‘If people care about children and have a soul, they’d want 20mph residential speed limits’
Prof Danny Dorling of Sheffield University's Geography Department
A SHEFFIELD academic has made a passionate plea for 20 mph speed limits in residential areas to reduce deaths among children.
Road death has become the greatest avoidable public health epidemic, said Prof Danny Dorling, of the University of Sheffield.
Speed restrictions of 20 mph reduce preventable deaths, especially among young people, and health inequality, he told the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety’s Westminster lecture.
“If British people care about children and have a soul, they’d want 20 mph residential speed limits.”
As Sheffield prepares to introduce more 20 mph zones, Prof Dorling said it was the most cost effective way to improve quality of life in Britain today. Once it was open sewers, then tobacco, now roads must be recognised as the nation’s major killer and be tackled.
Although total road deaths were falling, deaths from other causes fell faster, making the road toll an increasing proportion, said Prof Dorling, who is professor of human geography. Traffic forms half of external causes of children’s and young people’s deaths, particularly boys.
Roads imprison affluent children at home, denying them the freedom to move, and are the main sites of killing of poorer children.
Prof Dorling argued that road deaths should be in the Department of Health’s remit. Meanwhile, he was “shocked” that the Department of Transport’s road safety budget has been cut from a “paltry” £37m to £17.2m.
It had been proven that 20 mph zones cut deaths by 41.9%. “Elsewhere in medicine, you’d get honours and funding for such an effective treatment for an epidemic. Yet there’s a collective blind spot on the enormous benefits of 20 mph limits - perhaps because directors of public health aren’t trained in road safety.”
Prof Dorling said educating drivers on lower speeds, and a campaign to get people to ask local councils for 20 mph limits, was badly needed. “Government can lead on 20 mph. In a time of less money it makes even more sense.”
Some city suburbs, such as Nether Edge, have the restrictions, and the Green Party has been pressing for a city wide strategy. Sheffield City Council has left decisions to its community assemblies.
The central assembly is looking into 20 mph zones at the Winn Gardens and Hanover estates, while the east assembly has said it will design and consult on a zone for the Stradbroke estate.
Green councillor Jillian Creasy has said: “These schemes work best if they are city-wide, like in Portsmouth, where they have already reduced speeds on roads in just the first year of operation. Citizens get used to driving slower in residential areas, and there is no need for speed bumps or narrower zones.”
Around 300 pedestrians are killed or injured on Sheffield roads each year.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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