What are your thoughts on the introduction of 20mph speed limits in built-up areas?

[Alsty]

20mph makes sense on quiet residential roads with lots of parked cars, driveways etc. However it's worth bearing in mind that the speed limit is a maximum limit, not a target. If there are lots of hazards then you should be reducing speed accordingly. You should always be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear. This applies to any road regardless of posted speed limit.

Regarding signage and enforcement, I think the biggest issue will be when you come from a speed limit >30mph into a built-up area with street lights and terminal signs displaying "30". You can therefore treat it as a 30mph speed limit. However after an ambiguous amount of time, if you have not seen any repeaters for the 30mph limit then you would have to assume it is now a 20mph limit*.

[* this would be analogous to coming from a >30mph road into a built-up area in England where the 30 terminal signs are obscured or missing. The courts would expect you to realise after a while that it's a built-up area and not just carry on at the speed you were doing before]

 

[MattyH]

Wales has gone insane.

There's a reason the biggest petition ever has emerged against the change.

 

[Benzin]

Wales has gone insane.

There's a reason the biggest petition ever has emerged against the change.

A speed limit change resulting in the biggest petition ever is probably a more sad indictment of the current life situation than anything.

Amount of things wrong with the world, but heaven forbid people having to be aware when driving.

 

[rob666]

Going back to raw numbers, around a thousand deaths/serious injuries on the roads in Wales every year...roughly.
Deaths drop by roughly three quarters at 20mph instead of thirty.
Are 750 innocent pedestrians lives worth it?
My personal view, yes.
Get the traffic on the bypass and main routes, and away from the quick town rat runs.
Everybody else slow down while you drive through town.
I live on a busy straight main road in England...it would be nice if they kept below fifty.

 

[Slugjc]

No issue with the change to 20.

The issue I have is big new poorly designed housing estates that seem to think a family will have one car, and the kids growing up wont own till they have moved out. Big estate near us the replaced the old pit. Literally parking bang outside ya front door. And yet.........people still drive like their hair is on fire. I blame the new estates. Plenty of terraced streets near by aswell that were never designed for car occupancy.

The amount of traffic we have now is getting worse. The government is trying to push all onto public transport, whilst simultaneously not funding the buses and trains. Take the village I grew up in. Kippax near Leeds. Huge commuter village. Housing estates rising all round. Yet it still takes over an hour to reach Leeds by bus. More now since they have dug up the entire city roads, or so it seems. Some big industrial estates nearby are unreachable by public transport. No wonder folk get the car.

Twenty is plenty. No need to be constantly on the edge, driving round with the right foot welded to the floor. Slow down ya blerts. My wife always gets angry with me when I slow the car down if someone is tail gating. As I always say, in the highway code it's states if the car behind is a little too close. Give yourself time by increasing the distance between yaself and the car in front.

 

[Alsty]

Going back to raw numbers, around a thousand deaths/serious injuries on the roads in Wales every year...roughly.
Deaths drop by roughly three quarters at 20mph instead of thirty.
Are 750 innocent pedestrians lives worth it?
My personal view, yes.

This is highly spurious. You cannot simply reduce the headline KSI (killed and seriously injured) figure by three-quarters because you do not know anything about those collisions, such as who was injured (pedestrians, cyclists, motorists), where it happened (in the town, on a country road, on the motorway), was it at special feature such as a junction or bend or road narrowing, what was the speed limit of the road, or why it happened (exceeding speed limit, too fast for conditions, impaired by alcohol, distracted by mobile phone).

The actual number of KSI on 30mph roads in Wales in 2022 was 421 [1]. If we are talking about pedestians specifically, the KSI is 177 (across all speed limits).

The stats for KSI on 20mph do show as KSI figure of 42 but it's worth bearing in mind there are significantly less 20mph roads than 30mph which means you have less data and potentially more statistical error.

Of interest to me is the police report into road traffic collisions in Wales in 2022 [2] which found the most significant cause of KSI is "failed to look properly" accounting for just under 250 of the recorded KSI. For comparison, travelling too fast for the conditions comes eighth at around 70. It would suggest to me that money spend on educating and enforcing standards of drivers in general would be more fruitful than solely targeting speed.

I live on a busy straight main road in England...it would be nice if they kept below fifty.

I am assuming this is a 30mph road. Do you think people who are exceeding the 30mph limit would comply with a 20mph limit?

 

[rob666]

They are more likely to reduce their speed as a conviction with excess speed of more than 30mph can lead to a ban, not just three points, so, in answer to your question, yes.

 

[Alsty]

If the speed limit is 30mph then they can already be disqualified for going over 40mph [1]

If people are knowingly already breaking the law then I don't see what difference it makes. Lowering the speed limit will only affect those who follow the law.

 

[BarryZola]

That's not strictly true. On an empty road maybe. But if there is traffic on both sides of the road, all it takes is one person on your side to be travelling at 20 then everybody behind will be forced to travel at 20 as the speeders won't be able to overtake without running into head on traffic in the next lane.

 

[Benzin]

I've just seen the link to said petition on this on another Forum and... well, just to read to description.

We want the Welsh Government to rescind and remove the disastrous 20mph law
The new 20mph law is coming into force on the 17th September and it will mark the end of having socialism in power in Wales.

Welsh Government claim to have supporting evidence stating that reducing to 20mph EVERWHERE saves lives! Yet we get flyers merely claiming that it will, and opinions from doctors that see RTCs coming into A&E. This is NOT evidence. The only true evidence is from Belfast and it states it makes NO DIFFERENCE to RTCs!
At least one of the trial villages in Monmouthshire actually reverted their trial because it was causing absolute carnage on the roads! Mark Drakeford has come out claiming it is a success in St Brides Major but every time I go though there NO ONE is driving at 20mph.
The Welsh Government has FAILED to produce ANY convincing evidence to support these claims of safety. This law is being spearheaded by the WG Climate Change department and NOT Health & Safety!!
YOU HAVE NOT LISTENED TO US.
The Welsh Government was put there BY THE PEOPLE OF WALES, We are your boss! We demand that this foolish idea be stopped.

Apparently this is the end of socialism as we know it people.

This is the problem I think with a lot of these kind of things. People get insanely worked up, end up in their algorithm set rabbit hole finding like-minded people who are a bit off the deep end and suddenly it's a huge conspiracy in order to keep us all under lock and key in 15 minute cities being under surveillance by the 5G chip in the COVID vaccines. The language used is just so weird and angry.

Would be nice to see this evidence from Belfast. An obviously fair comparison to rural Wales.

This cannot be the highest signed petition in UK history right?

 

[GaryH]

Speed only accounts for around 7% of accidents

Factors leading to road accidents in Great Britain | Statista

A share of 38 percent of all road accidents in Great Britain were caused by the driver or rider not looking properly.

www.statista.com

I feel many of these policies are more about making driving so difficult that people don’t bother rather than road safety and environmental concerns

The 20mph in wales is completely unnecessary on probably over 3/4 of the roads it’s been implemented on.

If Drakeford was serious about tackling pollution and road safety he would have approved the M4 relief road rather than making it a rush hour polluted car park and rear shunt hot spot.

Next step will be ULEZ for Wales. Watch this space….

 

[Matt N]

Having been out on a driving lesson this morning in Lydney, my nearest semi-large town, and driven through the town centre and some residential side streets, it honestly reinforced that I completely understand the 20mph speed limit on all the implemented roads apart from main arterial roads. I periodically checked my speedometer, as you do, and through the town centre and on those residential side roads, I don’t think I exceeded 20mph once. On those non-main roads, where there are often more people and you’re having to avoid things like parked cars as well, I think that 20mph is more than fast enough for the conditions. Even though the speed limit is 30mph in some cases, I don’t think you could safely drive 30mph along those streets.

However, I maintain my stance that 20mph on the main arterial roads (through roads) is too slow. The roads passing through my village and the next village before Lydney are 30mph, and I think that that feels just right in terms of speed. I’ve also never felt unsafe walking alongside these roads as a pedestrian, personally.

Speeding through villages is a separate issue. One thing that I think would be far more effective for reducing speeding than making the through roads passing through the villages themselves 20mph is reducing the speed limit on some of those really brief stretches of National Speed Limit in between that don’t have any villages along them, but do have footpaths along them and last hardly any time at all. For instance, I live along a main arterial through road, the A48. Between my village and the next village along (where the A48 is at 30mph running through both), there is a stretch of road probably less than 1 mile long that is National Speed Limit. As such, the speed limit is 60mph (and even briefly 70mph, as the road diverges for only a few seconds into a dual carriageway of sorts for reasons that I can’t quite understand) for a relatively brief moment of probably no more than a mile or so before quickly hitting 30mph again. This stretch of road has a pedestrian pathway along one side of it for a large portion, and even bus stops on both sides of it at one point, yet remains at 60mph. It’s on a big hill, and people absolutely fly down this hill, despite the fact that they’ve only just left a 30mph zone and another 30mph zone is coming up pretty swiftly.

All of this aside, my point is that I think that when people reach the edges of the villages, seeing the National Speed Limit sign or knowing that there’s a stretch swiftly coming up will make them think “Right, a 60mph limit is coming up; I’ve got to put my foot down to the floor and go as fast as I can!” regardless of how long this stretch actually is. Vice versa, when people suddenly hit the 30mph villages without warning, I feel that the stretch of 60mph is too short to adequately prepare people to slow down before entering a village.

I’d certainly advocate for these very brief stretches of National Speed Limit being lowered to, say, 40mph far more than I would advocate for the arterial roads through the villages themselves being lowered to 20mph, as I think that that National Speed Limit sign psychologically makes some people really speed up regardless of how long the stretch of National Speed Limit is, and that can as a result make them drive faster through the villages themselves. I feel that lowering those limits would have far more of an effect on speeding.

 

[GaryH]

Looks like I was right about Wales wanting to make driving so unpleasant that people don’t bother and also looking to introduce charges for private vehicles to use the roads.

https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2023-02/national-transport-delivery-plan-2022to2027.pdf

Page 45 - in particular the paragraph which says:



Not only that but proposing to charge people to park their cars at their workplaces!!! Like I said this 20mph isn’t about road safety or the climate, it’s the start of Dictator Dickfords big push to stop people using their cars.

 

[Matt N]

Looks like I was right about Wales wanting to make driving so unpleasant that people don’t bother and also looking to introduce charges for private vehicles to use the roads.

https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2023-02/national-transport-delivery-plan-2022to2027.pdf

Page 45 - in particular the paragraph which says:



Not only that but proposing to charge people to park their cars at their workplaces!!! Like I said this 20mph isn’t about road safety or the climate, it’s the start of Dictator Dickfords big push to stop people using their cars.

I’d argue, though, that disincentivising private car use does not equate to Mark Drakeford being a “dictator”. Even if the 20mph limits are part of some grand agenda to stop everyone from using their cars (which I don’t think they are; the Welsh Government have been very clear that it is about road safety), it is likely as a measure to try and stem climate change.

Having personal cars on the road may be convenient for us, but it’s definitely worse for the planet than using public transport. It’s also less healthy for us, particularly if only driving short distances. Driving a distance you could easily walk or cycle lowers your activity levels, and people prominently doing this is arguably a contributing factor (although admittedly one of many) towards UK obesity rates being markedly higher than they’ve ever been. Indeed, one of the motivations for introducing 20mph limits that the Welsh government raised is that slower and safer roads should encourage more people to take healthier and more active forms of transport such as walking and cycling.

I don’t think disincentivising private car use to some degree is some kind of power trip for Mark Drakeford and Welsh Labour. I think that it’s a way to tackle both climate change and to some degree the UK obesity crisis.

 

[GaryH]

I’d argue, though, that disincentivising private car use does not equate to Mark Drakeford being a “dictator”. Even if the 20mph limits are part of some grand agenda to stop everyone from using their cars (which I don’t think they are; the Welsh Government have been very clear that it is about road safety), it is likely as a measure to try and stem climate change.

A dictator :

a person who behaves in an autocratic way.
"for some reason he's being a dictator—saying this is the way we're going to do it"

The Welsh people didn’t want this, the results of the 8 trial areas were that the people didn’t want it. But it still went through against the wishes of the majority. That for me makes him act like a dictator and how he is viewed by many in Wales at the moment.

As for not thinking there is a grand agenda to stop people using their cars, it’s there in black and white above, yes there is an agenda to do exactly that.

What I find bizarre is that at a time when we are shifting people into electric cars, with no emissions, they are also trying to ban them. Will the London ULEZ and other ULEZ zones be removed when we are all driving electric cars? I doubt it very much. As I said in another thread, having the freedom to get in your car and travel to see a relative or to have a day out will become only for the very rich.

I doubt 20mph zones will encourage more people to go out and cycle or walk. Obesity is more to do with our lifestyles and diets now rather than exercise. Just look at Uber Eats or Just Eat - it’s all fast food. People can still go out and exercise regardless of speed limits, but we choose not to and choose to eat more processed foods from the comfort of our armchairs.

Power trip may be - who knows. I think it’s more about trying to distance themselves as far away as possible from the London establishment than anything else. I would be amazed however if the people of wales vote him in for another term after this.

It’s good to see the PM today talking some common sense though and acknowledging that other countries need to do their bit whilst delaying some measures here coming in for a few more years, particularly the ban on new petrol/diesel cars.

 

[Matt N]

A dictator :

a person who behaves in an autocratic way.
"for some reason he's being a dictator—saying this is the way we're going to do it"

The Welsh people didn’t want this, the results of the 8 trial areas were that the people didn’t want it. But it still went through against the wishes of the majority. That for me makes him act like a dictator and how he is viewed by many in Wales at the moment.

As for not thinking there is a grand agenda to stop people using their cars, it’s there in black and white above, yes there is an agenda to do exactly that.

What I find bizarre is that at a time when we are shifting people into electric cars, with no emissions, they are also trying to ban them. Will the London ULEZ and other ULEZ zones be removed when we are all driving electric cars? I doubt it very much. As I said in another thread, having the freedom to get in your car and travel to see a relative or to have a day out will become only for the very rich.

I doubt 20mph zones will encourage more people to go out and cycle or walk. Obesity is more to do with our lifestyles and diets now rather than exercise. Just look at Uber Eats or Just Eat - it’s all fast food. People can still go out and exercise regardless of speed limits, but we choose not to and choose to eat more processed foods from the comfort of our armchairs.

Power trip may be - who knows. I think it’s more about trying to distance themselves as far away as possible from the London establishment than anything else. I would be amazed however if the people of wales vote him in for another term after this.

It’s good to see the PM today talking some common sense though and acknowledging that other countries need to do their bit whilst delaying some measures here coming in for a few more years, particularly the ban on new petrol/diesel cars.

There’s a big, big difference between disincentivising and banning. The Welsh Government are aiming to disincentivise personal car use according to what you posted above. In my eyes, that’s no different to how things like smoking, junk food and sugary drinks have gradually been disincentivised through different laws over the years. All of these things have been disincentivised to varying degrees, but none have been banned.

As an example, the sugar tax doesn’t ban people from buying a bottle of full-fat Coca-Cola. While it does disincentivise it and not make it as much of an optimal choice, people are still given the choice about whether they want to drink full-fat Coca-Cola. They can buy the full-fat Coca-Cola and pay the additional money, buy Coca-Cola Zero and drink a less sugary alternative for less money, or not drink Coca-Cola at all.

While I accept that it’s not a perfect analogy, that’s pretty similar in broad terms to levies like the ULEZ fine. The ULEZ does disincentivise car travel within Greater London for people with older and less efficient cars, but it does not flatly ban it, and people are still given the choice about whether they want to drive a less efficient car into Greater London. They can drive a pre-2005 petrol or pre-2015 diesel into Greater London and pay the fine, drive a newer, more efficient car into Greater London and not pay the fine, or use public transport and not drive into Greater London at all.

I would also add that in terms of your point about electric cars not resulting in the ULEZ being removed; electric cars are ULEZ-compliant (to my knowledge), so the ULEZ being in place or not makes no difference to them. I would politely ask; if the ULEZ was a big autocratic conspiracy to prevent car use full stop, would Transport for London really have made it so that the fine will gradually affect less and less drivers with time as electric cars and newer, more efficient petrol and diesel cars become more prevalent? Surely as these cars become more prevalent and non-compliant cars become less prevalent with time, that would actually have the opposite effect of less people being stung by it, thus actually increasing car use, no?

By the same token; I would argue that the 20mph speed limit in Wales is very similar, possibly even less blatant in disincentivising car use than the likes of the ULEZ. It might possibly disincentivise car use compared to other options by meaning that car users can get places slightly less quickly than before and providing a greater incentive to walk or cycle as the risk of injury from cars is lower (due to the lower speed of travel decreasing the stopping distance). However, it does not flatly ban car use by any stretch of the imagination, and people are still given the choice about whether they wish to drive along built-up roads in Wales. They can drive along built-up roads and keep to the 20mph speed limit, they can avoid built-up roads and avoid the lower speed limits, or they can walk, cycle or take public transport and not drive at all.

In terms of why I cited the obesity crisis as something that 20mph speed limits might help with; while people can still exercise regardless of speed limits, lower speed limits and safer roads might give people more incentive to engage in passive exercise (such as walking or cycling instead of driving to get to places) while going about their daily routine. As an example; if a child lives a 15 minute walk from school, but a 30mph speed limit and potentially dangerous driving mean that parents view the roads as too risky for their child to walk along, a 20mph speed limit and a safer road might lower the relative risk of walking and encourage parents to let their child to walk to school rather than drive them there. While a 15 minute walk each way to and from school is hardly a high-intensity workout, it is exercise nonetheless, and this would result in 150 minutes of exercise that the child engages in during the week that they wouldn’t have engaged in otherwise. This sort of passive exercise is bound to have at least some degree of knock-on effect upon calories burned across the week and by extension people’s waistlines, thus I feel that a 20mph speed limit could indirectly help with the obesity crisis. While it may not be the main factor, I’d argue that exercise and people driving short distances that they could walk or cycle could at very least be a contributing factor to the obesity crisis.

 

[Dave]

Goodness sorry been very busy and not had chance to catch-up with the TS Tufton street spokesperson but I have a spare 5 minutes so let’s give it a go.

Resorting to name calling eh Dave. How very mature of you.

I got the news story from this whack job website/news source.

Senedd: 36 more Welsh Parliament members could cost extra £18m - BBC News

The potential cost of 36 more politicians in the Welsh Parliament is revealed for the first time.

www.bbc.co.uk

As for how is England doing on NHS and the roads - not great, but then they are not spending millions (potentially billions) on replacing the all signs in Wales and introducing 20mph zones which are not needed.

As for the Welsh government website, that’s like trying to obtain no biased news about what’s happening with the war in Ukraine from a Russian news website.

So we start with your concern about the government website. Let’s start from the first concern, that people will be prosecuted for getting the wrong speed limit when the signs don’t match.

Government website should reflect law and guidance, and any lawyer worth their salt is going to wipe the floor with the prosecution going after someone who overspeed due to sign confusion.

If the government website misleads then a defending lawyer can use that as evidence, maybe you don’t want that to be true as whenever the right see a lawyer defend against stupidity it’s seen as being a “lefty lawyer”?

As an aside if you think being called “Tory” is an insult then you have deeper existential issues than I can’t help you with.

Exactly @Matt N. And as for enforcing the speed limits, police won’t be able to do anything on roads where the signs are messed up as in the photo below. 20mph sign, 30mph sign and 40mph painted on the road.



The money could have been spent much better on resurfacing the roads, 20mph only where actually needed (which would have hit more public support) and money into the health service. And I think the hit to the Welsh economy is understated, I think tourism in Wales will take a big hit because of this.

I’m almost certain the photo you have linked is a photoshop, but let’s assume it isn’t.

The police can do something about it because the police have said they are going to work through grace period guidance. Not least because people are taking down 20mph signs and changing them for 30mph signs.

Just pragmatism that really.

Speed only accounts for around 7% of accidents

Factors leading to road accidents in Great Britain | Statista

A share of 38 percent of all road accidents in Great Britain were caused by the driver or rider not looking properly.

www.statista.com

I feel many of these policies are more about making driving so difficult that people don’t bother rather than road safety and environmental concerns

The 20mph in wales is completely unnecessary on probably over 3/4 of the roads it’s been implemented on.

If Drakeford was serious about tackling pollution and road safety he would have approved the M4 relief road rather than making it a rush hour polluted car park and rear shunt hot spot.

Next step will be ULEZ for Wales. Watch this space….

I did wonder with this one if you where being deliberately incorrect but let’s assume you are not and take your posted statistics. You say only 7% of accidents are due to speeding, this is taken from the 9th from top catagory, I mean fine I suppose if we ignore everything that is shouting at us in the face. If we don’t ignore the obvious here are the actual facts from the stats you provided:

Driver failed to judge other persons speed, 20%. Now that can either be due to poor hazard perception or it can be due to people unexpectedly driving faster than the speed of the road, I’m going to be generously and say only 5% is due to that.

Driver careless, reckless or in a hurry, let’s assume again only 5% is “in a hurry”

Traveling too fast for conditions 6%

We hit 23% so you still may thing nothing to worry about but let’s now consider the physics of the situation. Not one of those catagories is not improved if car speed is reduced, because the slower a car goes the longer the reaction time.

Now here is the killer issue for you, if someone kills someone in a 30mph zone when they drive 30mph they wouldn’t categorise as “due to exceeding the speed limit” but they might in nearly everyone of those quoted categories
not have killed someone if they slowed down, and that’s the point! If the issue was people not following the rules killed people then enforce the rules, if it turns out people die because the existing rules don’t work then change the rules, shocking I know!!

Looks like I was right about Wales wanting to make driving so unpleasant that people don’t bother and also looking to introduce charges for private vehicles to use the roads.

https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2023-02/national-transport-delivery-plan-2022to2027.pdf

Page 45 - in particular the paragraph which says:



Not only that but proposing to charge people to park their cars at their workplaces!!! Like I said this 20mph isn’t about road safety or the climate, it’s the start of Dictator Dickfords big push to stop people using their cars.

Tory councils and central government until 20 minutes ago had the same policy, I’m shocked I tell thee!

A dictator :

a person who behaves in an autocratic way.
"for some reason he's being a dictator—saying this is the way we're going to do it"

The Welsh people didn’t want this, the results of the 8 trial areas were that the people didn’t want it. But it still went through against the wishes of the majority. That for me makes him act like a dictator and how he is viewed by many in Wales at the moment.

As for not thinking there is a grand agenda to stop people using their cars, it’s there in black and white above, yes there is an agenda to do exactly that.

What I find bizarre is that at a time when we are shifting people into electric cars, with no emissions, they are also trying to ban them. Will the London ULEZ and other ULEZ zones be removed when we are all driving electric cars? I doubt it very much. As I said in another thread, having the freedom to get in your car and travel to see a relative or to have a day out will become only for the very rich.

I doubt 20mph zones will encourage more people to go out and cycle or walk. Obesity is more to do with our lifestyles and diets now rather than exercise. Just look at Uber Eats or Just Eat - it’s all fast food. People can still go out and exercise regardless of speed limits, but we choose not to and choose to eat more processed foods from the comfort of our armchairs.

Power trip may be - who knows. I think it’s more about trying to distance themselves as far away as possible from the London establishment than anything else. I would be amazed however if the people of wales vote him in for another term after this.

It’s good to see the PM today talking some common sense though and acknowledging that other countries need to do their bit whilst delaying some measures here coming in for a few more years, particularly the ban on new petrol/diesel cars.

A dictator by definition is not voted in, which isn’t the case here.

I have looked for sources around the 8 trial areas not being in favour. I haven’t found an unbiased source (one Tufton street one against, one very eco left wing one said folk liked it).

I can’t continue that debate until you quote a source.

As for ULEZ, it doesn’t charge for electric cars so why would they have an issue removing it if only electric cars exist. There is a question around how we find funding to fix roads in the future though as they don’t get fixed by magic fairies so that’s defiantly a debate to be had.

 

[GaryH]

I would also add that in terms of your point about electric cars not resulting in the ULEZ being removed; electric cars are ULEZ-compliant (to my knowledge), so the ULEZ being in place or not makes no difference to them.

Good post Matt with points well made. With regards the above the point I was trying to make was that at some point when most cars are electric, they won’t ditch the ULEZ but probably rebrand it as something else that will then apply to electric cars. The financial loss will be too much for the councils.

Similar thing happened with DVLA and car tax. It never applied to electric cars until 2025 until the government found they were losing too much money from more green cars being on the road. My mate who has a Tesla now finds himself paying £165 a year same as a petrol car, along with a supplementary tax for 5 years of £355.

Good post though.

 

[Dave]

Good post Matt with points well made. With regards the above the point I was trying to make was that at some point when most cars are electric, they won’t ditch the ULEZ but probably rebrand it as something else that will then apply to electric cars. The financial loss will be too much for the councils.

Similar thing happened with DVLA and car tax. It never applied to electric cars until 2025 until the government found they were losing too much money from more green cars being on the road. My mate who has a Tesla now finds himself paying £165 a year same as a petrol car, along with a supplementary tax for 5 years of £355.

Good post though.

Just on that tax is often used to change behaviour, you can argue whether that’s good or not but that’s the case.

Fact is there needs to be some funding for road surface replacement, you either have a tax income or you privatise the roads. I know which I would prefer.

 

[Craig]

A polite request to keep things on topic, respectful and constructive in here please. It's clear some people have very polarising views from others, but that doesn't mean that it needs to resort to personal quips against each other.

Either address the points made in a sensible manner, or don't reply. The rest of the forum doesn't need to read the fact that you're not choosing to respond.

And finally, if you have issues with individual posters, take it up with them privately. This topic and others is not the place for them to be played out in public. Thanks.