Surely there are more important things to get uptight about than 20mph speed limits.

You can’t eliminate all risk from our roads, but when a modest safety measure has such huge benefits and so little impact on drivers, why the beef?

The issue has revved up again because there’s been a public backlash in Wales against a 2023 policy making 20mph the “default” speed limit on urban roads. Reform UK are bursting blood vessels over it and – silliness alert – want to scrap 20mph all over the UK.

Time for a reality check. There are people going about their lives all over the country, many of them children, whose names would be etched on gravestones if we didn’t have 20mph limits.

Two children I know have been hit by car drivers, separately, in 20mph zones. Both were bruised and traumatised but otherwise OK, thank God. But what if the drivers had been going faster? There would have been blue lights everywhere, anguished families, police appealing for witnesses. I can’t even think about it. The average person is seven times more likely to die if hit by a vehicle at 30mph than at 20mph.

Read more Rebecca McQuillan

We don’t need statistics to tell us this. Anyone who drives knows it. The stopping distance at 20mph is half what it is at 30. Anyone can be involved in an accident because they’re briefly distracted, but clearly the slower your speed, the less damage you can do. Hundreds more people would be living with life-changing injuries in Scotland alone without these 20mph limits.

And where’s the downside? Twenty zones have hardly have any impact on journey times.

By the end of........

© Herald Scotland