The pernicious creep of the 20mph zone

‘Twenty is plenty’ say the passive-aggressive road signs as you drive very slowly through 20mph zones all over Britain. The slogan is accompanied by a cartoon drawing of a snail. Then you get a frowny-frowny-frowny electronic sign and you slow from 25 to 20 to make it turn into a smiley face. That’s how we’ve been softened up: with a cocktail of the sanctimonious and the kindergarten.

As I crawl along the empty dual carriageway of Park Lane late in the evening, where the speed limit has been reduced from its previous 40mph to the now blanket central-London limit of 20, I hiss: ‘No, twenty is not plenty. Twenty is lente.’ It feels ludicrously slow: the trundle of a Dinky car, and an affront to common sense. This week’s 20mph go-slows on motorways to protest against fuel duty show that what we’re now being forced to do on our urban streets is regarded as a case of civil disobedience if we do it on the motorways or A roads.

Am I really saving a pedestrian’s life by going at 20mph down Park Lane? There are no pedestrians. I can understand the 20mph rule in a shopping street or on a residential road. But on a thoroughfare it feels crazy. To keep to this counter-intuitive speed, you need to keep your eye constantly on the speedometer, which is dangerous in itself.

‘You can’t really mean 20, can you?’ I thought at first, when the rollout of the 20mph rule spread across urban areas and I got stuck behind some annoying person actually obeying the rule. The police have since shown us they certainly do mean it. Twenty-six million of us now live in a 20mph zone, and nearly everyone I know – upright, law-abiding citizens who obediently wore masks and kept to the Rule of Not Visiting Granny – have since been clobbered by fines for driving at 26mph.