Maximum 30 km/hour

highest ranking order of chivalry of the British Empire).

It is noteworthy to mention that in 2007, Rod King had set up “20’s Plenty for Us” (20’s refers to 20 miles per hour maximum speed limit) to assist others in communities who were wanting lower speeds and speed limits. “In countries that use km, we refer to the campaign as ‘Love 30’.” It works by empowering local campaigns and acting as a catalyst for communities to change their speed limits. It has been influential in government and transport thinking and guidance on the use and benefits of 20 mph/30 km/h limits,” said Rod.

Now, over 500 local campaigns in the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada and Australia are calling for 20 mph (32.189 km/h) limits for most roads. He has also engaged with many places implementing wide area 20 mph limits, such as the majority of the UK’s largest 40 urban authorities, all Inner London boroughs and now the Welsh government, which is setting a national urban default limit of 20 mph. In 2017 he also worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) on developing a Slow Down Day Toolkit for UN Global Road Safety Week, which was used in over 1,000 campaigning events around the world.

He shares an inspiring quote from Nelson Mandela: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

He adds: “That must be the question we ask of politicians. Who do they treat better: the child who wants to walk or cycle to their school or the adult who wants to drive to work? Who gets the priority in protection whilst on a journey? What is the ‘nature of our soul’ if we collectively spend billions on car, motor bikes and public roads, yet maintain an environment in most of our communities where children will die if they make a mistake on our roads.”

Everyone loves a safer road. That is why, he said, “[r]educing road danger on our roads is not difficult. But we all, and especially politicians, need to stop looking at streets from through the lens of a car windscreen. We need to crouch down at the side of a road to the height of an 8-yearold and see what traffic at 50 km/h or 60 km/h looks like. And at 50 km/h that vehicle is approaching at a scary 14 meters every second!”

“Once we start talking about what we can do as politicians, as professionals, as drivers, to travel a little bit slower, then we will make our communities much better, as well as safer places to be. Some say that drivers are the problem, but implicit within that is ‘drivers are also part of the solution’ to road danger. The foundation for bringing liveability and reducing untimely death-ability in our communities is a 30 km/h speed limit for most urban and village roads with exceptions only

where segregated facilities and crossings exist for pedestrians and cyclists. Our streets become safer for children and everyone with the setting of 30 km per hour limits. The benefits are huge for all sections of community including drivers. Yet evidence shows hardly any difference in journey times which are far more determined by how long we are stopped at congestion points than maximum speed” added King.

He is right. In my experience in India and Thailand, the time it took for me to commute a 15-kilometer distance by car shows that average speed was less than 30 km/h. I went back to cycling in June 2014, got more confident and sold the car in August 2015, and did not even renew my driving license when it expired in July 2018. Safe, comfortable, accessible, and affordable public transport with safer spaces for cycling and walking are an absolute must if we are to avert untimely deaths and human suffering caused by road traffic crashes year after year.

Lower speed limits save lives

Rod King makes another strong point: “Lower speed limits for urban areas are one of the cheapest and most easily implemented interventions possible. That is why a default urban 30 km per hour maximum speed limit is the focus of UN Global Road Safety Week from May 17 to 23. 2021.” He also adds: “A lower default urban 30 km/h limit not only saves lives, but encourages active travel, reduces

noise and reduces pollution. It makes those public spaces between buildings that we call streets far more pleasant places to be.”

Only 118 months left

We must remember an important milestone of August 2020 when heads of governments at the United Nations General Assembly adopted the resolution with road safety commitments in line with the Stockholm Declaration for the next decade of 2021-2030. One of the promises of the past decade was to reduce the road traffic accident deaths and injuries by 50 percent by 2020. Many countries or cities have failed to keep this promise. On a positive side, governments have again resolved to reduce road traffic accident deaths and injuries by at least 50 percent by 2030. And the key lesson learned from the last decade of road safety is that we need early and effective changes at the start of the decade rather than hand wringing at the end. And that is why the UN has put default urban 30 km/h limits as the foundation of the 2nd Decade of Action on Road Safety. There may be 118 months to keep our promise, but the time for action and setting a new urban default of 30 km/h as proposed by the UN and WHO is 2021 and no later.