No, it isn’t. It’s puritanism pure and simple from a lobby group who’s loathing of the motor car is near pathological and cannot concieve why everyone will not buy a bike no matter how much money is wasted trying to socially engineer this because …they are out of touch with reality.

The safety benefits are debatable — the Portsmouth study certainly showed the number of KSIs went up …although actual deaths went down. Unable to deny the facts the Twenty’s Plentiers and the Councils then claimed that they couldn’t evaluate the stats correctly because they “didn’t know how many roads were actually 20″. What you spent half a million pounds turning an entire town into a 20mph zone and you cant actually remember how many miles of road you applied 20mph to — does no one have a ruler?

The statement it will reduce emissions is a black lie that has is in complete contradiction to extensive research done by the USA into optimum petrol consumption speeds in the 70s. And is also shown to be nonsense by people’s onboard car computers which monitor consuption for them.

It may increase the time people have to react but that has to be offset by the fact that it will make journey times longer, creating more driver fatigue. In order to hide this obvious fact the movement pumps out waffle about how everyone pootling round at 20mph will reduce congestion … postulate that it will even out traffic flow at junctions … which is actually of no benefit if you’ve made the journey time longer … and generally twists truth into balloon animals of twaddle so amusing they are almost beyond satire.

“You’re not up for all that? Why the hurry?”

The hurry is that I regularly drive hundreds of miles usually in the middle of the night and I wouldn’t give you puritans 5 seconds out my life that I dont have to. The real agenda is the bike lobby trying to bully people out of cars and whenever they talk for more than thirty seconds at a go their pathological hatred of all forms of 4 wheeled transport leaks out of them like an oil slick.