LYMM-based 20’s Plenty founder and campaigner Rod King has hit back at calls from high-profile lawyer Nick “Loophole” Freeman to restrict 20 mph zones to high-risk areas.
The prominent, lawyer known for getting high-profile clients off motoring offences, including speeding, has called for 20 mph zones to be restricted to high-risk areas such as roads outside schools, rather than becoming the norm in towns.
But his comments have come under fire from Mr King, who founded the 20’s Plenty campaign to improve road safety and save lives, accusing Mr Freeman of “talking rubbish” with “no evidence” to support his comments.
He hit back after Mr Freeman spoke out against 20mph zones, telling GB News: “To me, it’s counterintuitive, it’s generally too slow, because what happens is you’re so obsessed with trying to keep it to 20 miles an hour, that you’re looking at the speedometer all the time.
“As drivers, what we need to be doing is concentrating on our speed but other things as well, what other cars are doing, who’s around us, except there’s a whole combination of things that we need to be looking at.
“I drove on Edgware Road last night, having come off the motorway, and the car kept going up to 21 and 22 and I had to keep putting my foot on the brake to keep under 20, obviously cognizant of the fact that if you go more than 10% plus one you’re going to be prosecuted. And that’s what’s happening.”
In a discussion with Arlene Foster, he said: “I’m not suggesting we should never have 20-mile-an-hour speed limits, I think there’s a time and a place for them. The time is obviously school run and school time and certain places.
“But by and large, it’s too slow. In London, they’ve got 50 miles at the moment which are subject to 20-mile-an-hour speed limits, they want in 2024 for that to be 137 miles. And you have to ask yourself, what is it achieving?
“The statistics actually show that it has very little impact on safety. And my view is when some proper research is done, obviously, you’re not going to hurt someone as much as 20 miles an hour, but you’re probably going to have more accidents because you’re not concentrating on what you should be concentrating on.”
He added: “I’d like to see it being targeted, be selective at the right times, but not just a blanket let everyone go 20 miles an hour, because it’s counterintuitive and it causes anger for drivers, drivers who are sitting on empty roads in the early hours of the morning being restricted to 20 miles an hour.
“It’s incredibly frustrating. The majority, over 40%, say we break it because we don’t understand it. It doesn’t make sense. So surely we need to collaborate.
“Most motorists, the majority are sensible, they are law-abiding, we just need to have something that works for all of us.”
But in response, Mr King, who received the MBE in 2013 for his services to road safety, said: “He is talking rubbish. It takes no longer to check your speedo at 20mph than it does at 30mph. And for any competent driver they would acclimatise themselves as to what 20mph “feels like” so they don’t have to continuously check their speedo.
“It is just driver exceptionalism. All a driver has to do to keep to 20mph is to occasionally check their speedo taking perhaps half a second. A pedestrian (including children, disabled, and elderly) who wishes to cross the road needs to look right, check for cars, judge their distance, judge their speed, look left, check for cars, judge their distance, judge their speed, compute time to cross road, check right again and then cross the road if all is OK.
“The increase in drivers going to court for speeding is nothing to do with increassed 20mph limits. There is no evidence for this. In fact, police forces with the highest increase in court speeding appearances were Gloucestershire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. None are known for regular 20mph enforcement and in none of these have they had increased 20mph roll-outs in the period chosen. So, no causation or even correlation.
“In short the article is just lazy journalism looking to push an “anti-motorist” scare story,”added Mr King.
1 Comment
Given that the average speed in London is still around 9 mph, which is what it was over 100 years ago, there’s little point arguing for 30 mph. Agree with Rod King 100%.