20mph; make your vote count in Whiteshill and Ruscombe

Time for a 20 mph speed limit in our villages: please support

Well the consultation in Whiteshill and Ruscombe is nearly over on the 20 mph - I urge folk to take their votes to the ballot box in the village shop. Randwick have already had their consultation - Whiteshill and Ruscombe have gone a step further with a full ballot of the electorate which closes on 20th October. We have come such a long way and it would be awful not to get the votes we need in favour of the changes.....please vote.

We really can make a difference and start changing the culture - yes it wont be the answer but it is a step in the right direction....and by sharing the costs between teh Parishes it will never be this cheap an option again. See my letter to the press on this issue here - and below a letter to press from my colleague Sarah Lunnon - I copy it here as several people heard the 20 mph story in the national tabloids - sadly another great example of how tabloids twist the news.....

Re Philip Booths letter (20mph 12/09/12) readers may have been surprised, like Gloucestershire’s Green Party, by the story "Injuries increased in 20mph zones" carried by many news outlets. It is well known that an impact at 20mph causes less injury than an impact at 40mph. Injury being proportional to energy, and energy is higher at higher speeds - So what was going on?

Well as many excellent blogs have pointed out "Back when there were fewer 20mph streets, fewer people were injured on 20mph streets. Now that there are more 20mph streets, more people are being injured on 20mph streets. Journalists however had taken the raw numbers of people injured on the 20mph streets, rather than taking the rate of injuries per mile of streets. This road safety intervention, they concluded, isn’t working." 

Simple as that.

ROSPA’s website gives the figure of 450 20mph zones introduced 1991-99, and that by 2008, no less than 2148 zones had been introduced.

It is also possible that other factors are involved, such as people feeling more free to run about in 20mph zones, but if anyone is going to argue that, they are going to have to substantiate it, and it also completely misses the quality of life benefits that come with reduced traffic speeds.
 
Sarah Lunnon, Green Party, County Councillor for Stroud East