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20 mph sign (CC BY-ND 2.0 licensed by Tony Hall:Flickr)Southwark plans crackdown on 20+mph cyclists
The recent widespread introduction of 20mph speed limits in built up areas has been welcomed by road danger reduction campaigners, but it might turn out to be inconvenient for cyclists. That’s the prospect in the London borough of Southwark, where the council plans to include cyclists and horse-drawn buggies in the scope of the 20mph limit to be introduced at the end of July.
The Borough has long had an unusual relationship with cyclists, until recently refusing to even consider segregated cycling infrastructure because it believed mixing cyclists with motor traffic would help get drivers to slow down. Although new Southwark cabinet member for transport Mark Williams has said he will reverse this policy, Southwark did for a long time appear to consider cyclists to be mobile speed bumps.
Now, it seems, cyclists are to be included in an initiative intended to reduce the danger to pedestrians from being hit by heavy motor vehicles and not soft, fleshy bike riders.
According to the London SE1 website, the council plans to circumvent the usual exclusion of cyclists from speed limits (which in the Road Traffic Act apply only to motor vehicles) by referring simply to 'vehicles' in its proposed traffic management order.
Although it appears never to have been used foer the purpose of applying speed limits to cyclists, the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 allows for speed limits to be imposed by local acts.
That ‘vehicles’ includes cycles is the same logic used by the Metropolitan Police to prosecute cyclists for exceeding the speed limit in Richmond Park. Carelessly framed traffic regulations refer in part to vehicles, although read as a whole they are clearly intended to apply only to motor vehicles.
As far as we are aware, nobody has ever mounted a serious legal challenge to a cycling speeding fine in Richmond Park. In a response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by road.cc last year, the Metropolitan Police said it was unable to find any record of legal advice indicating the limit applied to cyclists.
In Southwark, the council seems to think that cyclists are just as much of a hazard as motor vehicles (when they’re not using cyclists as unwitting moving-target traffic-calming, of course).
In a response to a member of the public who pointed out that it was unrealistic to expect unpowered vehicles to be able to accurately monitor their speed, the council's head of public realm Des Waters wrote: "The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 does indeed refer to 'motor vehicles' however since 1984 cycling as a modal share has grown substantially and the council receives a number of complaints from residents – particularly pedestrians – about the excessive speed of cyclists.
"Therefore it would be inappropriate to treat cyclists differently to any other form of traffic and effectively tie the hands of police when it comes to speed enforcement."
The Metropolitan Police seem quite happy to have their hands tied, though. In the Met’s formal objection to the plan, Catherine Linney of the force's traffic management unit said that enforcing the limit would be “unrealistic” and it should not be introduced unless the “look and feel” of the road made it obvious to drivers that the limit was 20mph. The Met apparently believes drivers are too dense to notice dirty great round signs with the number twenty on them.
Linney wrote: "Introducing speed limits where traffic speeds are too high places an unrealistic expectation to enforce on the Metropolitan Police.
"Whilst any reduction in speed is of benefit, the number of offenders will increase significantly in the roads which presently have average speeds of over 24 mph, placing an expectation on the Police for enforcement which we do not have the extra resources to fulfil.
"The Metropolitan Police objects to a 20 mph speed limit on any road in the London Borough of Southwark where the mean speed is above 24 mph.
"We also object to the implementation of the 20 mph limit where it is not obvious to the motorist through the look and feel of the road that the speed limit is 20 mph."
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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81 comments
was it a "good" speed?
was he shouting it out in "encouragement", like -
"well done, 45mph, bravo"
or shouted more like this -
"oi you are doing 45 in a 40mph zone!"
lol
Translated as: "there's nothing in the primary legislation that allows us to do this, but we're going to show we can flex our muscles and do something (which we can't enforce anyway)"
Yet more time wasted by council numpties on a piddling issue, when there are significantly more important road safety issues to be dealing with.
They could fit loads of these everywhere?
Low hanging fruit?
Whilst big companies get away with tax avoidance and the Queen's horse is found to be doped up. Councils are going after more cash from the public under the disguise of improving safety.
Time the government accepted that self regulation no longer works especially as those high up are at it.
Love to see the cops policing this.
They will have to give cyclists a buffer like 3mph over the limit like they do with drivers or is that just for special ones?
tbh its the slow cyclist that cause more problems, usually riding in the gutter, not shoulder checking or indicating and blinding people in their head to toe HiViz.
In my comments on this thread, I've purposefully been a little provocative, because I knew a lot of cyclists would object to this on principle rather than any real concern about the impact of the law itself.
In likelihood, the Police will give not just 3mph leeway, but quite a bit more. Speed guns are very unreliable on bikes, they'd need to see someone giving it quite a lot of welly.
Which is actually fairly similar to the situation in Richmond Park, where the Police largely don't care about cyclists riding around a fair amount over the limit. What they don't like is people absolutely hammering it down the hills amongst traffic. That's why they are often parked up at the foot of Sawyer of Dark hill of an evening or weekend, to catch the Strava numpties trying to do hills the easy way. Sometimes they'll just pull people over to offer a word of advice...
We might see some enforcement at specific points (against all traffic), but I really don't expect a "crackdown" as the road.cc headline suggests. And besides, as I mentioned much earlier, the byelaw doesn't cover the red routes which are set by TfL, and CS7 which passes through Southwark is mostly a red route.
Bit of a pointless debate, really. Councils have no legal authority to enforce speed limits, if the Police aren't supportive of the 20mph, then you're not going to get booked even if technically cycles are included in the TRO.
I am not well enough informed on the doings of the borough of Southwark to comment generally on how they deal with cyclists; the way this is worded does sound callous. But whatever you think of segregated infrastructure, 'roads for everyone' is not unsound reasoning, and suggesting that the council regards us as little more than "mobile speedbumps" may be a tad unfair. To the extent we calm traffic, I think it's a good thing!
The more cyclists on the road the better. You don't have to be a hardcore vehicular cyclist [bias alert: I am] to eventually reap the benefits of encountering more motorists who through experience will be trained to better deal with your presence on the road.
To put it into context, these quotes about mobile speedbumps have come up during the campaign around the Elephant & Castle which is controlled by Southwark.
When the southern junction was redesigned just a few years ago, campaigners wanted it to have a left turn bypass lane for cyclists. The Council had an active policy of using cyclists as a traffic calming measure, and it is suspected this lead to them not providing the bypass lane, with everyone using the large ASL box across multiple lanes of traffic.
That policy has obviously had a spotlight on it following the continuing accidents and recent death at that junction.
Hang on knob-jockeys!
The 20mph figure for motor vehicles wasn't arrived at by magic, I 'guess' it is a speed that would mean fewer pedestrians would be killed/seriously injured in collisions than would be at 30mph?
(please correct me, I haven't studied this, you can probably tell)
So a reasonable speed limit for cyclists would be one that equates to a similar amount of energy/danger/safety to that of vehicles?
So maybe 70mph or so?
(another wild-arsed guess, it's late, I've had wine, can't be arsed trading facts with other bike riders)
Speed limits were mostly a factor of visibility, road conditions and braking distance so as to avoid an accident happening in the first place. See if you can beat the braking distance of a car on your bike at those speeds. Wet and dry conditions.
Precisely, and as a cyclist if I'm involved in a collision with a pedestrian whilst I'm doing 25mph I'm likely to get badly hurt unlike a car driver, this is the reason this law isn't needed - because most cyclists will cycle cautiously and the other idiots won't slow down even if the law is changed anyway.
Another factor is the width of a bicycle is much less than the width of a car meaning cyclists can give give pedestrians a wider berth and have more forewarning of any stupid moves they might make. And, if a cyclist is traveling at 25mph then their heart is racing and the thinking part of their stopping distance is going to be much quicker than the lard arse in the car reading texts.
The worry is that, as people on bicycles are easier to stop than people in armoured mobility scooters, any enforcement will be focused on the people doing the least harm.
The greatest problem with riding as it is, is being overtaking badly. By allowing the vulnerable road user to travel at speeds at which they cannot be overtaken, the vulnerable road user's safety is improved with little more danger added to the surrounding environment. Especially as they are unlikely to be able to overtake a larger vehicle in front if that vehicle is travelling at the given speed limit. Instead of the larger road user using the smaller as a speed bump, you have the converse, which is a far safer situation all round.
Additionally, in my experience, motorists often treat cyclists less as incentives to slow down and more as moving targets that absolutely must be overtaken, regardless of how far it will advance them in their own journey. They're like the sprint-checkpoint on wheels. Which is not a very good thing for a human life to represent.
Sorry, anyway, I think this is balls. Because it's fundamentally less safe. And that's a stupid thing to introduce into legislation.
If they pulled you over and they saw that you had a cycle computer on your handlebars then I'm sure they'd do you, had they clocked you with their radar gun. You couldn't exactly argue you weren't aware of your speed if you had a computer telling you now could you.
So if you get pulled over, hide your computer pronto
After a lovely ride home from work with merely a handful of attempts made to injure me, reading this toss has put me in a foul mood. F*ck this sh*t country.
"however since 1984 cycling as a modal share has grown substantially "
pull the other one, for verilly it hath bells on... 20% increase on nothing is still nothing...
Modal share is the wrong figure to quote anyway, in TfL's data modal share is EVERYTHING. Tubes, buses, trains, walking, everything!
As a percentage of road users in the centre of London (zones 1&2) cycling is now around a 12% share throughout the day, with almost a quarter at peak hours. There's quite a bias towards commuting rather than social use as it appears to drop away at weekends or evenings
Just had a thought. I know, scary!
Usain Bolt averages out at about 25mph over 100m (standing start) and hits a maximum speed in excess of 27mph (60 to 80m).
He's not legally required to have a speedometer either.
"The law is a ass - a idiot" Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist
"Usain Bolt averages out at about 25mph over 100m (standing start) and hits a maximum speed in excess of 27mph (60 to 80m)."
Yes. However Usain is not a vehicle.
I don't think it's particularly unreasonable to expect cyclists to observe some speed limits. 20mph is actually quite fast for a lot of cyclists. 30mph is faster than most ever go. I was going down a hill this morning at 54.8kph (max) and thinking to myself "this is way faster than my wife would ever cycle".
Ever been hit by a bike at 30mph? It hurts. Sometimes more than a car due to all the sticky out bits.
No, I haven't - but given the choice between bike or car, i'd pick the bike any day of the week.
Perhaps you should consider not repeatedly walking out in front of fast moving cars and bikes.
I wonder how well that attitude would go down here applied to cyclist the next time one gets run over... I'm told by reliable sources sometimes cyclists run red lights so it's not as though walking out means the pedestrian is in the wrong, is it?
Maybe you should consider not cycling on the road the next time you get butthurt about some KSIed cyclist, eh?
Around here the council, which is on the verge of introducing a whole load of new 20mph local limits, has an SLA with Police Scotland to provide adequate plod to enforce those limits. Seems to me the Met is saying in a round about way that they won't enforce it unless someone pays for it. Luckily our council isn't quite like Southwark in that they're not barmy enough to think the new limits can practicably be enforced on cyclists. They're just barmy in other ways.
I'm gonna need a faster bike …………
...and I'm going to need faster legs.
@ flying scot
Spot on comment
Bicycles not legally required to have speedometer, and no bicycle speedometer is calibrated to meet any DOT test
Good luck LB Southwark with your dumb ass plan!
Have about actually supporting cycling and getting people out of cars and onto bikes
Doesn't matter whether you have a speedometer or not, the law doesn't except ignorance as an excuse.
Not knowing your actual speed is not the same thing as ignorance of the law.
In other words: without a law prescribing a standardised and calibrated means of bicycle speed measurement, any law requiring cyclists to adhere to a certain maximum speed cannot be practicably enforced.
Yes it can. This is another common misconception.
A car is legally required to have a working speedometer. If a car was caught speeding and it was found to have a broken speedometer the driver would be charged for the speedometer. He would also still be guilty of speeding.
Ignorance of your speed is not a defence against speeding.
The offence may stand, and in that respect your point is valid, but it becomes moot the second the first person comes along and mounts a challenge to the statute itself. You can't simply make a law that says "it's an offence to step over this here line when you're wearing blue shoes" if the majority of people wearing blue shoes have no reliable means of seeing where that line is. Well, you can, but you won't get very far with it. You either don't prosecute it very often (in which case what was the point of having it in the first place?) or you prosecute freely in which case watch the legal challenges mount up.
I should be clear: I'm not against speed limits for cyclists, if they are enforceable. As things currently stand (and in any feasible near future) they aren't. Certainly not for a single patch of central London. Yeah, this whole street is a 20mph limit; this bit you can ride at 25mph with impunity but fifty yards down the road you might get done for doing exactly the same thing. Not seriously going to happen, is it?
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