It’s amazing what you can get used to, how you can learn new normals, how you can – perish the thought – learn the error of your ways. Like most drivers, when I first saw a 20mph limit sign I thought I was seeing things. I’d heard that they had been thinking about this – whoever “they” might be: the government, the council, the woke people, the health-and-safety-obsessed people. But I never thought they would go through with it. And yet here it was.
They couldn’t be serious. There’s slow and there’s slow, but this was unbelievable. Nobody was going to get anywhere; the world would grind to a halt; even time itself might start engaging reverse gear. They would surely have to engage reverse gear themselves and put a stop to it.
And then I kind of forgot about it, until I started noticing it in a different way. Every Friday morning a friend picks me up at 6.30am and we go for breakfast. He doesn’t recognise the 20mph limit; he just sticks to the 30mph limit that used to apply. And slowly but surely, it’s come to feel far too fast. I can’t say I’m exactly clinging on for dear life in the passenger seat, but 30mph now feels decidedly dangerous, certainly more dangerous than 20mph which, to be fair, is why they said they had introduced it in the first place.
When the Welsh government went a step further and made the 20mph limit more the norm than the exception, the fury was such that I feared the entire country might detach itself and spin off into the Atlantic. I heard tell of a French bloke, a longtime resident of a village near Swansea, agitating for direct action, à la gilets jaunes. Steady on, monsieur.
I was driving near there in September on the first morning of the dark dawn of the new speed limit regime. On a substantial, newly “twentied” stretch of the B4295 between Pen-clawdd and Crofty, I did as I was told and stuck to the new limit. I was soon at the head of a long line of cars and vans, as if I was towing a horsebox or something. In the mirror I could see the face of the driver behind, twisted in disdain at my sheep-like obedience, my complicity in the crime of the century. As he overtook – yes, overtook me in a 20! – I looked away. I couldn’t meet his eye, nor those of any others who went past. I was made to feel like a despicable collaborator in some Orwellian dystopia. All that is necessary for evilly low speed limits to triumph is for good drivers to do nothing. And so on. Ashamed and humiliated, I watched half a dozen cars roar off ahead of me, some of them, I have to tell you, at speeds in excess of 30mph.
Five months on, and everyone tootles along that stretch not unhappily. Apart from anything else, at lower speeds it’s easier to dodge the potholes, of which there are many. The Welsh government says that bringing in the new limit costs £32m, which seems a bit on the steep side to me, but it claims annual “overall casualty potential savings” could be three times that. Others have claimed it’ll all cost the Welsh economy £4.5bn, which also seems, well, ridiculous.
I don’t know about the numbers. I just know the sky hasn’t fallen in, yet. And that old dogs can learn new tricks and putter along quite satisfactorily at lower speeds. As for the turbulent French bloke, I’ve seen no yellow vests or burning tyres, but I’ll stay vigilant.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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