{"id":10754,"date":"2015-02-27T10:07:55","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T10:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=10754"},"modified":"2015-02-27T10:07:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T10:07:55","slug":"blogathon-2715-no-its-the-lack-of-speed-that-kills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=10754","title":{"rendered":"Blogathon 27\/15 \u2013 no, it&#8217;s the lack of speed that kills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like a number of cities around the UK, large parts of Bristol now have a 20mph speed limit.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m neither pro, nor anti, these reduced speed limit zones.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t seen any peer-reviewed evidence that lowering speed limits has a beneficial effect on the death and\/or accident rates.<\/p>\n<p>I do, however, understand the logic that a person being struck by a car\u00a0at 20mph is *likely* to receive less fatal injuries than if struck by a car at 30mph.<\/p>\n<p>But on my journeys to and from work, through the Bristol traffic, I have made a number of observations about how people behave\u00a0in\u00a0the 20mph zones.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>In the 20mph zone, cyclists:<\/strong><br \/>\nTake more risks<br \/>\nPerform shoulder checks much less frequently (if at all)<br \/>\nCut between cars, buses and lorries in a reckless fashion (because they know they can outpace the motorised road user)<br \/>\nRide in a manner that they would not emulate if the speed limit was 40mph<\/li>\n<li><strong>In the 20mph zone, pedestrians:<\/strong><br \/>\nJaywalk more (they wander, trance-like,\u00a0between near-stationary rows of traffic, neglectful of cyclists and joggers who are also dodging between the same near-stationary cars, buses and lorries)<br \/>\nOpen car doors to load their goods and\/or children in the full\u00a0face of oncoming traffic (because the oncoming traffic is moving so slowly, obv)<br \/>\nAre neglectful of risk from everyone else, because everything else is moving so slowly, they believe it&#8217;s within their ability to control it<\/li>\n<li><strong>In the 20mph zone, vehicle drivers:<\/strong><br \/>\nDon&#8217;t seem to do anything differently (but they do it slower)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like a number of cities around the UK, large parts of Bristol now have a 20mph speed limit. I&#8217;m neither pro, nor anti, these reduced<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}