85% Of Car Drivers Break 20mph Speed Limits, Reveals U.K.’s Department For Transport

Speed limit is enforced by road design, not by signs

There are quite a few 20 mph roads near me where the only incentive to slow down is to avoid being caught be a speed camera.

The roads are wide and straight for long stretches, and going at the 20 mph limit just means you become an obstruction for the rest of traffic, even buses and lorries.

The design of the road and posted speed limits are sending mixed messages.

I think a large part of it is inappropriately making 30 mph areas 20mph and also poor enforcement.

I live on a long wide 20mph road and I can't stand the people going at 40, 50 or even 60 or 70 mph at times. But I don't think my road should have been 20mph, it should have been 30mph. It seems it was easier to stick some 20mph signs up to say "we've done something" as a way of discouraging some people going at more rediculous speeds and hope most go at 30mph.

Instead what was needed was actual investment in the road - speed bumps, narrowing the road with choke points and passing points, physical rather than painted cycle lanes - that kind of thing.

Fortunately after years of pressure our road is now going to be in a LTZ (Low Traffic Zone). Both ends of my own long road are blocked off to allow pedestrians and cyclists only through, and my main road is being split into 3rds with X-junctions being turned into filters(Instead of X it's now > and < with no connection). If you're driving you can only turn into one side street while cyclists and pedestrians can pass through as normal. We've had a trial for a while and it's been very effective - my whole block has been split up with filters so you can't use it to pass through to reach the main roads around it - this has stopped the arseholes using my road as a shortcut and speeding at 60 mph.

People are still going at 30mph but the twisting and turning through the block means you can't really get up to anything more than that and also unless you're going to a house in the block it's pointless to even enter.

So while I abhor speeding, I would argue these stats reflect bad road management - over relying on 20mph speed limtis as a cheap alternative to actual road management and redeisgns which are expensive (and difficult in many parts of the UK with lots of very old and narrow streets inherited from previous eras).

It's the same or higher here in the US based on my personal experience.

Way too many people are speeding where I live too and I partly blame the road design as well. I've seen many places in Denmark where I live that they at some point reduced the limit from 60 to 50 or from 50 to 40 kmh with no modifications to the road design or obvious reasons like schools or crossroads. Or similarly you are driving along at 80 and then the limit changes to 60 but the road looks the same. I know it's usually because of safety or more commonly noise pollution or hidden sideroads. This doesn't make sense intuitively while driving because the road design signals higher speed than allowed. It's still no real excuse for driving too fast but I think it could solve a lot of the issue with better road design like "not just bikes" are also preaching in his videos

In the US speed limits are set by 85% of traffic speed on a road. So if the road was set for 30mph, and then you changed it to 20MPH with no other changes, you will immediately get 85% of drivers breaking the "limit."

Another way to say it is that UK's department for transport has incompetently designed 85% of their 20mph roads.

At least 10% lied. Nearly everyone speeds.

If you’re out there, need to be in a car and for whatever reason find it hard to keep the car at 20mph - do what I do and use the speed limiter function (if you have one). Works a charm.

With or without the tech aid though, there’s no excuse.

I believe it 100%.

I started riding with a Garmin bike radar and installed an app that tells me exactly how fast a car is going when it passes, and the majority are over the speed limit.

Just the other day, in a 60 km/h zone, I clocked two cars going 125 km/h.

If I thought for a second that police would charge these drivers using photo/video evidence, I'd fork over the $500 to get the radar with a camera built-in and report each and every speeding driver that passes me.

I feel like some reddit brain would say "oh we'll just enforce this digitally once everyone drives a self driving car"

given how many times computers fuck up and just randomly turn off or some shit, I still think humans (some of them at least) are more dependable

Tbf 20 through a village where no one's about is insane

Cars aren't good at going slow. They need a "chill mode" setting where light pressure on the accelerator for 2 seconds doesn't move you from 20-30mph before you realize it. I like going the speed limit and have a hard time only going 20 on some roads because it's just so dang easy to accidentally bump up to 30mph. Automatic transmission problems

Yeah, 5 over is my norm.

Exactly why we need LTNs etc. Existing restrictions don't work!

I always thought that 20 mile an hour signs were just a good excuse for police to be able to pull over just about anyone they want

@mondoman712
Only 85%?

Why does the UK measure this using miles? I thought it was just a made up unit?

@mondoman712

Based on my US experiences that number feels low tbh

This sounds like a money-making opportunity. If 85% of drivers insist on breaking the law, they should pay. We can then use that money to redesign the road for more traffic calming.

If 85% breaks a speed limit, they should revise that limit because there is clearly something wrong with it.