Setting a 30km/h speed limit would also reduce harmful emissions from cars.

Setting a 30km/h speed limit would make cities a lot safer while effectively reducing carbon emissions. Plus, you would not even have to be late for work.

Being hit by a car travelling at 50km/h corresponds to falling from the third floor of a building. One has only 50% chances of surviving the crush. On the other hand, being hit by a car running with 30km increases chances of survival as 95%. Yet the former is the general speed limit in European cities, with only some zones and streets as exceptions.

Needless to say, if you had to jump, you’d choose the first floor.

This could be reason enough to reduce the general speed limit in cities to 30 km/h, but there’s more. In fact, going at lower speeds could also contribute to saving CO2 and other emissions.

As a group of researchers around Jesus Casanova from the Global Network for Environmental Science and Technology has found out, reducing the speed limit to 30 km/h on city streets does not only have no impact on the time it takes to complete a trip by car, but also reduces harmful emissions from cars because less fuel is being burned.

The researchers conclude that reducing the speed limit is not only an efficient way to make pedestrians safer, but to help the environment as well.

Thus setting a 30Km/h speed limit is one of the measures promoted by the European Mobility week campaign which motto is “Clean air-it is your move”.  Reducing emissions AND getting more people on bicycles thus less in cars, the 30K option appears almost as a magic trick.

ECF has long campaigned for lower speed limits in cities and supports the European-wide 30K campaign for a 30 km/h speed limit in cities. Changing the default speed limit is much cheaper for cities than implementing a 30K zone as it doesn’t need any infrastructure or signposting work.

During the upcoming Mobility week (September 16-22), ECF will make another effort to get citizens to sign the initiative and promote the 30 km/h speed limit.

Join us at our booth in front of the European Parliament in Brussels on the occasion of the Sustainable 2Wheels event on 18 September – to make the case towards policy makers right in front of their workplace.