P-06-1407 We want the Welsh Government to rescind and remove the disastrous 20mph law – Correspondence from the Petitioner to the Committee, 08 April 2024

Hello,

Thank you for your email. However, I am unable to agree with any of the point Mr Waters had made. He cannot call it like for like as it will never be that. Having a trial in city centres or in a built up city is ALSO not the same as in an entire country. Wales is nothing like Ireland/Scotland. However, the Belfast study did still come out saying that there was little to no impact on this: https://jech.bmj.com/content/77/1/17

If Mr Waters would like to have a better comparison, then maybe he should investigate the Spanish implementation, they claimed there was a reduction in RTC’s by 24% and up but failed to make clear that this was right in the middle of their pandemic lockdown which saw some of the most curtailing restrictions in Europe. In 2022 when road journeys went back up, they saw a 4% increase in fatalities.

This does not support Welsh Labour’s ideology on this. You claim that people are getting used to it but stats prove otherwise.

- Feb 2024 saw an increase of 450 going faster than the previous month.

- Your own assumption that people would have gotten used to it by now is not accurate. You MUST NOT mistake compliance for acceptance. We will never get used to it.

- Your stats come from a small number of camera checks and does not reflect a true picture of Wales as a whole. You say that its dropped to 24.8mph but you haven’t said in what 9 communities. I would like that information along with the unredacted raw evidence to support this.

Wales has not gotten used to it and has not slowed down or ‘have been educated’ to change our thinking. Lets not forget that the Welsh Government works for us and not the other way around. We will not be dictated to by you. No one asked for this and you carried on without a care for the people of Wales. Your own polls and surveys came back against this blanket change and before you say its not a blanket change, please check the definition of default. If you change the default speed limit then you are introducing a BLANKET change. Mr Waters also used this term in his own reporting.

I cannot trust a Government that would get an employee of a charity that has received millions in funding to come out and say that 20mph works but didn’t make that clear from the outset and had to admit it afterwards, so how can I trust the so called figures you are providing when you have not made public the documentation that support it?

My final remarks on this are:

Welsh Labour must not simply pay this lip service. This petition has almost half a million signatures. That is 24 thousand more than they had votes in the last Senedd election. The people of Wales have spoken and they do not want this. You do not answer to lobby groups or charities that nag you to implement things, you answer you us and you may not like the answer we give you at the next Senedd election.

Thank you.