20mph speed limits: the foundation for Vision Zero in the UK

The success of the 20’s Plenty movement should be seen as an indicator of change. It challenges the hegemony of the motor car and puts community values above motor-normativity and its consequential death and injury

This is the talk I gave at the inaugural Vision Zero and 20's Plenty conference this month....and makes clear that slower speeds are the foundation of the move to Vision Zero in the UK, says Rod King MBE, Founder and Campaign Director, 20's Plenty.

Someone once said to me, “you will never meet the person whose life was so profoundly changed by not being the casualty that would have resulted had a 20mph limit not been implemented”. And the same could apply to your actions.

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Join us for the third webinar in the highly popular Delivering 20 series, hosted in partnership with 20’s Plenty for Us, where we explore the transformative role of lower speed limits in delivering Vision Zero: 24 June, 12.30 - 14.00 – register here

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Having entered my third decade of campaigning for safer streets through 20mph speed limits, I can reflect on the progress made since 2004 when I started. In that time 20’s Plenty have assisted over 700 local community campaigns to make the case for 20mph as a norm for their city, town or village. Wales has set a national 20mph default limit for built-up roads achieving a 28% reduction in casualties in the first year and a 20% reduction in “insurance claims”.

This has led to a lowering of premiums by £45 a year. After 20mph successes in Edinburgh and Scottish Borders, Scotland is now rolling out 20mph as a norm via its local authorities. The Isle of Man is setting 20mph for towns and villages and Ireland is implementing a national 30km/h default limit. 20mph is the default in all the Inner London and many Outer London boroughs. In England, 61 out of 131 local highway authorities have implemented, or are implementing 20mph for most of their urban/village roads.

The 30mph limit can no longer be considered as either “national” or “fit for purpose”. 20mph is on a track to become the de-facto national limit throughout Great Britain and Ireland.

The foundation of our success has been that we have always supported communities wanting “to make their places better places to be”. Even when authorities were disinterested or opposed, we empowered those communities to present the case with constructive evidence, materials, support, advice and enthusiasm with an absolute focus on wide-area 20mph adoption.

And as 20mph implementations increased then it provided even greater evidence of the success of setting 20mph limits, especially on faster main roads with greater speeds and more interactions with people.

Communities are ahead of authorities and police on understanding how speed impacts community life and how reducing speeds enhances those places into safer places to live their lives.

It's why a 20mph limit as an urban/village norm has so much potential to provide the foundation for Vision Zero. 

The lessons learned from 20’s Plenty campaigning offer a useful insight into the challenges faced by today’s conference - the journey to eliminate death and serious injury on all our roads. And I use those words carefully. Vision Zero is not simply “an aspiration to reduce death and serious injury” but is “a commitment to act to eliminate death and serious injury on our roads”. 

This will not be for the faint-hearted. It will be a journey that challenges some of society’s prejudices and bias. 

This requires systemic changes in our attitudes, our environment and the way in which we move about our places. It will need to address key and deep issues of speed, driving, infrastructure, legislation, and duty of care. Delivering one element of the Safe System approach is not enough. It must fix Safe road use, Safe vehicles, Safe speeds, Safe roads and roadsides, and Post-crash responsiveness.

And because of the breadth and depth of action required, this will require a culture change within society, our town and county halls, our police headquarters and our national government and institutions. You being here today is an indication of that change in progress.

Your actions on Vision Zero will open up a whole set of freedoms for those for whom mobility means moving their limbs as well as their bodies. Mobility choices would no longer be conditioned and limited by the fear of motors, but widened by the increased duty of care by drivers and society as a whole. This will bring huge economic benefits. We only have to look a few hundred miles to our East across the North Sea to find communities that are fitter, healthier and with children enjoying levels of independent active mobility that are no longer seen in the UK.

Perhaps I can reflect from an “activist” perspective what I see as some of the key aspects of Vision Zero. 

1. Engagement, engagement and more engagement. It is not enough to tell the public what you are doing. It is necessary to get the message across as to why you are doing things, the expected outcomes and how the changes align to their personal values around mobility for their family. Our 20’s Plenty experience tells us that there is huge support for safer roads at parish council and community level. But it needs debate as a catalyst for those values to be made tangible.

2. Context. The debate has to be framed around beneficial societal outcomes rather than personal experiences as drivers. 

3. Recognise that it can be done. Other places are making huge progress in eliminating death and serious injury. I am delighted that Jenny Carson will be reporting on this. It should be no embarrassment that other countries have started this journey before us. Lets learn from their successes.

4. It is a change in values. The success of the 20’s Plenty movement should be seen as an indicator of that change. It challenges the hegemony of the motor car and puts community values above motor-normativity and its consequential death and injury. 

5. Expect opposition and challenge the dissenters. Inevitably some will call this a “war on motorists” when the reality is that when looking at who kills whom on our roads it has been the “un-motored” who are disproportionately being killed, injured and intimidated.

6. Collaborate. Build on the shared values across institutions such as local government, police, emergency services, education, public health. The more playing their part then the greater will be your success. 

7. We need the government to lead. At the current rate, in the rest of this parliament there will be 120,000 people killed or experiencing life-changing injury in those public spaces we call roads. It cannot simply offer only a slightly more progressive approach than the last government. Hesitancy and fear of upsetting opposers, with their “motorist as victim” narrative, cannot be used as a reason for no progress. We must all as local authorities, police, NGOs, professionals and individuals, call on the government to boldly back Vision Zero by adopting the safe system principle. Anything less from the government would mark complicity in every one of those 30,000 life changing incidents every year.

8. 20mph as an urban/village norm is a population-wide intervention that gives the biggest bangs per buck. It demonstrates a clear commitment to change. It taps into the values that people place on those public spaces between buildings that we call streets. It provides a systemic change in risk and the ability to avoid crashes and casualties. It is the totemic issue that defines whether we accept the dominance of motor vehicles or we put greater value on the rights of our communities to streets that are safe and feel safe for all to use.

It therefore has to be the necessary requirement and foundation of any Vision Zero strategy to eliminate death and serious injury.  

Thank you for your time, involvement and your future actions after attending this hugely important conference which will save lives and life on our roads.