I’ve lived in Croydon for nearly 20 years, have had two children here, and for all its many faults, I love the place. I walk everywhere – to the shops, to pubs and occasionally restaurants, to my youngest child’s primary school, and to the station, tram stop and bus stop.
In the past week, the Reform party in Croydon posted some literature that promised, “To get Croydon moving we will roll out the removal of 20mph speed limits and return to a 30mph default speed limit”. It’s an idea straight out of the pro-car Peter Morgan playbook.
When I was a child, more than 40 years ago, nearly 6,000 people died on Britain’s roads every year. More recently, that death toll has fallen to around 1,600 per year – a reduction of more than 70%.
There is no single factor that has contributed to that. Cars have become safer for their occupants with technology such as roll cages, crumple zones, airbags and so on. But the widespread introduction of 20mph zones in parts of the country has undoubtedly also been a factor, as numerous studies have shown.
We know that Reform are very relaxed about death, so much so, as Inside Croydon first reported, that they selected a dead woman to be their Croydon Mayoral candidate for 2026.
But for those of us who enjoy living and who wish our fellow citizens well, too, reducing speed and saving lives is more important than being able to drive a bit faster.
RoSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, found that a pedestrian who is hit by a car travelling at between 30mph and 40mph is between three-and-a-half and five-and-a-half times more likely to be killed than if they were hit by a car travelling at below 30mph.
In Wales, where 20mph has become the norm for most roads, there have been 100 fewer people killed or seriously injured. The number of casualties between July and September 2024 was also the lowest for the three-month period since records began in 1979.
The devolved Northern Ireland government is currently pushing to introduce more 20mph zones because, “If a child is hit by a car at 30mph, they have a 50% chance of survival. If a child is hit by a car at 20mph, they have a 90% chance of survival.”
A few years ago, Transport for London reviewed the impact of the widespread rollout of 20mph zones in London. They found a 35% reduction in collisions, and a 34% reduction in serious injuries and deaths.
A study of 40 different cities across Europe found that 30km/h speed limits (about 20mph) have led on average to a 37% reduction in road crash fatalities, an 18% reduction in emissions (improving air quality for everyone) and even a 7% reduction in fuel consumption – which is handy for drivers in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.
You can read the evidence for yourself by clicking on this link.
In our borough, tens of thousands of children walk to school every day. These are life and death policies.
Grifter: Nigel Farage, who somehow managed to break parliament’s financial rules
So what is motivating Croydon Reform to reject all evidence and advocate a policy that kills and maims?
As will be no surprise to Inside Croydon readers, this attack on road safety is among ideas that were put forward by local Reform member Peter Morgan. Like so many members of Reform, Morgan is an ex-Conservative – although he was ultimately deemed too cranky even for them, and expelled.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron once described UKIP, Nigel Farage’s predecessor party, as being riddled with “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. Morgan even managed to get himself kicked out of UKIP, too.
Morgan has now found refuge in Reform, the limited company led by Farage, the MP for Clacton who was this week found to have broken parliamentary rules by failing to declare properly his external earnings.
As well as opposing 20mph zones, Morgan has also campaigned against traffic calming measures around schools, cycle lanes and even children walking to school – as has been well-documented by Inside Croydon.
Reform: Peter Morgan
At the end of last year, Morgan was lobbying with Croydon Reform members to make scrapping the tram network the party’s policy in Croydon – to local officials’ considerable discomfort once Inside Croydon published Morgan’s internal emails.
Morgan aside, there is a rising phenomenon among far-right parties like Reform for championing evidence-free, me-first, anti-social policies. It’s all very Trump-like in normalising spite, division and selfishness, and ignoring the facts.
But we must also look to ourselves: have we, as a society, become more insular?
We are increasingly cocooned in our own world in which we shop online rather than in our local community, stream films rather than go to the cinema, and mindlessly scroll through our phones rather than engage with our neighbours and fellow commuters. And all the while, algorithms push ever more extreme and conspiratorial content onto our screens.
The rollout and support for 20mph zones was a recognition of balance and compromise. Driving that little bit slower keeps children safer, reduces pollution and it keeps people alive – motorist, cyclist and pedestrian alike.
As Charlie Chaplin says at the end of his cinematic masterpiece The Great Dictator:
“We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone … Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in …
“Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.”
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn
- Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
- It’s available now on Inside Croydon’s Spotify channel
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