20mph limit in Wales. How is it going? 3 month report

Has the world ended?! With the release of the first data regarding the 20mph default speed limit change in Wales, we decided to explore the figures and give our own experiences with the change – good and bad!

Find the data at: https://agilysis.co.uk/download/165/white-papers-reports/7493/wales-20mph-implementation-report-january-2024.pdf

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#20mph #wales #cymru

In this video is the 20 mph speed limit thing going well here in Wales we’re going to analyze it with some actual data that has just been released and uh our own personal thoughts and feelings so for those who don’t know on the 17th I think it was of September 2023 the

Default speed limit in Wales changed from 30 to 20 that is effectively your Urban limit it’s where there is regular Street lighting or little signposts to tell you uh in the rest of the UK it still is 30 uh but here in Wales it changed to 20 so

Primarily affecting cities but you know we live in ryal Wales we’ve seen plenty of limit changes as well and uh thought we’d discuss a bit how it’s gone because there was certainly a lot of controversy and comments when we released our first video on the subject there definitely

Was and there were also was a lot of um vigilantism wasn’t there when when it arrived so uh how how much was they spent was it30 Million they spent on res signage or something along those L along those lines yeah um and particularly in our area the signs were vandalized um we

Even had painted over face on some of them yeah yeah which which is stupid because all that does it’s the council that then has to pay for the repairs so you’re just taking money out the pockets of your quite openly said that there isn’t the money to do it again so

Currently we’ve got this new signage that’s covered in graffiti and I no I I think it’s all fairly clear at the moment I don’t think so I saw Mark dr’s face a couple of days ago oh yeah but uh yeah okay there’s a few they they’re trying

To get on top of it but I think that shows you that there’s a lot of public anger about this change and certainly the comments on our previous video reflected that probably even more so cuz we weren’t jumping on the anti 20 mph bandwagon we’re trying to keep a fairly

Open mind on it we we don’t want to side one way or the other and there are pros and cons as we’re going to disc now um what about talking about some little fallacies that have kind of appeared since oh yeah well well let’s clear up

The first one uh is it 20 mph everywhere no no no it isn’t and um I think something like 8.7% of the previous 30 mph limits are still 30 uh there’s one in our village uh they’ve extended the 20 slightly pre-existing 20 they existed before they exist in parts of England as

Well and Scotland all over the place already um but yeah there are still some m in our sections sales is hugely dependent on tourism and people are talking about not coming anymore please do come which is ridiculous are you also not going to go to London to Brighton to

Oxfordshire the quite large apprciate the countryside more slowly yeah but but you’re not having to because the the rural speed limits are pretty much unaffected I don’t think that I don’t think that will stay the case I think we have found a few haven’t

We well 20s no the 50s yeah the 50s are creeping in uh one of those roads is the a44 abest with towards the uh East uh that that road has had a 50 mph uh limit put on it but that’s because it was one of the unsafest roads in Wales yeah and

Also uh one of the roads we’re going to discuss is the route between chandil going through uh pentra kurad Kun aled and that way across to kamaran very pretty route it’s beautiful speed is 50 m hour um again you can kind of see why there I mean there’s barely a streight

You’re turning constantly to be honest you would 50 if you were driving safely any we did we digress slightly so uh they’ve released these this report in January uh it’s also it’s in line with the fact that they’re also going to start um enforcing they have and they

Have started in January um was when the enforcement was going to start so uh they wanted to look at the results they looked at the initial results were looked at after a week and then 3 months in which was um in preparation for this report and they think that if there’s a

Three they can’t give specifics of accident rates yet yeah that can’t do that yet but looking at the numbers that they have they do think that if there’s a 3 m hour drop in speeds that 32% of deaths will be prevented and 25% of serious injuries so that’s incredible I

Mean that is incredible when we demonstrated the stop between 20 and 30 miles hour something else I want to address people were criticizing the fact that we did our stop test in the 2cv which quite an old car it’s got very good brakes but it is an older car and

They also said well it doesn’t matter cuz you’re still going to stop in time but the the point wasn’t so much to demonstrate that it was to demonstrate the difference in potential energy uh so um you can see a very marked example of what it would be like to be hit our car

Doing 20 M hour compared to 30 30 is going to do a lot more damage than 20 I mean there was that terrifying advert when we were children about if you drive at 30 m an hour one in 10 there’ll be one in 10 of the accidents will cause a

Death and if you drive at 40 m hour nine in 10 people will be killed yeah well if you can reduce that rate even more than that one in 10 that that’s incredible and I think that’s why it’s it’s worthwhile doing it yeah but anyway you

Said that that drop was based on three an hour what has the drop been you said three 3 milph would create all these differences and the reason that I mentioned that is the fact that it dropped from 22.7 as an average speed to 19.8 so that’s very nearly that 3% so

That’s 32% less deaths potentially and 25% less serious injuries potentially potentially yeah it will be interesting once that data is out it will be interesting to see whether it has made a difference but we we’re only um guessing until that point but yeah I mean in a

Way it’s a bit shocking that dropping the speed limit by 10 m hour reduces the speed the speed done achieved by only 3 miles hour but it’s worth pointing out that even in a 30 limit a lot of the traffic is not actually averaging 30 m

An hour it might might be able to get up there but then it’ll be queuing and all all that so it the reality of the change I think in urban areas especially is that you’re not actually going much slower than you were anyway it just feels it yeah

Because the results are taken from um TomTom who formulated these results I think it’s based on 7,000 and something miles of Road uh including areas like Mera tid Halford West um various other areas up in North Wales as well all these all these TomTom Journeys are being recorded uh anonymously so these

People aren’t at any risk of um you know partaking in the survey and then being punished that’s not happening um but they’ they’ve they’ve uh observed these people and they’ve seen that as you say they weren’t driving at 30 in the first place but there has been a market

Difference average 2.9 miles per hour since the change has come in so and if they were driving it say 23 as an average that takes them so close to 20 miles an hour and that difference in the potential accident rate and another strange thing is go safe the um Road

Safety partnership with the Welsh government I think um have said they’re not going to enforce um speed limit fines until 26 mph so normally you it kind of be um was it 2 m hour no no it’s 5% plus 2 m hour mhm which would be

Quite close to um 20 M hour in this case so they’ve actually done it at plus four miles an hour so go a little bit over 20 you’re not going to get fined but um yeah enforcement is now taking place enforcement was not taking place when they were recording this data so

Maybe the data will change again now that they’re actually enforcing it yeah because I mean this is the thing that everybody is aware of is the fact that 20 mil hour is the speed limit but 26 miles per hour is where the um enforcement is going to come in 30 mil

Hour is always was the historic speed limit and 35 is where you’re going to get criminal Pro being in caught if you do 35 and a 20 and rightly so frankly absolutely that’s that’s half that’s no that’s even more than half again isn’t it KY and that’s nearly double the speed

Li it’s worth jumping out of the actual facts for a moment just to talk about our own experiences uh when when the limit change first came in um everyone was observing it really really well for like the first few weeks but it was it was almost religious because of that

Fallacy of everywhere as 20 mil an hour there were there was quite a high percentage of people that were driving everywhere at 20 M hour National speed limit would definitely where there was a 30 limit they’re like all 30s now 20 but if a 30 limit said 30 you could do 30 so

Uh yeah there was some initial confusion and uh it didn’t take too long for anger to start building up and we’ve certainly been victims of that ourselves where we’ve been doing 20 miles an hour and people are right up your backside or even worse overtaking at ludicrous

Speeds we’ve had Vans doing that yeah and then ignoring the fact they only meant to do 50 on a 60 yeah I mean the the one that seems to happen quite a lot is um if you’re a 20 heading towards a 30 or a 40 people will see that moment

As their time to overtake which you wouldn’t have done that previously no you know please use the phone is that Stephanie it is go away Stephanie we’re busy you know people wouldn’t have seen that as an opportunity and there seems to be a little bit more dangerous overtaking I

Would say risky overtaking I mean it was a bit muddled in for us the worst Journey we did you were driving we went to kamaran and we went along the Route you said the lovely pretty route and uh we were getting people right up our backsides but coming either way was even

Worse there was one queue of cars and the car at the back was just the queue was doing 20 M hour it was doing the speed limit and people were absolutely losing it but I think that was just pre- Christmas crazy cuz the roads generally were utter bedum

Season of Goodwill it wasn’t it wasn’t I’m a learn driver and um I’m going to observe the speed limit because that you know it’s forming good habits and I actually pulled in at one point I was very I was observing the speed limits along that road it goes sort of 20 30 50

20 big stretches of 20 which is a problem itself we’ll talk about that in a moment so I actually pulled over at one point because it w the drivers behind me were so aggressive and it happened to be cuz I thought am I doing something wrong happened to be that when

I pulled into the side is when that Convoy came in the other direction with the person honking like a I don’t even know just horrendous yeah horrendous so um yeah it’s fair to say it hasn’t gone down universally well no and especially at that time when everyone’s angry and

Fraught anyway it was not good times at all and we are seeing they did mention the phenomenon of clustering with regards to the 20 M hour um you do tend to get stuck in not stuck you do tend to have to be within a convoy of traffic um

When you’re in the 20 m per hour z and that’s because one car will do 20 all the others are quite happy to go a little bit faster so they all end up catching each other up and then the whole lot huge group of cars is doing 20

M hour all together there’s more to it than that and I can’t exactly remember the science of it as to why they cluster at the lower speed but again that that pushes people’s patience because they feel like somebody’s going too slow um so yeah there has been aggression but

I’ve got to say on the flip side as a learner driver um being at 20 m per hour even though I’ve spent a lot of my life in second gear um because little shmy if you’re not approaching at speed she likes to do on third likes to do it in

Second um it does mean that you can carry out better observations you can react better to hazards um everything is just moving a little slower it does mean that you may have to be a little bit more patient at Junctions um but it’s actually better from the perspective of

A learner driver aside from the aggression the aggression is and it’s worth pointing out of course we have a nasty habit of only looking at this from the point of view of car drivers who were all feeling like they’re somehow grossly held up by all this but as a

Pedestrian or a bike rider um I think there are benefits I feel a bit safer walking on the road quite often in ryal Wales uh there are Villages where there is no pathway so you’re walking in the road and I feel safer with cars doing 20

Mph past me even I do when they’re doing 30 or absolutely because when we go to places where the standard is 30 we’re quite shaky because it’s a bit of a surprise so fast when you try to cross the road cuz we’re getting used to anticipating 20 M hour cars and then

These cars come whiz whizzing at you we whiz why we say whizzy for 30 miles an hour it never was but it is now but yeah I think there is a problem generally that I don’t think this has been fought through that well just go and blank it

Let’s change the default that involves so many roads I I think there are an awful lot of roads where 20 M hour is not appropriate especially out here in rural pars where 30 is probably sensible cuz you got lots of driveways but we’ve got 20 mph roads where there aren’t many

Pedestrians at all or there’ll be a pavement on one side and there’s nothing on the other side so the pedestrians will be on the pavement there isas nothing no reason for them to cross the road so you think that surely reduces the risk as well why are we doing 20

When really that there are no pedestrians but equally there are times when they not been properly thought through perhaps so for example um there’s a village called lar just up the road from us and if you come into CL from the sonin direction it’s a 60 MPH

Road and then as you descending a very Steep Hill you hit the 40 and then maybe not even 50 m along is the 20 and you do struggle to get yourself to that 20 and also you wonder a little bit about what’s coming behind you and what speed

They’re coming at that should be I think clath as an example oh people going to be like what but you know maybe that should be further out to get you you stretched out and you’re slowing down it just seems very very abrupt you go 60 to

40 20 there is a school there is a difficult Junction so 20 is probably all right there it needs to be 20 through clath that isn’t under discussion it’s how that entry into the village is handled yeah and and there some roads where it goes from a 60 to a 20 with

Very little warning yeah yeah and there’s and there’s still mixed messages there’s somewhere along the cardigan Road where you’ve got a National Speed liit applies and literally 10 meters away I can’t remember it’s a 40 or a 30 and you think well make your mind up

Yeah yeah and like I said they try and step you down sometimes so that means you’ve then got three or four speed limit changes in a very short period that’s where the bunching comes from it’s those um very quick slow downs is where the bunching comes because

Anything that’s coming behind you say 60 is going to have to slow down so you’re all Bunch together that’s where the bunches coming from the non scenic route to come out and has become a bit of a nightmare you can’t call it the nonic group we go through penata hi

Penata God we’re going to die we’ve definitely got okay it’s still very scenic but it’s not as Scenic as the one that goes past squidly Railway let’s face it okay yes those trains uh so um yeah that route there’s so many 20 sections but you just think there is no

No legitimate reason for this really but but I will make the Proviso obviously speed limits exist because car drivers are notoriously bad at driving at a sensible speed that is why limits exist they exist because they have to because if you just left it to people to make

Their own decisions they would all go way too fast there people who think oh well I can do 140 mph on an empty Motorway and it’s perfectly safe and you’re like well it’s only perfectly safe until something goes wrong and that’s what speed Li trying yeah it’s

Trying to mitigate that so um yeah I I do feel a bit bad arguing against the limit changes because obviously I’m a car driver I just find it annoying and um I think I should be able to go faster but that’s why limits exist cuz car

Drivers make bad choices so 3 months in where are we so we mentioned that they talked about it a week in they did a sort of check on uh I think it was the 23rd of September uh and it was those 7,000 however many miles of Road they

Did the check um this is sort of their control group and it’s the same group they did 3 months later so what did it look like after a week uh it was quite a big drop the changes were marked marked 3.1 yeah average limit average speed

Drop but like I say everyone was well not everyone few people losing their absolute marbles about it but most people were adhering to the speed limit very well and then people started to creep up again well this is it so we look at three months later and not in m

Tville M tville fair play you you got the lowest drop on average uh 1.8 m hour I think but exactly the same after a week as it was after three months so you’re consistent consistent in mura um yeah so after a week everybody was as we said and we saw it everybody was

Religiously following it um and then three months later it’s creeping back up again it is creeping back up and one of the reasons was people were STD to realize there was no enforcement at that point and if people know there is no enforcement they will just drive as fast

As they like there is a 50 mph section of the M4 near Swansea where nobody does 50 m hour cuz they know there aren’t any cameras they they think they’re going to get away with it um we’ve seen police vehicles on that stretch so you better

Be careful that they are keeping an eye out but if people think it’s invalid uh that they will break the law and if they think they can get away with it so it be interesting to see uh 6 months if they do it again to see whether enforcement

Has bought uh the Aver down down again but it is a big concern don’t they reckon that something like 52% of cars are traveling of cars are traveling over the speed limit however that could be 20.3 it could be up to 26 is that the average was 20.3 which is

Speeding mhm it’s not it’s awful speeding is black and white like 20 mph is the speed limit if you’re doing 20.3 you are speeding yeah yeah so 52.9 could be as low as 20.3 mph it’s somewhere between 20.3 mil hour and that say 25.9 before you hit

That 26 yeah yeah um and then it was 17 17.9% of yeah we’re then 26 up to 35 No up to 30 up to 30 yeah um so a lot of people are breaking the speed limit and the lower level part of that will be because you can’t just sit there staring

At your speedometer and I think that’s why they’re allowing a little bit extra than they normally would on a speed limit you might well creep up to 25 Without Really realizing so that is definitely a thing I’m quite glad they taken that into account but uh yeah a

Lot of people are ignoring this and My worry is that people get used to Breaking speed limits will then start breaking other speed limits as well cuz they’re now getting in the habit of it so slightly concerning so my concern is as we’ve mentioned you have those that

Adhere to the the speed limits the 20 M an hour and that is a slow speed you have those who don’t adhere and it becomes dangerous yeah it BEC where they’re overtaking in the 20 Zone uh that is dangerous cuz yeah they’re not breaking the speed limit by a little

Bit they they are showing complete disregard for it as I said if I’m dropping in into sth at 20 somebody comes up behind me at 60 because they haven’t seen it or choose not to see it we have a problem yeah so yeah it’s been an interesting experiment um I I’m still

Not sure I love driving at 20 mph but then car drivers are always going to feel offended by speed lo I remember when I used to live in the east of England having to slow down to 30 for villages where there didn’t seem to be anything going on and I find that

Frustrating uh so anything that your progress is going to feel like frustration but uh yeah on the the plus side you have to say as a pedestrian it does feel better in those areas where you haven’t got the traffic whizzing past um I will say Obviously our experiences are mostly rural we’ve been

To Swansea once since the limit change and actually the main route through the center of Swansea is still 30 m hour so off on the sides where there’s more pedestrians it’s sensibly 20 but the the main thare through the middle is still 30 is pedestrianized yeah so yeah I think

Quite it was probably already 20 anyway and that is another thing to bear in mind but 20 limits aren’t new they’ve existed for quite a long time and they’re in place all all around cities all around the UK so this isn’t a new thing no but yeah I don’t I don’t think

It’s perfect I think they need to look at more signage particularly repeaters they seem to have put the the 20 at the beginning of a section the 20 at the end of a section huge section with no repeaters that’s because it’s the default speed limit so they legally

Don’t have to put repe if you’re installing a new instilling a new speed limit surely it’s worth putting those repeaters in yeah yeah it’s probably not a bad because you do get confused you’ll suddenly pull out on the road and you go wait is it 20 or 30 exactly exactly but

Uh it’ll only be 30 if there are repeaters so um yeah still still some getting used to but um it it hasn’t been the catastrophic end of the world it’s just that there are definitely some areas that they can and have been I think some 20s have already changed back

To 30s really so some councils are looking into that sort of thing I think that’s most mostly in North Wales I think they kind of had to go in with a blanket yeah and then tweak as they go so it would be nice if a few more 20s

Where there aren’t pedestrians um in great numbers uh are higher but then of course I would say that I’m driving a car yes anyway that’s our experiences with the first 3 months of 20 mph in Wales we’re not moving out of Wales that’s for sure yeah so not catastrophic

Not end of the world but yeah let us know your comments I don’t know what I’m saying that of course you will certainly did last time we talked about this topic but yeah let us know your thoughts and we’ll see you in a future video farewell bye