I am not, and in fact never have been, a very good driver. I know that is tantamount to admitting I fall short of the stereotypical norms of masculinity, but the fact is that I don’t take a huge interest in cars, I don’t watch Top Gear, and every car I have owned bears the bumps and bruises that are testament to a driver’s lack of aptitude behind the wheel.
I concede that my attention sometimes wanders, and I find the audio-visual display in modern cars a constant distraction. And so it is that I don’t have a particularly good record in observing the speed limit. I endured a six-month ban in 2020, and despite my best efforts, I found myself this week on a Zoom call with five other miscreant road users on a three-hour course designed to give us greater awareness of speeding regulations.
At the same time that the Reform UK Party Conference in Birmingham was bellyaching about how the imposition of 20mph zones in urban areas represents a “war on motorists”, I was learning that travelling at 30mph rather than 20mph increases your total stopping distance by 35 feet, and can make the difference between life and death for a pedestrian.
Besides the fact that I’m in favour of anything that Nigel Farage is against, I found the course highly instructive and, from a road safety perspective, totally convincing. Last month, Birmingham – a city with the car at the heart of its heritage – became the latest municipality to announce proposals for a blanket 20mph limit for its urban roads, and it’s hard to argue with the logic.
A significant body of evidence from 20mph areas points to a drop in overall road casualties by 23 per cent and total collisions by 26 per cent. Injuries are less severe, air pollution has decreased and there are public health benefits in encouraging more cycling and walking. What’s not to like?
Plenty, according to the petrolhead lobby, and articulated by the Reform Party.
Jex Parkin, the Reform leader on Birmingham City Council, believes that the introduction of 20mph limits throughout the city would disrupt commerce and penalise motorists, saying: “We can’t move to a society that is anti-car, that doesn’t support cars, because what about businesses that use cars, lorries, vans for transport? Birmingham’s roads are already difficult enough to navigate. The council should be making it easier to get around our city, not harder.”
It’s curious that a measure which undeniably makes us all safer has become a proxy for the culture wars. Many of those who oppose a 20mph limit – like the near 470,000 people who signed a petition to try and force the Welsh Senedd to abandon plans to impose the restriction throughout Wales – believe it to be a personal liberty issue.
Whatever Jeremy Clarkson may say in opposition to a pedestrian-centric traffic policy, our roads don’t belong exclusively to those behind the wheel. They belong to us all, and the freedom to drive at the speed we want does not trump the freedom of residents to live in peaceful streets, of children to be safe, of elderly people to be able to cross the road without peril.
A recent study of the impact of the new limit on Welsh roads revealed that an average of just two minutes has been added to typical journeys. And this also plays into the cult of the individual, an unattractive aspect of modern life. We all feel we are so important, and that our assignments are so crucial, that we cannot be held up in our purpose. Don’t tell me how fast I can go: I’m on an urgent mission.
But the biggest argument in favour of a 20mph limit is not moral or political, but statistical. In 2025, there were 1,594 people killed on the roads of the UK, and approximately two-thirds of all crashes resulting in death or serious injury occur on roads with a speed limit of 30 mph. The example of Wales, where, since the introduction of the new limit in 2023, collisions on 20mph and 30mph roads fell by 25 per cent is compelling enough on its own.
This isn’t a war on the motorists. It’s not health and safety gone mad. And it’s not a trap set to catch more drivers breaking the speed limit. The widespread introduction of 20mph zones in urban areas throughout the UK represents a more basic, and sensible, impulse: to make the consequences of human error less disastrous. We may get there a tiny bit slower, but it’s definitely the way forward.
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