There are other wrinkles associated with the county council meeting to discuss the forthcoming introduction of a blanket 20 mph speed limit.
The first was from the chair, Llanbedr's Cllr Huw Williams, who called it 'one of the daftest ideas I've heard personally coming out of the Welsh assembly [he means Welsh government]'. He could be right but it's ironic that Cllr Williams has often pressed the same Welsh government for speed-related road safety measures on the A494 through the village he represents. This has included the encroachment of a painful 30 mph limit that seems to extend far beyond where it needs to be and let's face it no one obverses anyway (so what chance 20?). And, in any case, isn't the chair supposed to be neutral?
The other is that the figure quoted for Rhuthun/Ruthin in terms of collisions over a five year period was 27 in total. We don't know whether these involved the road user category that 20 mph was designed to help—pedestrians. It could be that all were car hitting car, for example. We also don't know whether anyone was killed or serious injured. Neither do we know whether any involved boy racers, the class of motorist least likely to obey the speed limit. Nor yet the speed of impact.
Given the amount of traffic through and around Rhuthun, 27 collisions in five years to me seems a very small number. This *five year* figure is equivalent to about three per cent of just one *hour's* worth of traffic on the A494 through town.
Or, it's 1.45×10-4 per cent or 0.000145 per cent of vehicles over the same five year period.