Fully autonomous would be a godsend for busy parents. No time to take the baby to nan 30miles away who is babysitting today..no probs just put them in the robot car.

a complete distraction from what is actually needed.

Everyone should play Sim City 4. As the cities get bigger, traffic always grinds to a halt, people start complaining about quality of life and pollution. You can either bulldoze large areas of your city to put in urban highways which just increase traffic and pollution and push the problem onto smaller connecting roads or you can spend crippling amounts of money on public transport which turns out to be really hard to plan and get people to use.

Quite accurate really 🙂

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Drove to Llangefni  from Cardiff yesterday, A470 most the way.</p>

Dim probs, one or 2 short stretches of 20mph but I think I managed to negotiate them without crashing the entire Welsh economy

Take that TC and RT

Big brother watching

If people weren’t such ****, Big Brother wouldn’t need to watch, it could trust them to get on with things.

My dad swore him and mum aren’t going to Porthmadog anymore (being going every year for the last 40+ years) due to the 20mph limits.

They also haven’t learnt a word of Welsh the whole time and are DM readers 🤷‍♂️

My dad swore him and mum aren’t going to Porthmadog anymore (being going every year for the last 40+ years) due to the 20mph limits.

Wouldn’t that be motorway most of the way for you?

Some politicians have been trying hard to implant the idea that all roads are now 20mph in Wales

it is not clear what is a 20 and what is a 30

Areas that have 20mph limits are clear to me. The signs give it away.

Areas that have 30mph limits, and those that appear on the border of leaving a 20mph limit zone, are less obvious. Traditional lack of repeater signs and signs obscured by shrubbery and trees make it tricky. I’ve had quite a few folks come up to the bumper, weave, beep, and flash when neither I nor the car have spotted the 30mph sign and are still enjoying the calm of 20mph. Whatever.

perhaps Andy B could repurpose the congestion zone signs to institute a ‘unless it says different the speed limit here is 20mph’?

Many drivers I see from my study seem to go a bit slower than in the past in the 20mph zone outside. Not sure many are at 20mph or below. There are some who continue to go way faster.

Areas that have 20mph limits are clear to me. The signs give it away.

Hmm, not sure – there are 20 signs from before the change, here and there – but now the default is 20mph where there are no signs (but lampposts). That means that the signs are not giving it away, in the case of 20s.

Since the introduction of widespread 20 limits in Bristol I tend to do 20 in most urban areas anyway. Its so much better for all road users (apart from the angry Daily Mail readers apparently) that it makes sense to me. No need to worry about whether it is a 30 or a 20, just do 20. I appreciate there may be anomalous stretches of road around but they can be fixed or lived with.

I would expect a lot of councils to get together and rubber stamp a load of sensible improvements.

I admire your optimism. They could have done that ready for the legislation.

Do where does the motorist stand where signs still say 30 because they haven’t all been changed yet if they are doing 25 having driven in from England. I don’t suppose there are signs on the border informing people of the new law

I drove out of Swansea on Sunday towards the Gower. Getting out of Swansea is very up and down and I encountered a fit and fast roadie almost immediately. The signage wasn’t clear so I kept at 20 and the traffic was light. On the ups I overtook the cyclist and on the downs / flats he undertook me, this happened 4 or 5 times and both of us had bemused looks on our faces – I would have really liked to know what he was thinking but I expect he thought I was hindering him rather than helping. There are a lot of road cyclist who can comfortably ride at 20, and possibly don’t have the speed metric on the main screen of their computers so are unaware of their true speed, I wonder if they are prepared to slow down too.

Do where does the motorist stand where signs still say 30 because they haven’t all been changed yet

Where d’you think?

The law isn’t that every urban road is 20mph. It says that the DEFAULT limit is 20, which means it can be more than 20. If it is more than 20, it’s signposted as such. So if there’s a 30 sign, it’s 30. If there’s no sign at all (with streetlights), it’s 20 – this is the only change.

on the downs / flats he undertook me,

That was very stupid on his part – don’t undertake cars, ever – you can filter alongside stationary or crawling cars, but that’s it.

Cyclists might want to do more than 20 but tough. Same as for drivers. Maybe he doesn’t know how fast he’s going, whatever, but don’t undertake cars.

I live in Manchester…

I think this is your main problem, not the signage. I know it’s a bit of a generalisation but I think Manchester has some of they most idiot drivers in the country!

The law isn’t that every urban road is 20mph. It says that the DEFAULT limit is 20, which means it can be more than 20. If it is more than 20, it’s signposted as such. So if there’s a 30 sign, it’s 30. If there’s no sign at all (with streetlights), it’s 20 – this is the only change

so every 30 sign that hasn’t been changed is still a 30 then. That will be the vast majority. And how are people meant to know this? If you drive into Germany from France there are signs informing you of the speed limits. Same at Dover when arriving in the U.K.  so how does that work with this. 90% of the time you have no idea if you are even in wales for the first 30 miles. Given how unclear the border is on the road then how do you know your under a different jurisdiction unless your on the M4

so every 30 sign that hasn’t been changed is still a 30 then. That will be the vast majority. And how are people meant to know this?

You know the speed limit is 30 because of the sign saying 30. What am I missing here?

so every 30 sign that hasn’t been changed is still a 30 then. That will be the vast majority. And how are people meant to know this? If you drive into Germany from France there are signs informing you of the speed limits. Same at Dover when arriving in the U.K. so how does that work with this. 90% of the time you have no idea if you are even in wales for the first 30 miles. Given how unclear the border is on the road then how do you know your under a different jurisdiction unless your on the M4

How did you know it was 30 before?

The difference is that before if the limit was 20, or 40 (or 50, 60, 70) then there would be repeater signs every so often. No repeaters, then it was 30 or 60. Now it’s the opposite, if a hypothetical person pulls out of their hypothetical driveway in a built up area then it’s 20 unless they see signs saying otherwise.

It’s really not that hard to get your head around.

If you’re crossing the border 30miles from the next street sign, then quite clearly you’re not in a built up area and the limit isn’t 20 😂

It’s even simpler:

If there are no signs, but you’re in town (with streetlights) it used to be 30, now it’s 20.

Admittedly, people coming into Wales may not know that. There should be signs at the border, for sure.