Friday, February 16, 2007

Anti-speeding campaign

At the city council meeting last week we submitted the first of a series of petitions being collected by local people for reducing speed limits. This was in Glendower Road.

I've been talking about getting 20 mph speed limits for some time. Tonight the local councillors were out on the doors again talking to people around Calshot School. The school has a good road safety scheme put in when I was chair of governors. But it needs to be backed by a reduced speed limit.

The police have organised a number of speed checks throughout Perry Barr and each one shows average speeds of about 30mph - legal but unsafe. There are conflicting statistics about the risk of fatality and injury at different speeds - but undoubtedly it is tiny when a driver is going at 20mph.

Highways department have also recently recognised this and asked us to make submissions for 20 mph limits.

So quite a few local residents are now also collecting signatures in different neighbourhoods. If you want one for your area, please let us know.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The Government have promised to publish in March new guidlines called 'Manual for Streets' that will recommend that 20mph should be the speed of traffic in *all* residential areas across the country.
The stetement is on this government site : http://tinyurl.com/38ppnk.
The first page you get to is the index, click on 'Movement' which is section 7, then use Search for section 7.9.2.

I have a BBC ActionNetwork website campaigning for 20mph zones and it has some useful detail, it is at http://tinyurl.com/jbugc

I believe that local campaigns across the country should use this evidence when putting their case.
James Wishart, MICE, Northampton