Date published: 2008/07/10
The BBC says:
The introduction of 20mph speed limits in residential roads should become routine, a leading public health doctor has said.
Stockport public health director Dr Stephen Watkins said a child hit at 20mph had a 5% chance of dying compared to 50% at 30mph.
He said not introducing 20mph zones was effectively "killing our children".
The British Medical Association conference in Edinburgh backed his called in a vote.
Speed limit zones of 20mph have been introduced in recent years, but mainly concentrated by schools.
Speaking at the conference, Dr Watkins pointed out children did not just congregate by schools.
He said: "We need much more widespread introduction of 20mph zones in side streets."
He said the difference between a two mile journey at 20mph, and a two mile journey at 40mph was just three minutes.
"We are killing our children for the sake of a couple of minutes," he said.
Over 3,000 people a year die on the UK's roads.
The usual disingenuous argument. So the BBC notes that over 3000 people a year die on the UK's roads, but they fail to note how many children are killed by drivers in 30mph streets. Probably a very small number. But with his "three minutes" claim, Watkins is trying to use emotional blackmail and pretend that everytime any driver goes at 30 mph anywhere near where some random child might be, there is a high risk of death. You have to multiply the three minutes times the real journey length (often much greater than two miles) and times the number of journeys, divided by the number of deaths by children by a car driving 30mph in a 30mph zone. This is going to be zillions of minutes per death.
Further, you can use a similar kind of argument to justify dropping the limit from 20mph to 15mph, and then down to 10mph, and then down to 5mph and then down to 0mph. So, cutting the speed limit from 30mph to 20mph allegedly reduces the probability of death by a factor of 10. Well, reducing it from 20mph to 15mph probably also reduces by the same sort of factor. Etc. You might as well argue that the world should stop. So no cars, and certainly no buses or trains, which are also dangerous. Or horses or cycles, since they can both kill people as well. Let's move society back to 10000 BC, where no child died in a traffic accident.
At some point society has to accept that there is a trade-off between reward and risk, and between cost and benefit. Unfortunately Watkins seems to have no concept of this. The academic middle class in action.
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