This petition was closed early.
Its 21,920 signatures would otherwise would have risen far higher.
A better indication is provided by the petition to “Stop the Welsh Government imposing blanket 20 MPH speed limits” launched in Buckley, Flintshire, selected by the Welsh Government as one of eight pilot areas to trial a default 20 MPH speed limit, which had reached 58,546 signatures by lunchtime today, including 84 added this morning.
This reflects the real lived experience of people in the North Wales pilot area, ignored by the Deputy Minister who selected it.
The 60% support claimed by the Deputy Minister was polled before the pilots went live and his fig leaf of an exceptions policy leaves Councils without real discretion.
He ignores all research challenging his claim that a default 20mph speed limit will reduce casualties.
In pursuit of evidence-based road safety policies, the UK Department for Transport published an authoritative independent 20mph Research Study in November 2018, which found no significant safety outcome in terms of collisions and casualties in residential areas.
Following this, a 2022 study from Queen’s University Belfast, Edinburgh University, and the University of Cambridge found that reducing speed limits from 30mph to 20mph has had ‘little impact’ on road safety.
The Minister has previously quoted Police Record Road accidents for 2021, which show that 53% of all road accidents happened on 30mph roads.
The same figures show that 3% of all road accidents occur on 20 MPH roads.
Transport for Wales data estimates that the change will increase 20mph speed limits from 2.5% to 36.9% of roads in Wales, whilst reducing 30mph speed limits from 37.4% to 3%.
This would mean that the accident rate on 20MPH roads would be close to the current figure on 30 MPH roads, whilst falling to 4.2% on 30 mph roads.
The many emails I have received from residents of “pilot town” Buckley have included:
“Many of these roads are busy access roads on steep hills. The lorries are struggling to get up the hills in such a low gear and sticking to such a low speed downhill is hard on the brakes..”
A cyclist wrote “instead of overtaking and getting out of the way, these cars vans and lorries will be driving close behind, in front or alongside me. This has not been thought through.”
Another resident said: “It is doing the opposite of what it supposedly set out to do. There’s more pollution with cars chugging round in lower gears, people pay less attention to the road and more on the speedometer, leading to incidents on roads that previously had none.”
And as another said this weekend, "the so-called default scheme is a mistake, resulting in bad driving, near misses and increased pollution".