Photo by Mayr. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0. Yes, I know it's not the UK.

The RAC Foundation (a UK organization dedicated to "protecting the interest of the motorist") warned that the idea of a town with a 20 mile per hour speed limit would grate many drivers, and they're right. But, the UK car supermarket group Motorpoint conducted a survey about the reduced limits and found that two in five British drivers - about 12 million people - would "welcome" a lowered speed limit in their town. We'll see if any of them move to Portsmouth to prove their point. In most American towns, after all, residential streets have 25 mph speed limits. There is a proposal from the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety to make 20 mph the mandatory standard in all residential areas in Britain in order to reduce the number of people who are killed on British roads (currently 3,100 a year).

There is also a green angle to this. We know that neighborhood electric vehicles are not the fastest cars on the block. Forcing all in-city traffic to go 20 mph would mean that NEVs can hold their own, something that should help NEV adoption rates in the UK. Press release after the jump.