Did you know that sprinter Michael Duane Johnson could run 27 miles per hour? Obviously, he can only maintain that pace long enough to catch a bus or win an Olympic medal, and he'd have a hard time doing it whilst talking on the cell carrying a child in one of those humongous child seats. But the point remains: 20mph is a very, very slow for a car. And the question persists: is 20mph safer than say, 25mph? Or 30mph? In absolute terms, if we're talking about car - pedestrian contact, ipso facto. The faster the car at the moment of impact, the more potential lethal energy involved. But driving safety's a slippery customer, where the primary variables are the driver's level of attentiveness, personal reaction times and a wide variety of road conditions. So, will the UK's decision to lower speed limits in town centers to 20mph help the Government reduce road deaths from 3,000 to 2,000 a year? To make that analysis, you'd have to know how many of those fatalities involved pedestrians in town centers, what speed the contact occurred, if a reduced speed would have prevented the fatality, and what other, perhaps more crucial variables were in play. From a public policy standpoint, you'd have to also analyze the expense of changing the signs and time lost vs. any other, perhaps more effective measures. But two things are for sure: that's a debate the UK isn't having, and no other measure would collect so much-- if any-- revenue for the government. And remember: it's all for the children. Sent using SendMeRss.com.
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