Forum topic: The enormous costs - personal and financial - of fast traffic in towns

"If we could reduce speed limits to 20mph in these built-up areas then anybody who's got children, anybody who works with children, anybody who sees what we see, would have to be supporting us."

Words spoken by a surgeon at Birmingham Children's Hospital as part of a video telling a true story.  Along with a policeman, an ambulance driver, a parent and the young victim of a road traffic collision, she makes the unanswerable case for 20mph limits on urban roads.

If vehicles in towns and cities didn't exceed 20mph, collisions involving pedestrians or cyclists would cause so much less injury and suffering, often life-long.  The police point out that serious road injuries have financial costs too, amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds per patient, in the case of a fatal injury, two and a half million.

So why do we allow traffic to travel along our roads at dangerous speeds when these facts have been clear for so long?  Why do we not spend enough money on traffic police and speed cameras?  With enough traffic police and cameras, fewer drivers would risk speeding or drink driving and the costs arising from collisions would reduce - probably saving far more money than the spending on extra police.  It's absolutely clear that current policies make no sense financially or, more importantly, in terms of people's safety and happiness.  The thinking behind them is completely warped.