"tim (moved to sweden)" wrote in message
I have taken the time to read through their website.
Their main concern appears to be that they want to do away with the need for rests or serious injuries to occur before traffic cameras are installed. I see no problem with this idea as it would just provide a cheap way of ensuring that everyone drives within the speed limit at all times, which is just upholding the law.
They also want all urban areas to have a default speed limit of 20 mph which does seem rather low. There is an experimental 20 mph limit along Queen Street, Portsmouth (a distance of about 2-3rds of a mile) at the moment and it is very slow. At least it doesn't have speed humps. They mention in their site that the optimum speed for current vehicles to reduce emissions is about 44 mph. This is inline with a report from the DFT. But they don't mention that emissions rise substantially at traffic speeds below 20 mph, so enforcing a limit that low would lead to more pollution.
As the 2004 Road Casualty figures published yesterday show, the number of KSI has reduced by 28% from the 1994-1998 average with a 43% reduction for children. This is despite an increase of licensed vehicles of almost 28% in the last 10 years. You can argue why that has happened, but to say that speed cameras haven't helped with that reduction in road carnage would seem illogical.
Ian
