I READ a letter in your newspaper questioning the need to reduce speed limits to 20mph across the borough.

I thought that there had been a great deal of local and national publicity about this but perhaps the writer had not seen any of it. The 20mph limit is all about saving lives and in particular the lives of children.

Speed kills, and the slower the traffic, the lower the risk is of serious injury or death.

When driving at 30mph you have far less time to react to any incident.

In addition the kinetic energy in your motor vehicle is proportional to the speed – damage to a pedestrian is greater.

The stopping distance is also proportional to the speed so that means that a car braking from 30mph will still be travelling at 22mph when one braking from 20mph over the same distance will have stopped.

Many towns, cities and boroughs have implemented 20mph limits in residential areas have found that child pedestrian casualties have dropped by as much as 74 per cent.

Recognised as an important new contribution to keeping children safe, Rod King, the founder of ‘20’s Plenty for Us’, received an MBE from the Queen at an investiture at Buckingham Palace in November. While the safety benefits may justify ‘20’s plenty’ on their own, there are additional real benefits for lower speeds.

Traffic noise drops considerably, as does pollution.

Your street becomes a far more pleasant place to be and this encourages people to walk or cycle instead of using the car.

This ‘modal shift’ to walking or cycling enables us all to reduce our dependency on the car, for the good of the environment and our pockets.

CLR SUSAN LOUDON