20 zones: TRL confess bogus child casualties & so does a minister
Further to our query to TRL about the 20 MPH zone figures, attributed to them by Roads Minister Mike Penning, they now confess that child accidents are only average 1.45 per year per zone. So the main reason given by councils for introducing 20 MPH Zones seems to be bogus then?
The main fault in their reasoning is to assume that each site has accidents by averaging all with the bad ones where there is possibly a road layout problem, with all the others where there were no accidents at all. So, the London example of 400 sites, is an assumption that all those sites would produce 1.45 child accidents a year when most of them would produce none at all. Surely this then is exactly what we don't want; a very costly blanket approach to 20 MPH zones where accidents are not happening at all.
Here is their response to our questions but do read our follow up to decide if we are a responsible group so far as the questions we do raise and the setting of our questions.
Mike Penning
