Will Farage let me drive on the right if I want to?

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Whether the 20mph default speed limit in built-up areas is a good thing or a bad thing is obviously a matter of opinion, depending on whether we prioritise reducing casualties or convenience and speed. The statistics show that it has reduced the number and severity of casualties on the roads, although a thorough evaluation might need a few more years to assess whether it is really working as well as it appears to be. On the downside, experience suggests that it has led to an increase in aggressive driving and risky overtaking manoeuvres, especially by those vehicles whose drivers are exempt from the law. I can’t find a definitive definition of exempt categories in the legislation itself, but simple observation over the past year leads me to conclude that it includes taxis, white vans, and BMWs.

Farage told us last week that it is a ‘looney’ policy, and went on in a Q&A session to describe it as being an example of government telling people what is right for them, adding "It is typical of control, control, control". In essence, his view seems to be that it has nothing to do with safety, and that the Welsh Government have introduced it solely with the aim of controlling what people may or may not do. It’s a particularly silly argument – if it applies to the 20mph limit, then it also applies to the 30mph limit, or to any limit set at 40, 50, 60 or 70. All of them control what citizens can and can’t do. Come to that, why should the government control on which side of the road I should drive? All laws set limits on what we can and can’t do, they all ‘control’ us to a greater or lesser extent. The question is – or ought to be – about where we draw the line, and how we balance safety against speed of travel – or, more generally, personal advantage against collective advantage. ‘Not liking something’ is not enough to distinguish between an arbitrary control of behaviour and a sensible safety measure.

Reasoned debate is not, though, what Farage and his ilk want. Their aim is to appeal to people whose minds are already made up, and to strengthen those existing prejudices. Not that reasoned debate would ever help anyway. No-one who has not arrived at a particular view in the first place through a careful and rational study of the evidence is going to be persuaded to a different view by a careful and rational study of that same evidence. And that doesn’t only apply to the question of speed limits. Believing that evidence can and will shift an opinion which was never evidence-based to start with is a mistake which many of us make. Overcoming prejudice and a willingness to disregard mere facts is more of a long term project, which involves teaching critical thinking as a key element of education. There is a reason why Farageists and their fellow travellers are hostile to the idea of an educated populace.

It's all a bit too eclectic for me

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Whether it’s entirely reasonable to describe the leader of the Conservative group in the Senedd as an idiot, as Martin Shipton has done on Nation.Cymru recently, is a matter of opinion. There is plenty of evidence to support the hypothesis, and some might regard it as simply a ‘harsh but fair’ judgement; but there is a broader question as to whether direct insult is ever a worthwhile tool in political debate, even if the evidence is both categorical and overwhelming. That again is, of course, a matter of opinion. True and fair or not, it’s unlikely that Lenin would have seen him as a ‘useful’ idiot, and not just because there is no evidence that Lenin ever actually used the phrase.

What is less contentious is that Andrew RT Davies and his not-so-merry band do seem to be somewhat obsessive about some issues, most recently about the widespread introduction of 20 mph speed limits in Wales. It’s an obsession which has led them to brand it as part of a ‘war on motorists’ (a war which, apparently, also includes ‘eclectic’ vehicles, and it wasn’t even April 1st).

They’ve even invented a few policies which Labour aren’t proposing to implement (such as reintroducing tolls on the Severn crossings) in order to inflate the extent to which Labour hates anyone who drives a car. In fairness, in doing this one might point out that the Welsh branch of the English Conservative and Unionist Party are merely aping the approach of their supreme leader, who has himself axed a good number of policies which never existed either.

Given their own previous support for the introduction of 20 mph limits, it would be hard to describe their current opposition as being in any way principled, but then that’s not something which one would really expect of them. They have interpreted the result of one by-election as an indicator that voters will support pro-car measures and are trying to apply it more widely in the forlorn hope of avoiding a wipeout; but the evidence that it will work is sketchy to say the least. They are, though, (last time I looked) still in favour of 20mph limits outside schools, hospitals and playgrounds in order to protect users of those facilities from the dangers of vehicles. Presumably, it is assumed either that people will get close to those locations by car rather than on foot, or else will have to just take their chances on pavements further from said premises where there are fewer of them to get run over.

And that leads me to wonder: if it is fair to describe Labour’s approach as a war on motorists, it is surely equally justifiable to describe the Tory approach as a war on pedestrians – and the environment. A demand for more road-building and fewer traffic control measures necessarily implies a degree of environmental damage and a change in the balance of priorities between vehicles and people in our villages, towns, and cities. If changing the balance in favour of pedestrians is equivalent to a war on motorists, isn’t changing the balance in favour of motorists equivalent to a war on pedestrians? The truth, of course, is that it’s a silly argument. Either way. It isn’t a simple question of balancing conflicting interests, even if such dramatic language added anything to rational debate. Most of us are sometimes motorists, sometimes pedestrians, and sometimes users of public transport. Striking the right balance is a good deal more complex than the simplistic Tory obsession suggests, but a party which stands no chance of ever having the responsibility for implementing its policies in Wales can feel free to ignore that. It’s hardly as though anything they do or say can do much (more) damage to their future prospects. Whether the leader is an idiot or not.

Manufacturing their own rods?

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Well, here we are on Day 2 of the new 20mph default urban speed limit in Wales and so far the sky has not fallen in, despite the dire predictions of the Chicken Licken party in the Senedd. It’s true, of course, that it will take some time for all of the implications to become fully clear (and it’s more than likely that, in the light of experience, there will be changes in terms of which roads are affected). One of the wilder doomsday predictions that caught my attention was the one quoted repeatedly by the Tories about a hit of £4.5 billion to the Welsh economy. Turns out it’s actually a figure taken directly from the Welsh Government’s own Impact Analysis (there’s nothing quite like making a rod for your own back, something which sometimes seems to be a particular specialty of Welsh Labour) which is available here.

The number just didn’t feel right to me, and as I’ve mentioned before, my old maths teacher was a fan of the ‘common sense test’: if the number which emerges from a series of calculations doesn’t feel right, check your assumptions and check your workings, and then check them again. In this case, there is a second reason for doubting the accuracy of the figure – one might call it the ‘Tory statistics rule’ – if the Tories quote a number, particularly if it involves unquestioning acceptance of a number produced by a Labour government, the number must be axiomatically presumed to be dubious. And indeed it is. There are a number of caveats to it which the Tories have chosen to ignore (although, in mitigation, any expectation that they would read and understand the whole document is obviously unfair). At the heart of the calculation is an assumption that every minute’s delay has a direct financial cost.

In the case of delivery drivers or bus drivers, for example, it is possible that there will indeed be a cost: if the working day is extended, overtime might be payable, and if the cumulative delays are large, more staff might be required, at a cost to the employing company (although it’s worth at least asking whether creating a few extra jobs shouldn’t then go on the benefits side of the equation as well). On the other hand, it should be noted that the actual impact on their time depends on the actual reduction in average speed, which is not at all the same thing as driving 10mph more slowly. But for the rest of us, if it takes me an extra five minutes to drive to the supermarket and back, can that really be considered a financial cost at all? For sure, those ‘five minutes’ accumulate over a period, and after 12 trips, I might have lost a whole hour of my life (although in the real world that might depend more on how many tractors I encounter en route in either scenario – a number which is almost never zero in these parts – which would reduce my average speed anyway). But that loss of time won’t actually cost me, directly, a single penny. Trying to monetize those odd minutes for the sake of filling in numbers to allow an algorithm to calculate the total cost in pounds and pennies strikes me as a particularly futile use of civil service time and effort.

The Chicken Licken party’s time and intellect (I’m being kind with the second of those factors) might be better employed investigating how much that part of the exercise cost in civil service time and in how many other cases similarly futile calculations are being made, rather than quoting meaningless figures out of context as though they were gospel truth. But, as I remember the tale from my childhood, more investigative work and less dramatic headlines was never really what Chicken Licken’s story was all about. Drakeford might not be entirely unhappy about the comparison:- Chicken Licken never did get to tell the king about his sky problem - but the fox's family ate well as a result of his overdone panic.

Leaving a vacuum is a mistake

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Conventional wisdom decrees that Labour lost the Uxbridge by-election because of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), and Labour and the Conservatives alike have since been furiously back-pedalling on anything that looks like a commitment to halting climate change. I wonder, though, whether there is rather more nuance here. Did they, in fact, lose because people thought that the charge was going to affect them, and didn’t understand just how few vehicles were really going to be affected? It seems likely that the number of people who thought that it was going to affect them is considerably higher than the number actually going to be hit by the charge, and the Tories won by playing on that unjustified level of fear. None of that alters the fact than those most likely to be affected were those owning the oldest vehicles, and thus likely to be relatively less well-off, or that the scrappage scheme seems to have been inadequate. And the information about whether they would be affected or not was readily available, but depended on people seeking it out rather than being informed more directly.

The Welsh government may be putting themselves in a very similar position with the 20mph zones being widely introduced next month. Like ULEZ, this was a scheme initially supported by the Tories, but they have seen an opportunity to make mischief and attract support by now deciding to oppose it. Just as with ULEZ, the impact on people is likely to be much less than many are assuming, because of the large number of exceptions. And, just as with ULEZ, information on those exemptions is freely available (although in this case much harder to interpret; the website is far from being intuitive), but, again, people have to seek it out rather than being notified in a more direct fashion. The way the Tories are seeking to use the policy is simultaneously shameful and shameless, but they’re pushing at a door left open by the Welsh government. If a party devoid of principle or consistency decides to campaign in this way, playing on or exaggerating people’s fears, part of the responsibility, at least, falls on those whose woeful failure to communicate effectively what is happening has enabled the Tories’ innate dishonesty.

Given a choice of how to get from A to B, my choice is generally likely to be ‘as quickly as possible’: the ideal would be for Scotty to simply beam me from A to B in a few seconds. In the absence of Star Trek technology, there is always going to be a compromise between various factors, including (but not limited to) speed, safety and environmental impact. On balance, the Welsh government have probably got it about right, and can tweak it as necessary in the future if the need arises, but they are dismally failing to explain or persuade. That leaves a vacuum which is largely being filled by disinformation and distortion. And those are Tory specialities.

Faster isn't necessarily better

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Some years ago, one manager for whom I worked was always late for meetings.  His ‘reason’ was that he already had 9 points on his licence for previous speeding offences, and therefore it was impossible for him to get to meetings on time.  He was invariably at least half an hour late, leaving the rest of us sitting around for half an hour waiting for him.  It used to irritate me, but it didn’t seem to have occurred to him either that it was possible to get to meetings on time by setting out earlier, nor that the time taken to get from A to B could not be calculated by simply dividing the number of miles by 70, because there would invariably be congestion, or road works, at some point along the route.

The Conservatives in Wales seem to be suffering from a similar inability to comprehend the reality of travelling by road, with their announcement today that they would raise the speed limit on the M4 from 70 to 80 mph.  They argue that this “could play a vital role in getting our economy moving and offering invaluable support to hard-pressed motorists, commuters and businesses”.  Leaving aside the words ‘hard-pressed’ which seem to be a mandatory requirement of any press release on any topic from any party these days, how, exactly, would it achieve that result?

On my calculation, the M4 in Wales runs for a little under 80 miles from end to end.  Assuming that it were possible to travel at the maximum legal speed along the whole length, then at 80 mph it would take one hour, and at 70 mph it would take around 1 hour and 8 minutes.  That 8 minutes is, of course, the absolute maximum time difference between the two speeds; we also need to factor in the stretch around Port Talbot where the speed limit is 50 mph, and the almost inevitable congestion at other points which reduces the maximum attainable speed.  For most journeys for most drivers, the effective speed limit (and therefore duration of journey) is set by traffic conditions, not by the law.  And let’s not forget that most journeys by most drivers don’t actually use the whole length of the M4 either.

Taking that absolute maximum of 8 minutes as a theoretical saving, do they really believe that that is enough to ‘get the economy moving’?  And in what way does it offer ’invaluable support to … motorists, commuters and businesses’?  The argument doesn’t stand up to a moment’s examination, and I’m afraid that I really don’t believe that Andrew RT Davies is stupid enough to believe it himself either.  (I think I just paid him a compliment, of sorts, there.)

If it is not going to have the effect that he claims, then why is he proposing it?  Only the man himself can know what’s in his own mind, I suppose, but I suspect that he’s actually trying to make a populist appeal to people like the manager whom I mentioned in the opening paragraph; people who believe that speed limits are somehow unfair, and that enforcing them is some sort of stealth tax on ‘innocent’ motorists, or means of preventing them going about their business.

There is room for debate about what the ‘correct’ speed limit should be.  The improved safety of modern vehicles might suggest that it could be increased, whereas the increasing volume of traffic on our roads, and the need to reduce carbon emissions, might suggest a decrease, given the evidence that slower speeds increase the overall carrying capacity of roads and reduce total carbon costs.  But a simplistic appeal to those who simply want to be allowed to drive faster isn’t the place to start that debate. 

Still, irresponsible and half-baked proposals are another indication of a party which doesn’t expect to be part of the government in Wales any time soon.

Make haste slowly

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The Government’s proposal to increase the top speed limit to 80mph will no doubt appeal to that section of the population which regards adherence to laws on speeding as being optional.  It tends to be the same group which regards the use of speed cameras as somehow ‘unsporting’, as if the whole thing is a game in which the main object is not to abide by the rules, but simply to avoid getting caught breaking them.

I worked with someone once who was always late for meetings, because he already had nine points on his licence and couldn’t afford to drive fast enough to arrive on time.  ‘Set out earlier’ was the thought that went through my mind; but the view that speed limits are somehow an unfair and unnecessary restriction on normal business is not unlike that being expressed by the current government.

There almost seems to be a sort of collective belief amongst some that speeding – like taking home the office stationery – isn’t a ‘real’ crime.  ‘Proper’ crimes have to have obvious victims, and an apparently ‘victimless’ crime should therefore be treated differently.  In reality, speeding isn’t victimless, and never has been - but it is true that the ratio of crimes to victims is different.  Whilst there is a victim in every single case of robbery, the same is not true for speeding.  Because the overwhelming majority of instances of law-breaking on the motorways do not have a victim at all, the misguided generalisation can gain credence.

The government’s thinking appears to be rather muddled, to say the least.  On the one hand, they argue that there will be huge economic advantages in allowing people to drive that little bit faster; on the other they argue that the law as it stands is unenforceable, since half the drivers are already exceeding the limit anyway.  I find it hard to reconcile those two statements, unless the intention in reality is to increase the effective, enforced speed limit from 80 to 90mph.

I’m not convinced by the argument that so many people break the law anyway, that it’s unenforceable.  It is, again, based on the idea that there are different degrees of crime; it’s certainly not a suggestion that would be made for most other breaches of the law.  Widespread disregard of a law is not, in itself, an argument against the law, particularly if a major part of that disregard is based on an unwillingness by the authorities to enforce the law.

Nor am I convinced by the argument that it will enable people to get to their destination sooner.  Most of the motorway network is so congested that theoretical top speeds are rarely achievable anyway.  Besides, work done by governments over many years has shown that total road capacity can best be increased by maintaining a lower and more consistent average speed – it’s what has led to the variable speed control systems used in places like the M25. 

And paradoxically, increasing the speed at which some travel could have the end effect of reducing the overall average speed of all motorists – leading to an increase in average journey time rather than a decrease.  The best overall average speed for all seems to be achieved when the variation between the speed of different vehicles is reduced, not when the speed of the fastest is increased.

The one thing that no-one seems to dispute is that the fuel and pollution cost of the proposed increase is significant, and will make it harder to achieve agreed emissions targets.  For a government which said it was aiming to be the greenest ever, it’s a major step away from that aim. 

It may also affect the balance of attractiveness between public and private transport.  Although the actual impact on journey times is likely to be minimal, that will not prevent people from believing that they can achieve a journey in a shorter time, and choosing to use their cars as a result.  That belief may not be rational, but that doesn’t stop people taking decisions on the basis of it.

All in all it looks more like an attempt to be populist in order to gain the support of a particular section of the electorate than part of a coherent transport policy.