 Rwy'n iawn, i chi maen nhw gainedo'n gweld iawn ar y ddechreuwch sydd yn 2019 o bob pam gwellio i geisio i'r economi a'r boardiau yn cyflawni. Felly, mae'n ddiogel i'r cyfreid letterol nad oes ei cyfleid letterol, aeth cwm wneud cyflotsol cwrs mewn cydwch ar gyfer yn iawn. Mae'n cwm gweithio i'r cyfleid letterol a ddod o'r cyflawni gyd hayn, The committee will take evidence from motoring and road and passenger organisations. I would like to welcome Neil Gregg, the policy and research director of I Am Road Smart, Paul White, the deputy director of Scotland of the confederation of passenger transport Scotland, Tony Kimmure, the chairman of the Scottish Taxi Federation, Martin Reed, the policy director of Scotland and Northern Ireland Road Haulage Association and Eric Bridgestop, the independent road safety researcher on behalf of the Alliance of British Drivers. Can I say to those of you that haven't given evidence before, the way this works is because there's quite a lot of you, there are a series of questions which members like to ask here. If you'd like to come in, try and catch my eye, I'm afraid I won't necessarily get in on every single question but I'll do my utmost to do that. Don't touch any of the buttons in front of you, they'll all be operated by the gentleman on your left and the other thing I would say is just keep your eye on me once you start talking because sometimes when you get passionately involved in the subject you may wander on for a bit and if you see my wagging my pen like this it probably means that you ought to be coming to the end because it can fly out of my hand to attract your attention if you're not paying attention but hopefully you'll all get a chance to come in. Stuart, before we go any further, you'd like to make a declaration, I believe? Yes, I draw attention to my register of interests which shows that I'm a member of the IAM. Does anyone else want to make a declaration? No. Okay, we'll move on to the first question which is from the deputy convener, Gail Ross. Good morning panel, thank you for joining us today. We have had some of your written evidence but I want to start out by, if you could briefly outline whether you support the move from 30 to 20 on restricted roads and if you could give us the reasoning behind your answer. That looks like it's a question to all of you, so Neil, do you want to start off? Briefly, we don't support the bill because of the blanket nature of its intention to change everything in an unfocused way. We are not against 20 millon hours, which is required. It's very popular outside schools. We did a survey of several thousand drivers a few years ago and what that came out with was that 49 per cent couldn't support 20 becoming the new 30. 21 per cent could support it and there was a big chunk in the middle of it, 20 per cent who said, we don't know yet. There's not a huge ante 20 millon hour among drivers, there's a survey of drivers, but our issue is that we just think it's a too broad brush. If you have an issue with the street, if you want to change behaviour, you have to change the look and feel of the street. The evidence is quite clear from the Park Transport other studies. If you just put up the signs and perhaps Edinburgh is an example of that, it doesn't have a huge impact on behaviour. There's a number of studies that have come out recently from Atkinsdown South, all saying basically the same thing, 20 millon hour without changing the character of the road that doesn't really change driver behaviour, so it's that blanket approach. We'd rather see it targeted. Paul? The membership of CPT is divided on the issue. There are certain members that I think they all are supportive of the aims of the bill, and certain ones believe that if urban operators, in particular, are getting to 20 millon hour as an aspirational, it never mind 30 millon hour, whereas some members are worried about the impacts on their business, particularly in marginal services, where an increase in journey times could lead to patronage and make that service non-viable. A bit of a mix, but we support the aims. Perhaps there are elements that can be changed within the supplementary guidance of the bill itself that would make it palatable to more members. Speaking for just over 23,000 public hire taxi drivers in Scotland, I haven't had a single response in favour of the bill. Having said that, they're generally supportive of 20 millon hour speed limits where it's appropriate, but I imagine that this will be a very consistent message. However, the feeling is that the blanket approach is likely to cause a lack of compliance. There's a likelihood of increased compliance if it's applied specifically where required. Martin? Very similar to my colleagues along here. The response of our members has been along the lines of an objection to the blanket approach. Nobody, in principle, has a problem with 20-mile-an-hour speed limits. Should they be protecting the vulnerable or in areas where there are known hotspots and problem areas? However, it's a blanket nature that people find unpalatable rather than the issue of the 20-mile-an-hour itself. Just to be clear, I'm here because the ABD hasn't got anybody that could be here today. I'm an independent, but they contacted me last week on the basis that they knew I've done some work on this in the past, and they nor I support 20-mile-an-hour generally on the basis that there's no evidence at all that it makes anything safer from a casualty point of view and conclusions. In fact, it makes things worse for the reason that people are lulled into a false sense of security on the road that they're walking or whatever. There's lots of other reasons that we're going to later, I'm sure, so do not support. Stuart, you wanted to come in briefly. I've just heard almost every witness use the term blanket nature of the ban. In fact, the bill says restricted roads. In other words, it does not apply to anything that's in A road, it does not apply to anything that's a B road, it therefore is applying essentially to the housing estates and the side roads, off-men roads. I just wondered whether, in making the comments blanket road, we were actually talking about what the bill is saying, or a more general objection to, in all urban areas, a universal 20-mile-an-hour limit. I just wanted to be clear, because in particular the IM who did a survey, was it in the context of the limited objective of this bill, or was it in the context of really basically all roads in urban areas? It was in the context of all roads in urban areas, so the question was framed. Do you disagree or agree with the current 30-limit being replaced by a 20-limit? Do you want to come in briefly and then I'll go back to get it? Actually, I think that Stuart is slightly misdirecting you. It's not on urban roads, just it's on all our villages in our country areas as well. So a 30-mile-an-hour road through a village isn't affected, but every single road and lane off that are restricted. So it's not just urban, it's rural as well. Gil, do you want to come back with me? Yeah, absolutely. The point was made that it's correct that the bill only applies to restricted roads. As you know, some local authorities already do, as some of you mentioned, have it outside schools and in certain housing estates and things like that. It was also mentioned last week about having variable speed limits at different times of the day. Do you think that's possible or do you think that's just confusing? Who'd like to head off on that? Paul? I'll answer that if that's okay, because of the experience that we've had with bus lanes. I think that if you vary speeds, you might do the water. In times in it, we've lobbied in Edinburgh for set times that you can know seven days a week, seven to seven or whatever. You know something that's set that you can know, and that helps if we're looking for a mindset change. You really need to make it as easy as possible to comply. I worry that if you were to set different timings, you would maybe just add to the confusion and a lack of compliance. Tony, do you want to come in on that? Yes, I think that a 24-7-3-6-5 approach is possibly more of an issue for us, because we've got so many taxi drivers criss-crossing the nation at all times of the day and the night. And driving at 20mph on a dual carriageway when there isn't another vehicle in sight, a mile in front or a mile behind doesn't make any sense to anybody. So we're very much in favour of a timed approach. Although I'm inclined to agree when it comes to bus lanes, nobody uses them anytime, because the idea of the clocks changed and everybody moves into the left doesn't happen. It's never likely to. I think that the signage that's in the RAC report that you've got, that looks very practical to me and I think that's a much better solution than a 24-7-3-6-5 approach to 20mph in an hour. I think that we can get hung up on fixed speed limits. I think that other parts of Europe do use variable speed limits in France. For example, they vary the speed limit with the weather. I think that the issue for us is that the road should be self-explaining. If you're having to put extra technology in to explain why that limit is there, then you've lost the narrative. It should be clear to people why they should be doing that speed at that time, because there's pedestrians there, because of the nature of the road. So again, it comes back to the concept of, if you don't change the road, the character of the road, you are going to have an issue convincing people what the speed limit is. It should be a self-explaining. Technology will be very expensive as well. Eric, you want to come in. Just to say that I think that drivers need to be told what the hazards are, whether a school is operating or so on. I don't think that they need to be told what speed to go. I've seen no evidence at all that 20 is a positive thing. I think that it makes things worse from a safety point of view. Signs that come on to say, be where there's a school here or signs that go up to say that there's a school or a hospital or whatever it is, but changing the speed limit, I think, is a negative. I think that other people are going to go on to the safety aspect. To continue this line, the way things are at the moment, local authorities have the power to issue a traffic order to turn a 30 into a 20. Do you think that an alternative approach might be to streamline that system and make it easier for them to do it in the current situation that we're in just now? Who would you like to arrow, Martin? One of the concerns that we have with the TRO system, even in its current form, is the fact that local authorities across the board are facing real shortages in terms of resource, and to add something like that on to already troubled waters, there's a concern that firstly they could potentially take the easiest option because of resource constraints, which would be doing that, as we said, rather than looking at individual roads. That would be a concern. Anything that could be done to mitigate that would be very welcome, but I know that that would probably be done in the next stage of the bill and when more detail is forthcoming on that. However, putting it under the blanket of just the TRO system just now, as it currently exists, we would have concerns about the local authority's ability to carry that out. However, if they have the ability to carry it out at the moment, surely making the process easier and quicker would be good for local authorities because it would take less time and resource? It does that, but why would it be quicker by changing it when they've already got the established system? I think that the point that the deputy convener is making is that it's quite laborious to go through the process to get a 20-mile-an-hour reduction, and the question was that, if it was quicker and easier to do, it would make the requirement for a blanket 20-mile-an-hour bound superfluous because you could actually target the areas in question. Tony, do you want to come back on that? Would you agree with that? It seems logical. I'm not clear on what the alternative to the TRO process would be, but surely that seems logical to me. Jamie, I think that the next question is yours. Thank you, but just to follow on from before I do on the TRO things, it's an important issue. If the current system means that you have to apply for a TRO to reduce a road to 20, presumably the same would be true in the obverse if it was 20 to then increase that road to a 30, do you have any views on whether there would be an additional or reduced workload to do it the other way around? Paul, do you want to come in and then nail? I think that, just to quote back the evidence that you received at your previous session, that the quantity of roads that they would be looking to change to 30 would be a little less, so just in the percentages of workloads that would be the answer. I think that in terms of TRO, I would support the streamlining as long as it doesn't affect any kind of consultation that you have with the key stakeholders that are impacted by the TRO. However, I think that that would be important if we were to introduce the bill that before it was applied on the roads, there was a period of time when you consulted with stakeholders such as the people in this panel to decide which roads should perhaps retain the 30mph status and have those TROs in place before the 20mph zone was applied. Neil? The feedback that I am getting from local authorities is the cumulative effect that everything that is happening at the moment is causing them a resource issue. Pavement, parking, low emissions zones, the bill all came together at the same time, that is why they would struggle. However, if it did go through, we would like to see a streamlining process, so it is easier to do it because they have all these other things to do as well as fixing the potholes and all the things that they should be doing day to day. Indeed, presumably, there would need to be some mapping exercise to work out which roads it wanted to change to the contrary. There are many reasons that have been given for the rationale behind the bill and if I could ask in your response to my question not to focus on those of air quality, journey times and congestions because my colleagues will have other questions, I am going to focus specifically on perhaps what is at the nib of this and that is the road safety aspect. What are the panel's views on this reduction from 30 to 20 miles per hour and the effect that it has on road safety and all road users, both vulnerable users, drivers and others who use roads, including cyclists, pedestrians, et cetera? Who would like to? Eric, do you want to go with that? I would just start on that. I hinted earlier that the whole thrust of the 20 mile an hour approach is to encourage people to feel safer, whether they are walking or cycling or whatever. Less so for drivers, drivers just have to make sure that they are looking at their speed over to make sure that they are down to about 20 miles an hour, although the evidence then is that the speeds actually do not change very much to talk about minus one mile an hour. The more you encourage people to feel safer, the less care they take and its evidence in any 20 mile an hour zone that I have driven through, certainly St Albans where I live, people wander across the road, there are pelican crossings, but they wander into the road where they are even looking because they are encouraged to feel safer. The evidence seems to be that the casualties go up. Manchester, just the last two years ago, cancelled their next stage of 20 mile an hour rubble out because the casualty reductions in the 20 mile an hour zones were less than those in the remaining 30 mile an hour zones. Do you have a view on what percentage of accidents or collisions are caused by excessive speed? Do you have any statistics on that? What do you mean by excessive speed? Above the speed limit? I do not have an answer to that, Nick. I would point out that speed above the speed limit cannot in itself cause anything. I think that I have hinted in my paper that if you change the speed limit, you do not automatically make the road less or more safe, whether you make it a faster speed limit or a slower speed limit. In other words, what is your view on what is a safe speed? Is it an arbitrary number that Government dictates to drivers or is there some other form that you think is a better method? Safe speed is whatever is appropriate to the conditions. Safe speed on a motorway in the fog might be 30 miles an hour, even though the speed limit is 70. Safe speed in a 20 mile an hour zone could be, well, since it was previously 30, presumably it was 30 then. I will bring in Stuart and I will come back to you if I may. I just want to pursue what Mr Briggs has said. He is essentially suggesting that, if we make people feel safer, they will act more recklessly. That argument that I first had in the 1960s, when proposals to compulsorily fit seat belts to cars were introduced, is there any evidence that the fitting of seat belts to cars, which I think is generally acknowledged, made everyone feel safer, led to an increase in accidents and reckless or careless driving? Eric, I think that that is back to you. I am not sure of the evidence, but I am certainly aware of the arguments. There is certainly an argument that says that, if you put a spike in the middle of the steering wheel, everybody would drive a lot safer because that is a very clear evidence that they are going to be hurt in the invent of an incident. Mr Briggs, you cannot simply turn the argument upside down to suit your own purposes, with which I fundamentally disagree. I hasten to add. I am simply asking the very simple question that the most important innovation and contribution at safety, I would argue, and others do, to preventing injury and death on our roads is the introduction of seat belts on a compulsory basis. That made everybody feel safer. I am simply asking that that major initiative to make people feel safer did that cause people, when they felt safer, to be more reckless in the way that they drove. I suspect that in some cases that is the case. You suspect in some cases, but you reduce and bring to us no evidence of any kind whatsoever to sustain your argument that making people feel safer makes them more reckless. I will leave it there, convener. Eric, you can come back and then I want to go back to Jamie. I started driving when seat belts were just being made compulsory, so I have always driven with a seat belt, except when I hired an MGA in Scotland in 2012, no seat belts, no power steering, no anything. I felt very unsafe for the first few miles driving with no seat belt on. I was very careful, but there is no car anyway. Jamie, back to you. We are not taking evidence on whether seat belts are good or bad, but we are taking evidence on whether a reduction to 20mph will improve road safety. Do the panel have any views on whether the approach that is specified in the bill will have an effect on road safety, including driver's perceptions, if that is the case? The evidence is growing all the time, but the difference is very small. It is not making much difference in terms of safety, because those roads were often safe before. You are not seeing a huge increase in safety. If you wanted to change the number of people killed in our roads, you would target rural roads, for example. Very few people get killed as pedestrians and cyclists in our towns and cities. Some do, and that is clearly to be avoided. If you look at the Atkins study that we have talked about and all the other studies, it is very difficult to pick out any real safety benefits, so that is the key thing that you are looking for. The studies are showing that the reductions in speed are there—one or two miles per hour, coming down a little bit—often imperceptible, often unnoticed by the locals. There is a recent speed compliance survey from the Department of Transport that shows that 81 per cent of people in 20mph zones were breaking the speed limit. They were travelling above 20mph. There is a huge compliance issue in 20mph zones. I think that we need more research, more evidence, but there is a growing body of evidence that they are just not having the impact on road safety that they are having. Unfortunately, they are not having the impact on other things, such as active travel and encouragement. From a road safety perspective, we do not really see it as being a huge improvement. It is not making much difference, because many of those roads were safe before. You want us to come back? To put it in a very simple terms, getting hit by a bus or a car at 20mph is less damaging than being hit by one by 30mph. Braking distances are less. This is the early stages. I completely agree that the evidence is either inconclusive or points to not a huge reduction, but at this stage, what we are looking at is that I have not been in operation that long. If you are looking at attitudes no change down the line, perhaps speeds will come closer to 20mph, ideally below 20mph, and then you will hopefully see the safety benefits. At the moment, the evidence is inconclusive. I am very keen that we, as a committee, look at this subjectively as we can and use an evidence-based approach to what has happened. We would not be the first place in the world to do this. Scotland has been done in other cities in the UK and other parts of the UK. We have been doing it in Edinburgh for a reasonable amount of time. Is the committee aware of any evidence to suggest that accident levels have gone up or gone down, that safety has improved or decreased, based on what has already happened? This is not a new concept. Surely we could use the evidence that we already have to help inform our decision moving forward? Who would like to go on that? Nearly your offering. The evidence is inconclusive. That is the problem. If it was clear, then we would throw our weight behind it, but it is just inconclusive. We are going to grow a number of studies from across Portsmouth, Manchester, parts of London and Edinburgh. We still have to see the real long-term benefits from Edinburgh. Lots of studies have been done. Research is just coming up with the same thing time and time again. The safety benefits are pretty inconclusive. Thank you convener. It is building on what my colleague Jamie Greene has asked. Just to tease out some more issues around the safety area, which is obviously very important wherever this goes, my understanding from the Atkins report is that it does not come to any substantial conclusions. This has been highlighted that perhaps it is early days in many ways, but it is clear from the evidence that it presents, as I understand it, that the wider 20-mile-an-hour roll-out, the higher the reduction casualties, and it has been seen in the Brighton case study, which is the only area case study that is featured in the report, which has the highest change in collisions and casualties. There is a national inconsistency across Scotland in regard to 20-mile-an-hour roll-outs. Most of your organisations, as I understand it, and from the written evidence and from today, say that 20 miles an hour is appropriate in the right places. Why, then, do the people of the borders, which is in my region, for instance, not deserve safer streets when we have them here in Edinburgh already? Harold, on that quite lengthy question. Preface it with the report, convener. Who would like to get...Tenny, do you want to have a go at that? Sure. I do not claim to be an expert in road safety. I am an expert in just the practicalities of shifting people around from one place to another. However, I was very closely involved in the consultation in Edinburgh and we monitored very closely what happened in the 16 test areas that we had around the city. The reason that evidence of change in road safety is inconclusive is that there is very little change in driver behaviour and the speed that they are moving at in the first place. In a couple of the areas that were restricted in Edinburgh, average speed went up a little bit and some of them went down a little bit. The overall effect was to change the speed of the traffic from 21.5mph to 20.5mph. The actual speed at which traffic is moving, I know that an average taxi moves at about 13mph in the course of a 12-hour shift. I do not think that anybody would deny the people of the borders safe streets. We are just talking about the practicalities of the fact that in the streets around a school, when there are lots of parents picking up and dropping off and lots of kids moving around, people generally move quite slowly anyway. Changing the speed limit from 30 to 20 when the traffic is moving around at three or four miles an hour is academic. That is the issue for me across the board here, changing the speed limit from 30 to 20. I think that that would reflect the views of our members as pretty much an academic exercise, because most traffic moves in line with the conditions anyway. That would be my point of view. Very quickly back on that. If you take an area where there is a school, once you are in that 20mph zone, you are in that 20mph zone, but there are residential streets around about where children are still crossing the road and going away from school and all that. Would not the 20mph blanket arrangement, apart from the exemptions, just send that clear message that this is an appropriate speed to stick below? It is a question of just paying some regard to the reality. The reality is that the traffic does not get up to 30mph an hour anyway, so you can make the signs whatever you want them to be. I think that all the evidence shows that it is not actually changing average speeds or driver behaviour. Is it changing people's perceptions? I do not know. I think that we will move on to the next question, which I am going to ask Peter. It is yours, Peter. Thank you, convener. I am going to go on a slightly different tack. I am going to ask you about vehicle emissions and the air quality, whether it might change for the better or for the worse, by going to a blanket 20mph. What do you feel? Do you feel that there are mixed views and whether that will make emissions better or worse? What do you feel? What do you think the impact would have on restricted roads? What impact would this have on vehicle emissions and the air quality in towns and cities if we go to the default 20mph? Martyn, do you want to head off on that? We have had a look at this and we cannot find any evidence to say that there is a massive difference in terms of the emissions. What there would be would be a slight reduction in particulates through things like tyre wear, etc. However, in terms of the emissions themselves, we have not been able to find any evidence that that switch would make any difference or whether a truck would perform better or worse at 20mph than at 30mph in terms of emissions. I agree with Martyn that we have moved from one topic where Devon is inconclusive to another one where it is rather inconclusive, the difference between 20mph and that delta between 20mph and 30mph inclusive. Although you raised a good point about the areas where air quality is a real issue, those urban corridors are ones where, if 20mph zones bring a smoother flow of traffic, deceleration and deceleration, you can have a conversation with the council about other mitigating and supporting measures to help bus such as priority at lights and things that allow bus a smoother journey, then that will bring down emissions. The stop, start and nature congestion is what causes a majority of the problems in that area. The free flow of traffic would be the one that would make the biggest difference rather than a 20mph or 30mph on our speed limit in terms of emissions. Do you think that if we did go at a 20mph on our speed limit that that would allow the traffic to flow more freely? We have heard some evidence on motorways, for instance, if you reduce it in congested areas from 70mph to 50mph, the traffic actually moves better. Would that allow that to happen in towns as well? I do not know whether that could go by extension or not. The 20mph zones that exist just now, we understand why they are there and what reason they are there for. As we say, driver behaviour changes. I do not know when we are looking at city centres. Our members will not be in the 20mph zones as much as the rest of the people hear members. I will defer to their expertise on that side of things. For an HGV in Edinburgh city centre, there is a very strong likelihood that they will not get to 20mph on any of the roads that are coming out. Do you want to come back on that? I think that you intimated that the average speed was about 13mph. Did I get that wrong, or is that what you said? Correct. The emissions that we generate are generally caused because we are crawling around at low speed. Again, changing the average, the speed limit from 30mph to 20mph, when you are stationary, is academic. Emissions would be reduced if we could all get to a cruising speed and keep it going. Would that not be nice? I think that you want to come in and then I will come back to you, Peter, if you have a few more words for that question. I thank you all for your evidence and written evidence on your submissions today. Of course, what we are seeking, and a number of colleagues have said this, for your opinions, which are valued to have an evidence base where we are not interested in erroneous or opinions that are unsupported by reverse search findings. You have a number of colourful phrases in your submission. The widely accepted figure is, for instance, a 40,000 a year death is attributable, directly attributable to poor air quality. You describe, I quote here, as a zombie statistic, simply not true. If you let me finish up, I see that you find it amusing. I do not find it amusing. That is not my quote. No, no. This is the A, B. This is Brian Gregory. I did not write that piece at all. That came from A, B, D. So you are speaking in support of this paper? I am supporting the paper. I did not. Right, that is fine. We will let me come on to the next bit then, please. Perhaps the most telling thing, because views are important. I am not suggesting everyone sits and does endless research. Views are important but there has to be some evidence basis. I am trying to understand the value that we would place on your opinions when you say something like, and I do quote here, and for the avoidance of doubt you attribute this to a transcript of a BBC Sunday politics programme, at which you say it 25 minutes 34 seconds in at some point, the phrase, pollution levels are illegal because we made them illegal, not because it is dangerous. Your view is pollution is not dangerous. Urban pollution is not dangerous. As I say again, I did not write this part of the paper but I am prepared to answer the question. I think that the purpose of that statement is, if you adjust the level at which you believe we should be aiming for, it is a bit like speed limits. For a long time we have had a 30 mile an hour speed limit, which has generally been agreed to be the right speed for years and years and years. We are now saying that we want to change it to 20. That is saying that we have made it 20. If we exceed 20, we are now making that illegal whereas two years ago 30 was perfectly illegal. It is a similar sort of argument, I think. We are specifically talking about the air quality. Correct me if I am wrong here. This is the paper that you are speaking to and you are attributing this with a link to a BBC programme. Do you agree with the statement that pollution levels are illegal because we have made them illegal and perhaps more worrying the statement that pollution levels are not dangerous? I think that pollution levels have been getting better for years and years as well because we have been doing more and more of changes to cars and vehicles generally are cleaner. My understanding is that pollution is improving. Is pollution dangerous air quality? Poor air quality is dangerous. It is what it is, is it not? I am not an expert on this. My safety is my thing. We will move on to the next question, then, which is Richard Ritchard. I have two questions in the second one that I will expand on. Basically, the first question is, a number of respondents to the online survey raised concerns about the reduced speed limit, increasing journey times and worsening traffic congestion. Do you have a view on that? I am sure that Mr Ken Muir has. He already has. You are basically saying that we are all travelling round at 13 miles an hour anyway. No, the truth is that I do not believe that changing the speed limit would have a significant effect on journey times. I do not think that it does in Edinburgh, where I have personal experience of driving a taxi. Is that not just a factor in Edinburgh? What about Motherwall? What about Bellsill? What about Dumfries? Would that not increase your average? My experience is that, when a 20-mile an hour speed limit is late at night when a road is not congested, my experience and the feedback from our members is that nobody particularly abides by the 20-mile an hour speed limit anyway. I tend to refer to what actually happens in the real world and what is happening in the real world is that we are not complying with the 20-mile an hour speed limit and therefore journey times are not being significantly affected and the cost of taxi journeys is not being significantly impacted. On a journey of several miles where somebody is driving at a consistent 20-mile an hour rather than a consistent 30-mile an hour, it would moderately affect the overall journey time and the cost. In the real world, I do not think that that happens. It is not enough to measure it. We have had no feedback whatsoever from members to say that journey times have increased within 20-mile an hour zones or indeed in most cases where speed limits have dropped. We can look at the A9 as an example where journey times have moved slightly but the driver experience has balanced that out. It is a better drive now and they tend to make provision for the additional 10-15 minutes that it is going to take from between Perth and Inverness. On the urban argument, I believe that Fife and Clackmannanshire are two of the areas that have adopted the 20-mile an hour zone or the 20-mile an hour approach. Again, I would reiterate that we have had no adverse feedback from members to say that journey times are longer on that. I think that Paul, if you want to come in at this point. Paul, is that okay? Journey time, reliability, punctuality are all so important to bus operations. I have no evidence that I can present to you, but in the discussions with operators, they found that the zones have maybe increased journey times but marginally. In discussions with local authorities, they have been able to suggest measures that could be put into place that would mitigate that small increase in journey times. Based on my second question, last week, when I asked the question, there were quite a lot of comments coming back on Twitter. I was asking if bus times would be affected and timetables would be affected. I am now assured that they will not. In fact, the reduction to 20 would improve and would still allow, because of the stop-starting. Mr Kim, you have said that they are only going at 13 miles an hour. In your opinion, would reducing the default speed limit on restricted roads to 20mph have any specific impact on bus operators, logistic companies and taxi operators? We got the answer to that last week. I would like your answer to that question. Is it true that taxi operators go at 13 miles an hour? Yes. I do not believe that it will have any measurable effect on journey times. To clarify my comments, I am referring to certain operators that have experienced 20mph zones. I would not like those to be taken to say that the introduction of the bill across all restricted roads would have zero impact on all operators, because that is not what I am saying at all. There are certainly CPT members, particularly in rural areas, that would have voiced concerns that there would be an impact. I do not know if those concerns will prove to be the case, but I just want to make that clear that I was not saying that there would be no impact. If there is an impact in journey times and you have to put more resource into retaining frequencies, that generates a cost for drivers, fuel and vehicles. However, if the bill comes in and encourages active travel, that might lead to an increase in bus passengers, which would be the hope. I am unsure of what would be the impact and what would be the results. Mark, since you want to come in on that, I will bring Jamie in. Sure. Again, I would go back to the fact that the amount of HGVs that would be in those roads in the first place would vastly reduce my concern. When you are looking at some of the more non-regulated industries, such as the vans that are brought in to do multi-drop in a number of different areas that will be in those zones or residential areas, it would be the compliance side of that that would give me concerns. As far as hollage goes, as my colleague from CPT says, until we know what roads are likely to be affected, we cannot say with any degree of certainty about journey times. However, when you are looking at the urban side of things, we have had no feedback from members to say that journey times have been impacted because of the nature of the roads that they are on and the understanding that they are there for a purpose, that speed limit. Jamie, you want to come in. Yes, thank you for following on from Mr Law's line of questioning. I think that if you are focusing purely on cities where perhaps average journey times are already below 30 anyway, then it is easy to see why there is a nominal effect. However, if we do know which roads it will apply to because it states in the bill that that experience may be different across other parts of Scotland, the RAC is not here today to be fair to them. It quoted in evidence to us that the potential impact in urban congestion from reduced speeds and longer journey times may increase emissions. It goes back to our previous line of questions. I do not think that we ever really got to the nib of whether slower speeds increase emissions or not, but do you agree or disagree with the RAC's comment on that? Neil, you want to start and I will come to you back. Again, in conclusive is the word of the day. It is in conclusive on emissions, it is also in conclusive on congestion. I have seen no real evidence to show that the journey times would change in a way that people would notice, because the studies so far show that the speed limit, the driver behaviour in 20-mile-an-hour zones, does reduce speeds, it particularly reduces speeds at the top end, so if it was 29, 28, it comes down to 26. However, it is so imperceptible that people do not see any difference. If you are not seeing any difference and it is not causing any issues, people with short journeys or stop-start journeys will not have a problem with it. I do think that what you have highlighted is that when it comes to villages and rural areas, there is absolutely no research at all to back up the decision-making. A lot of research is on the urban areas, but very little in the villages and less populated areas. That is not very helpful, I am afraid for you. Just as an engineer, it seems that if you have a village that is 30 miles now and it is going to say that you are driving through it and there is a mile to go through it or whatever it is at 20 miles now, A, you are going to be probably in a lower gear, which means that you are revving harder, which is more emissions, and you are doing it for longer, which is a double whammy, it seems to be, that you are actually putting out more emissions. Rod talked about acceleration and deceleration, that is fair enough, but once you are down to say that if you come down to 20 miles down from something higher, rather than 30, drop down into third gear, maybe, or something, you must be putting out more emissions. Just an engineer's view, not a... Was that all your questions? Yes, that is fair. I commend me, it is supplementary, but I am fair enough to do it. John, I think that it is a next question. Have I got that right? Sorry, Maureen. I am doing question 8, Community. Sorry, Maureen. Sorry. I have double jumped you and ignored you, I apologise. Maureen. Morning panel. I hope that we could all agree that we want our citizens to live and work possibly, hopefully, in safe, healthy environments, and I think that over the decades That's not necessarily been the case, that our streets have been taken over by the car and the car has become king. Pedestrians and children playing have had to jump out of the way of cars, rather than cars realise that they should give way to pedestrians and children playing. Nid o ddaw particular a those have been suggested it that the livability of our neighbourhoods and and our streets would increase. Given that we have problems with obesity and active living, surely, if we can do something to make our streets more livable in and where we feel safe, to take more exercise and, indeed, to let our children out to play and that cars are not just going to fly through what is happening at the moment, that would be a good thing. I wonder if I could have your views on that. Options, that is. Is that what you want to start, on the basis of you driving round Edinburgh at 20mph? I am sure. Gideon Dlym? I think with respect all of the things that you've said I agree with and all of them seem to be about the number of cars rather than reducing the speed limit from 30 to 20 kilometers. If there were less cars on the street and less cars parked, I think that we would, I don't think, if we all want our children and our grandchildren to breathe cleaner air and to be safe. But I'm not sure that reducing the speed limit from 30 to 20 miles an hour would reduce the volume of traffic, which I think is more reflected in the points that you made. From our perspective, we just think that the benefits of 20 miles an hour zones have been oversold as the solution. It has to be clearly the only part of the solution. If you are going to get people out to play in the streets and again an ambition we'd all like to see, healthier people, less traffic, less pollution, it would be a great thing to have. You have to spend some more money on changing the character of the roads. You have to invest in play streets, you have to change the engineering of the road, you have to make it clear to the driver of the car that they are not really meant to be there. They understand that and most drivers will do that. They take their speed driving cues from the environment they're driving through, so they're driving through a street that's been relayed, it's got chocains, it's got planting, it's clearly meant to be a shared space, then they will drive slowly. For us, our main concern about this whole debate is that somehow 20 miles an hour is seen as the answer, and that's it. It has to be clear that it has to be part of further investment in segregated space and shared space. If you're in a car, if you're in a bike and being overtaken by somebody at 20, as opposed to 26, as opposed to 30, you're still being overtaken by a tonne and a half of metal very close to you, and that's going to put you off getting older people and younger people out onto bicycles. It has to be more than just 20 miles an hour, and we're not convinced that you need to start at 20 miles an hour. You could go straight to that investment and target it to the... Not every street is like that, cars rushing through. These days in particular, most of the accident black spots have been dealt with, so it is an issue of trying to invest more in just making the cityscape look better as a shared space, and then the car drivers look at the message. Very much completely in agreement with my colleague here and with your statement. This is a complete sympathise with the idea that car is king and that's something we need to do, and this is one element of a series, hopefully, of policies and interventions that would help to tackle that. Again, if we want to really build upon it, then it is about prioritising active travel in accordance with the travel hierarchy, and I'm including walking, cycling and bus in that, so it's about giving people the option to walk, giving people the option to cycle and maintaining bus speeds and making the bus travel attractive, so yes, it is part of isolation but it's not going to... On its own, you're going to have the impact that we may hope. Maureen, do you want to hear from anyone else? Well, I think that everybody should get a chance to give their views on it. Okay, all right. I think that your description is a perfectly valid one, except that it seems to be the same picture, if you like, which, as I said earlier, leads to people feeling to just lower their guard, so if you say this is a safer street and yet it's still got people going through it at 24 miles an hour or something, if kids are playing in there, they shouldn't be playing where the cars are trapped. Crossing the road is one thing, but playing in the street is quite a different matter. The street is there for all manner of use from lorries, taxis, cars, buses and cycles and people, but it's not one versus the other. Yeah, I agree that we should be looking to make the streets as safe as possible and in urban areas I have two kids myself and I'm more than happy when they're out playing because they're not under my feet apart from anything else. But it is absolutely important that we create these spaces now. My situation is slightly different from some of the other members of the panel. Nobody gets in a lorry for any other use other than delivering freight, so they're not doing it for recreation, they're not going to the shops or any of these things. The amount of vehicles that are on the road, predominantly cars, contribute heavily to congestion etc and we've touched on that matter. So yeah, if we had the infrastructure and the public services that were up to speed to encourage people to use other modes of transport and take up active travel, then that would make everybody's life a bit better I think. Richard, you want to come in briefly? So I've seen the adverts for years on the television, speed kills. I know of a child who was not down with someone driving at 20. That child survived. If the person had been driving at 30, that child would have been dead. So do you not agree that speed kills? Paul, you are nodding. It's always dangerous because if you nod it, it looks like you want to contribute and I'll bring you in. Having given you a moment to think about your answer now, do you want to answer that? It would be a straightforward yes, speed kills. You could say that in the terms of this bill, is it bringing speeds down to 20mph? Maybe not, but I completely agree that speed kills. It's been proved, you were asked earlier about evidence. It has been proved that if you reduce the speed of a car, anyone being hit by the car can hit at 30, you bounce back and hit your head on the road. If you get hit at 20, you've got more chance and I know of a specific case where that did happen in the child. Now who was three at that time would now be about 30 and survive. Do you not agree that 20, the proposal that was made by Mr Ruskell, could possibly save people's lives? Honestly, I don't think that it can. The simple reason is that we've already seen that all the surveys and all the reports so far say that the actual mean speed of a car in a 20mph zone is perhaps one mile an hour less than in the 30mph zone. However, it's not speed that kills, it's bad driving. If a driver going at 20mph half asleep is more likely to hit a child than a driver going at 30mph now who is alert. There's also a reason not to mix travelling speed with impact speed, because that child assumed if the child was hit at 20mph. Do we know the background to what he was doing when he saw the child and did he break hard to a point where he hit the child? You bring the incident up, do you know more details about it? My question is, is there an example where if you could claim that if the speed limit had been 20 of a child that was killed, would that child still survive or was it driving dangerously and illegally perhaps more than the speed limit anyway? To answer your question, the person was travelling at 20mph and the child walked out in front of him from two cars. Cars were parked along the road and the child walked right out in front of the person, so he didn't have time to break. He actually hit the person at 20mph, but the child survived. The driver was driving according to the conditions because there are roads in St Albans where that is the case. Cars down each side of the road, even if it's 30mph, I would not go at anything more than 20mph or 15mph sometimes. I don't even look at my speed at that point because I'm too concerned about what's on the side of the road. It's dangerous to try and examine individual cases without having all the information to hand, but I think we'll move on to the next question. Mark, you'd like to come in particularly on that question and then we'll move to John Finnie. I suggested supplementary convene. I was interested in Neil Gregg's views about 20mph zones because as an organisation you support 20mph zones outside of schools but, of course, we know through AA reports that 80 per cent of child accidents don't happen outside of schools. They happen in residential areas. Why don't you support 20mph zones in every residential area where children live? Because we would rather that the resources were targeted at locations where there's a real quantified problem. We have a limited number of resources. Where children aren't being run over, you'd rather target the resources there rather than where children live where they are. If you have a street, for example, where there are, there's a problem of high speeds and there are children crossing that road and there are there are injury accidents, the way road safety engineering works is that unfortunately you can't quantify a life saved. You have to have to have a problem there before you do anything about it and that may be the wrong way of going about it, but that's the way it works given the limited resources we have. Twenty man hour, if it's definitely going to work then it should be self explaining again. There should be engineering measures to make it happen. It's this blanket approach idea that just by putting up some signs you're actually going to change driver behaviour. I would have loved for the Atkins report and Allways reports to have come back and said quite conclusive that yes, this works, people slow down, there are fewer crashes, there are lower emissions, but unfortunately that's not the answer we're getting from these reports. What proportion of residential streets in urban areas do you think should be 20? I think nearly all residential streets are 20 anyway. Nearly all residential streets should be 20 right now. Because automatically they are, they're often dead ends, they're often got car parking and the vast majority of local people drive at 20 miles an hour on those roads. But if you're saying that 20 miles an hour is the speed that you want people to be going at, then you have to be looking at physical restrictions as well, because without physical restrictions, as I say, 81 per cent of people driving in 20 miles an hour zones today are breaking the speed limit. So it's about where you put your resources and for us we're just not convinced that this blanket approach is actually going to make any difference. I would like to make a difference. You've had three questions in fairness. I'd like to move on to John, if I may, because there are a few others here. Thank you, convener. Parallel, with any piece of legislation where it to be passed, we often are asked about and want to witness his views on any awareness campaign that would accompany that. So if there were this to pass, first and foremost, do you believe there should be an awareness raising campaign and what format should that take, please? Neil, do you want to go on that? I would agree 100 per cent. I think that the biggest disappointment from me out of these studies is the lack of awareness of the local people who've had this 20 mile an hour zones, well, that inflicted upon them in many cases they've asked for it. In actual fact, they didn't understand what it was about, they didn't understand what they were supposed to do. So I think that your awareness campaign isn't necessarily about all drivers. I think that we can do that at a Scottish level through Road Safety Scotland. I think that the real key to getting the success of those zones is to raise the awareness of what you expect the local people to do, because often they don't understand why that zone was putain, they don't understand what they were supposed to do, and then you end up with local people being against a zone, where in actual fact it's there for their benefit. Certainly, very much for an awareness campaign, I think that it's been a long time since the 20, 30, 40 campaigns that Richard Lyle referred to. We could do with a refresh on that as well, perhaps, but for us it's about consultation and awareness amongst the local people who are aware of those things and are not actually working so well. John, does Tony Watt come in on that? I wondered, you know, taxi drivers making them aware that the speed limit is 20 miles an hour or a passenger carrying vehicle? Do you think that there should be a campaign and what sort of follows John's question on that? How do you communicate a message to anybody? That's always problematic, but I would have thought that the simple answer is that you change the signage on a street, drivers all know where to look for speed limit signs and they should see them, so I'm not certain how to answer that to be honest. Paul, do you want to come in on that? That aspect that I hadn't considered, you know, there's the public awareness and there's also the awareness of those who are professional drivers carrying passengers and companies will obviously feed that into their training and awareness. The drivers will be aware that professional drivers and companies will expect them to adhere to that speed limit. Perhaps for the public you could put adverts in the back of buses and then don't know why the view you're confronting them is travelling 20 miles an hour. Mr Bishop, any awareness campaign should be aimed at all road users and just to re-emphasise what I've said earlier that it should avoid making the mistake of making vulnerable road users feel too safe leading them to take less care. Can I ask the panel how likely it is that any campaign would increase driver compliance with the reduced speed limit? If I may just supplement that by referring to some matters that have been alluded to before, the RSE motoring report states that compliance in 30-mile-an-hour roads is 39 per cent. In 20-mile-an-hour zones it's 39 per cent. The Atkins report, which was referred to, finds that considering the so-called acceptable speed, that's 10 per cent plus two in 20s, is broadly similar to 30s. In answering that question about the likelihood of increased compliance with an awareness campaign, can I ask what evidence, other than anecdotal, do you have to counter that claim regarding the level of compliance? I think that you have to be aware that the RSE report is a self-reporting study, so you ask someone, do you comply with 30 miles an hour? Of course, they're all going to say yes. The study that I'm referring to and I can share it with the committee. Well, yeah, exactly. The speed-complex test takes great Britain, which was out just a few weeks ago. This is traffic count measurement in the road of actual speeds, and it's saying 81 per cent brake 20 miles an hour. That's the total, it varies in certain. It underlines the issue. If you ask people what will you do, what do I do, they all say yes, it's great, I will support it, but when they go out and drive about it, they break the speed limit. It's a difficult one, and it just underlines getting the message over. That's where it comes back to what I said before about the road has to help here, the road has to explain to people why they should be doing that speed. Otherwise, when they have free-flowing conditions, as we see here, you get very low compliance. I wonder as a general point, given the organisation's representation here, if we're all being quite accepting of a situation where we go, well, that's the law, but folk are not adhering to it, he's a alarming statistic surely, Mr Beg. Absolutely, and in fact, our press release at the time, we said that 81 per cent non-compliance, it's a terrible thing. That's undermining confidence and speed limits and undermining confidence and enforcement. The other surveys that we've done, people are not keen on strong enforcement of 20 miles an hour. They're quite happy to see enforcement through physical measures, through awareness campaigns and so on, but if you start talking about speed cameras and police, support fell off quite substantially. I think that you have to be careful about that. Again, I have no evidence to give you that I can say, hand on heart, that lack of support for complying with speed limits is affecting people's behaviour elsewhere and causing more crashes, but certainly we do worry that there's an undermining of confidence in speed limits because of this lack of compliance with some of the speed limits that we've got at the moment. Let's just bring Jamie in and give some other... Jamie. It does follow on nicely from other members' questions, and I think that this is the issue around compliance, signage, but also driver perception. I'm just going to pose a question that's a conundrum I've been thinking over of what would be safer in reality is the status quo where a road is a 30-mile per hour limit for its entire tree but has signage at appropriate hotspots to designate it as a 20 versus the new world where that road in its entirety is a 20 with no further signage in between to designate reductions or hotspots. Which of those would be a safer environment to be in? Who'd like to go on that, Martin? Do you want... You looked away, that's also dangerous. I should give up poker, I think. That's a really difficult one because, obviously, we're currently in the systems that we're in, we move from 60 to 40 to 30 or 50 to 30 quite regularly. I don't know, is the truthful answer to that. I would suspect that keeping the same speed limit across the board would probably turn out to be safer, but that's not taking into consideration things like driver frustration. If you're 20 miles an hour and there isn't another vehicle on the road, then that's going to be difficult to stick to that 20, I would have thought. Do you want to come in and then I'll bring some other members in? Stuart, go to the contrary. I would rather that you targeted, along a long stretch of road, you targeted the parts where there is an issue and where there's clearly been a problem and that's rather than having just a consistent message because that doesn't highlight to the driver or something there. It says the whole road safe and it's not... I'm going to bring Stuart in and then I'll come to your area. It's really just for Martin. Are you familiar with the psychological phenomenon of omwi, which is in driving, is if you're driving consistently at the same speed all the time, you'd become desensitised to the speed that you're driving at and there is some research which is not specific to driving but to other environments that it is of benefit for there to be periodic variations to reset your attention to what's going on. Are you familiar with that and do you think that that would apply in this context? I'll be honest with you. As I said in my previous statement, I'm not 100 per cent convinced either way. My suspicions would be along those lines but, as I said, we, as an industry, we constantly move from varying speed limits and, certainly, as Neil points out, when there is a drop in speed limit for a specific reason that's clearly outlined and understandable, then people will comply to that or with that, sorry. Eric, I'll bring you in briefly and then move on to the next question. As I said earlier, I think that the drivers need to be told what the hazard is, what is the reason for... They're responsible for beating the driver more slowly if there's a genuine reason that works, but being told to do a slower speed when there's no apparent change in environment is where it's going to fail, I think. Drivers generally... I mean, being told there's a sharp bend ahead, if you're just told to slow down, you think, why is that? If you said there's a sharp bend or there's a junction coming up on a road, that's much more important to a driver than being told to slow down with no apparent reason. Mike, yours is the next question. Thank you, convener. Yes, moving on from compliance, I want to talk about enforcement, both are linked, and I want to refer to the Scottish Parliament's own information centre briefing, which is available to MSPs and everybody else. On that, it says, quoting some specifics about the Edinburgh, south of Edinburgh research that concluded that when you have a 30 mile per mile an hour limit in Edinburgh, most drivers were travelling at 22.8 miles an hour, so the vast majority of drivers were obeying the law. When the speed was reduced to 20 miles an hour, the average speed was 20.9 miles an hour, so most drivers are breaking the law and are therefore criminals. That's the criminal law that we're talking about here. That's applying to most drivers in this study. The actual speed was reduced by 1.9 miles an hour. Taken with the fact that this bill would mean that all repeater signage in the 20 plenty areas have to be taken down, so I'm not sure that everybody's aware of that, but that's the case with the bill. All repeater signage in 20 miles an hour has to be removed. What are the problems, do you think, for enforcement of the criminal law? Who'd like to head off on that? Martin? Very quickly. When you're looking at a situation like this, the policing of it is vitally important. Again, we know through our own dealings with Police Scotland how under-resourced they are, so that becomes an issue. We look at the other alternative options that were mentioned before—speed cameras, etc. All have a cost attached to them. If you were to implement it, it would be very little point unless there was a punitive element to it. Again, I'm not going to paraphrase for my colleagues as would it be better to look at targeted areas that would have a greater requirement than other areas and ensure that they are properly policed. Neil, you'll probably bring in Tony and Eric on the seat. Going back to a point that I made before, we asked people how they would prefer 20 miles an hour speed limits to be enforced. 45 per cent said with signs only, 24 per cent with road humps, speed cameras, 14 per cent by traffic police, 4 per cent none leave it to the drivers to conform, 13 per cent. There is a fall-off in support for strong enforcement of 20-mile-an-hour zones. It would be very important to see how sensitive the police were to that when they did enforce it. At the moment, they've said quite publicly that they don't really enforce 20 miles per hour in Edinburgh. The resource issue is a big one, but it's the public support issue. If you started booking people doing 25 miles per hour at 3 o'clock in the morning on a wide open road where the character of the road hasn't changed for years and there are no pedestrians around, you would really risk public support. I think that public support is very important for those measures if they really are going to work. Tony, do you want to say anything on that? We'd all be safer if there were no cars. I suppose that we're just trying to figure out where the practicalities are. If my daughter didn't ride a horse, she wouldn't have fallen off it and broken her collarbone. I understand the arguments about, wouldn't you do less damage hitting something at 20 than you would at 30, of course. However, I'm beginning to think a wee bit about prohibition as a great example of applying a law that nobody really adheres to. Nobody can really enforce. Everybody pretty much ignores and then eventually you reverse the decision. I think that we're talking about looking at the evidence and everything that we've all gathered over the past few years and all of the consultations that we've been involved in. Does changing speed limits from 30 to 20 really change the speed of the traffic? No. Does it improve safety? Not that we can evidence and does it improve emissions? Not that we can evidence. I've spoken to some of the MSPs individually about it, but I know that it doesn't change average speeds much, but what it might do is bring down the top-end speeds. I've heard that argument, but I haven't really seen evidence of that either, but it's possible. However, my position and the position of our members is that everybody accepts that people are likely to pay more attention if you focus on specific areas. That's more likely to have an influence on people's behaviour than a very broad brush-up approach where enforcement isn't possible, signage disappears and it's not really in the real world likely to affect anybody's conduct. Eric, do you want to come in briefly and then we'll move on to the next question? Without wishing to put words in Mike's mouth, it sounded like an argument not to roll out this at all because what you said is that there's a very small change in actual speeds. They're already over 20, and they're still just over 20, as Tony, I think, said no change to emissions. I do wonder what the benefit is of this criminalise. In fact, having said that, the average speed before was 22.8, and if you apply normally, somebody said 10 per cent plus two miles an hour, you wouldn't be prosecuting anybody at 22.8 the previous speed in those areas that alone would have come down to 20.9 after the 20 mile an hour that's put in. It's a curious argument, I think, if you're trying to support 20. Briefly. Well, nobody's commented throughout the whole of this session about my comment that this law, if we pass this law as it's suggested in this bill, all the repeater signs for 20s plenties have to be removed. You cannot have repeater signs in the 20 plenties zone, so there'll only be one sign in the zone that comes in. Do you think, therefore, that this will have an effect on compliance and enforcement? The point that I'm trying to make as taken by Tony's comment about prohibition, in fact, when we produce laws of the land, we should produce laws of the land that have public support. If you don't produce laws of the land that have public support, then you undermine it, and, therefore, do you think that this will happen in this case? It will happen, I'm sure. People need to know what the speed is. I think that that is a fear. The compliance figures that I've been quoting to you suggest that it is an issue. We don't have 30 mile an hour repeater signs at the moment, and people claim that they don't know what the speed limit is and what the speed limit is. One quick thing going back to awareness campaigns and enforcement. There could be an opportunity here to have a 20 mile an hour speed awareness course type approach. Rather than issuing tickets and penalties and fines, you actually get people in it and get this message over to them, because if people feel that they don't understand what's going on and don't understand why the 20s are there, then getting them in and putting them in a room with speed awareness courses is work for other speed limits. There is a 20 mile an hour speed awareness course being developed south of the border. If we do get speed awareness courses up here, then that could be a potential opportunity to educate people and raise awareness. I think that we move on to the next question. John, that's you. Thank you very much, convener. I realise that we're going over the same ground from different angles. My angle being from a financial memorandum, and we're talking about a cost here of some £20 million, and I'm wondering—it seems to my role on the committee—whether that is the best thing that we can do with £20 million. For example, one thought that I have is that if we're going to have to have only restricted roads, the cities will be full of main roads, which are still at 30, but all the side roads would be 20. That means that you're going along a major road at 30, you turn, there's going to be a sign that says 20, you get to the end of the minor road, it says 30 again, there's going to be a big cost for the councils. From a cost point of view, wouldn't it be better just to make the whole of Glasgow 20, and I think that that would be cheaper for the council, so I would be interested in your views on that. I'm also from a safety point of view, because if the kid does not know if they're on a side road—oh, the traffic is only going at 20, I can be more relaxed once I go around the corner into the main road—it's going to be 30, so wouldn't it be cheaper and safer if we just made it small town, big city, all 20? Who would like to go on that, Neil? In the overall scheme of things when it comes to roads, 20 million isn't a lot of money. It doesn't buy you a new dual carriage or anything of that nature, but certainly given the cashstrap nature of most local authorities these days and the state of the roads, you could spend 20 million better on things such as potholes and things such as cycle lanes, segregated facilities and targeting the areas where you have the biggest road safety problems. For us, it's all about the impact on road safety, and we're just not convinced that this is going to have a huge impact on road safety. If it takes the resources away from elsewhere, then it could have a negative effect on other parts of council spending. However, I think that I've made a point before that it is just the cumulative effect on councils of all those things that are happening is going to be the main issue, and that's what I'm hearing. However, I have no further information on the financial implications for individual councils, but certainly if they're being asked to do lots of these different things, then something has to come off the end of the line and be missed off. You seem to be saying that you feel that it would be cheaper for councils if we just made the whole of an area. Clearly, if you streamline the process and make the process cheaper, that would be cheaper for councils. However, I'm saying that if the overall cost that you mentioned was £20 million, that still could be better spent elsewhere in terms of an impact on road safety in our view. In this scenario, we would still be allowed to apply for a TRO for key bus arterial routes. That would be my ask of that. If it's 20 miles an hour blanket, can we still have the discussion about where there is the potential for exemptions, where a bus is stuck in traffic and congestion and there may be a small stretch where they feel that there's a chance to make up some of that lost time? If it's acceptable, and if it's not acceptable, what kind of measures could be put in place to allow that bus free-flow aside from the congestion, what sort of bus priority measure? That kind of discussion, we would like to see take place at a local authority in your scenario or in the current scenario with restricted roads. Broadly, that is what we're all agreeing that there will be exceptions whichever way you do it. Do you have a preference then, or are you willing to just work with whatever the system is between blanket 20 with some exceptions or some 20s, some 30s and still some exceptions? I do not have a preference. Mike, you want us to come in. A question particularly for Paul, I think. Looking at the financial memorandum following on from what John has just been saying, in the financial memorandum it says that councils will pay about £10 million over two years for all the signage, but what the bill actually says is that I'm thinking of rural Scotland in particular in my area of Aberdeenshire. All the A and B roads are not affected, so all the roads through the villages are not going to be reduced by this bill. But every single road and lane where there is street lighting in every village across Scotland is going to have to have by this law signage in and out of every lane and road throughout the land. Do you think that £9 million to £10 million over two years is going to do that? I'm not qualified for the cost of that. One of the things that I was pleased about the financial memorandum is that it's signage that we're talking about and not traffic calming measures such as speed bumps because that is something that our members would add to their costs and it increases maintenance costs and makes the ride less pleasant, but I can't comment on the cost of the signage, if that's going to be enough. Maybe we'll move on to the next question, which is Colin. Thanks very much. I think that most of the points have been raised and I think that it's clear that the panel are probably sceptics on the bill itself, but I come back to Eric May, who seems to be implying that it's actually going to make things worse. In fact, the alliance's own evidence states in a quote, that vulnerable road users are given the perception that 20mph zones are safer than 30mph areas and behave less cautiously. What evidence does the alliance have to back that claim up and why do you think that it's appropriate to blame vulnerable road users for the fact that they get run over by cars going too fast? I'm not sure that I blame them, but I'm not speaking for the ABD now, I don't know what evidence they've got, but I just know that every time I drive through a 20mph zone, I behave with a 20mph limit, but I see people wandering into the road not using the pelagin crossings, not waiting for them to go red, looking at their mobile phones, with their earpieces on, headphones or whatever. In fact, I'm sure that it's been true up here, I haven't arrived last night in Edinburgh, but it's just a natural thing that, generally, people are encouraged to feel safer. In fact, a lot of the public opinion surveys that 2020 do is do you feel safer? If you feel safer, it's a natural human instinct to lower your guard, why wouldn't you? You don't have any evidence to back that up, that's what happens. More people are running over in 20mph zones because they feel safer, is that it? Do you have any evidence to back that up? The evidence that something is happening in 20mph zones comes from Manchester, for example, where it's found that the accidents in 20mph zones did not go down as much according to a trend as areas that are still 30. Other areas will say something different, but you're saying that in Manchester, therefore those figures are based on vulnerable road users in the words of the Alliance, behaving in a responsible way, basically? Perhaps the word vulnerable is wrong, it's just road users generally, particularly pedestrians, maybe young people, I don't know, they seem to be the ones with the headphones on and looking at their phones most of the time. But you can't specify any studies or anything that backs up the claim that in 20mph zones, that problem's worse. People wear headphones in 30mph zones as well, but you're saying that there's a particular problem with 20mph zones. They have not been encouraged to think that 30mph is safe, or 40 or 50. It's a very much a 20s plenty theme. Go and play in the street, it's safe. In fact, John earlier mentioned a kid who needs to know what the speed limit is. The kids don't know what the speed limit is, they know what the flavour of a road is, they know whether they should do, know whether they need to be careful to cross a road because it's a fairly busy road, they should know how to use a pelican crossing. If it's a 20mph limit, they should not be encouraged to wander into the road and kick the ball around. Bring in Gail Briefing and then move on to John. I wonder, therefore, if it's an educational issue, because surely we should be teaching our children not to walk into a road without looking, regardless of what the speed limit is. If they're doing that, we need to re-evaluate what we're teaching our children. If it goes hand in hand with enforcement, awareness raising and education, then surely that's a whole package that we should be putting together. As I said earlier, it's important that if there's a roll-out campaign, it's not telling people that it could be lovely and safe and go and play in the road. That's what's going on at the moment. That's Rod King's approach. To build on what Colin has just asked, I've got a busy junction in my constituency right next to my office called Parkhead Cross. Some of you may have seen it. I'm already a number of my constituents, and I have to say that this is in a poorer area of my constituency, so it's probably one of the poorest areas of the country. A lot of people are just totally relaxed at the moment. I see parents dragging their kids across the road. It's a busy, busy junction against the red lights. I see vulnerable people at night when the roads are quieter, but you just get one drunk person and he wanders across the road in his dark clothing and nobody is going to see him. Surely someone like that is going to be safer if that whole junction was reduced to 20. As the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, the Faculty of Public Health and the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health have said, if when they do get hit, because I'm afraid that that has always happened, and probably will, being hit at 20 at that junction is going to be a lot less bad than being hit at 30 at that junction. So your argument there, I think, is that you're now being hit by a law-abiding driver who has said it's a 20-mile-hour limit or a 30-mile-hour limit, whatever he's abiding by the law and he's driving carefully and he's either seen it or he hasn't seen the person in the dark clothing lying on the road because he's drunk. It's just as likely that somebody who is not law-abiding who's perhaps thinking it's late at night, I can do 40 now because it's a 30-limit or maybe I can do 40 because it's a 20-mile-hour limit. I don't think—I think the likelihood of a collision being avoided because a law-abiding driver has reduced their speed to the speed limit is—that's a very unlikely scenario. I think I mentioned that in my paper. I mean, most road accidents—I don't really see your distinction between who's law-abiding and who's not. I mean, the point is, if somebody gets hit, whether the person—whatever speed they're doing, if they're doing a lower speed, they're less likely to get killed, they're less likely to be hurt. Even if the person behind is not law-abiding with the car in front of them is law-abiding, then they're both going to be going slower, aren't they? So my counter to that is, find me an accident where somebody has been killed or injured or whatever it is, where you could plausibly claim that had the speed limit been lower—and 20 is the obvious one in this example—that that would not have happened. Please do. I've been asking for that sort of thing for a long time. Okay, we're not here to—yeah, okay. I mean, we take your points you're making, we're not going to give you answers immediately, but you are not— Sorry, I was just going to say that if an accident is caused by a drunk driver or an illegal driver for every stolen car or whatever, that is not going to be affected by a different speed limit. That driver will drive badly whatever the speed limit is. That's what I'm arguing. Which is an argument against any speed limit at all? It may be. I mean, I believe that most people could drive safely with no speed limits. Right, okay, let's let—I'll leave it at that, yeah. Okay. Are there any other questions from the panel? Okay, I think we've reached the end of that evidence session. Thank you very much all of you for coming in. I'm briefly going to suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to depart, so the meeting is suspended. I'd like to reconvene the meeting now and to move on to a gender item four, which is subordinate legislation. This is—there is one item for consideration, which is one negative instrument on zoo technical standards. The instrument ensures that the system of zoo technical standards functions effectively in Scotland. No motions to a null have been received in relation to the instrument, and I want to know if anyone wants to raise any points. If somebody wants to raise a point, I am going to make a declaration that I have a farming interest and I'm part of a farming partnership that breeds pedigree cattle, but I don't propose to make any comment on that, Stuart. My apologies for not prior notification, I just noticed. I'm content to support this. I'd just like to write to the Government and ask them at section 5, 4C, what they mean by other public holiday, because what it looks like bluntly is that what's been lifted and put in this Scottish piece of legislation looks off the light, something that's lifted out of an English piece of legislation, and other public holiday in Scotland means something different, because public holidays vary by locality. I just want to be clear what they intend. Does anyone else have a comment? Is the committee agreed that it doesn't want to make any recommendation in relation to the instrument, except to ask the Government to clarify the definition of public or any other public holiday? Are we agreed? We are agreed. That concludes the part of the meeting that is in public. We're now moving to private.