The Annual General Meeting of the Isle of Wight Green Party earlier this week saw members unanimously pass a resolution to look for 20mph speed limits to be introduced in town centres across the Island.
This comes only 2 weeks after a fatal traffic incident on Newport High Street, and days after a 2nd serious road incident outside Marks and Spencer’s.
Both events concerned pedestrians, both involved older people and both were right in the centre of the town.
Newport Green Party community councillor, Michael Smith, was himself hit by a vehicle in central Newport in December 2021 and spent much of 2022 receiving residential care as part of his recovery.
Michael has said:
“It’s clear that recent incidents have shown that road safety on the island needs to be seriously looked at in order to ensure that pedestrians have every opportunity to cross safely. Other councils in England are prioritising 20mph areas to make our roads safer and reduce pollution. People on the Isle of Wight deserve similar safety measures. We don’t want to see similar tragic incidents happen again.”
Councillor Joe Lever, Green Party councillor for Carisbrooke and Gunville, added:
“The council’s speed review data is currently being collated into a report for Cabinet in the Spring. This should contain recommendations and suggestions to address the demand for improved road safety in our towns across the Island. I urge the Cabinet to ensure that 20mph roads in our town centres are included in these recommendations.”
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Isle of Wight Green Party meetings are held regularly on the 3rd Monday each month at 19:00 at Newport’s Riverside centre.
Another bit of silly ‘playing politics’ on the part of the Greens. After all, traffic through Newport never goes very fast, you’re lucky if you can manage 10mph which shows that recent accidents had nothing to do with speed.
Spot on, just a virtuousness show. They should join up with the monster raving looney party, the name certainly suits.
So a 20 limit won’t hurt will it!?!
i cant recall correctly but didnt the 20mph zone in godshill cost a lot for a few signs?
“The move, which will cost the Isle of Wight Council £12,538 to implement” – iwcp
Why not go the whole hog and do what the powers that be want and pedestrianise the whole island and then introduce the 15 minute rule as proposed in Oxford.
Of course, it is all for the greater good..
Softly softly catchee monkey…
Having all your necessities available within 15-minute walk is cool, right? I mean, I’d prefer to NOT spend hours driving, and have more _actually viable_ options than owning a car to do my daily, boring necessities like buying bread or going to GP.
And then if by “pedestrianised” you mean Amsterdam-style then plenty of walkaways, and world-class cycle paths (and microcars and mobility scooters for disabled allowed on them), more buses (trains and teams?) to go beyond the 15-minute when you need to sound good as well?
Am I missing something? Why the monkey comment?
Sounds good to me, hopefully be well signed on the rat runs too… stop that twit on that noisy exhaust motorbike, if he rode it properly, would not be a problem, but he thinks he is on Brands Hatch.. !!
To help improve road safety, after any accident, the faulty party should have to do a retest, from beginning, same as those that have lost licence for any amount of time, complete retest.
Newport is gridlocked with traffic lights. How do cars speed? They can barely crawl round. Might be different late at night.If you walk into the road without looking, guess what can happen .
Does anyone really think that Island Roads vehicle was thundering along at more than 20mph in the middle of town?
just one more naive story from the greens. Nothing new there then.
From the evidence seen it wasn’t the cars that were in the wrong for these accidents and neither were they speeding….
Yeah but the thing is it’s not about assigning blame but actually saving people lives.
You will always get accidents because people will make mistake even if they try their hardest no matter what – we are not perfect machines. There’s no escaping that. Specially on island full of old folks.
Thing is those accident end up so severe and/or fatal mostly due to cars. Pedestrian making a mistake and bumping into another pedestrian is barely a problem. Make a similar mistake against a car and your entire life is gone.
Severity of those accidents can be lowered by setting 20mph limit in places where traffic of cars mixes with pedestrians. That’s a super old-school best practice number and frankly I’m surprised anyone is surprised by it.
islanders drive at 20mph haha no way will you lot drive at that speed. stop lorries’ using the high street then stop parking then make it a 20mph
Speedometers rarely hit 20 in Bembridge.
These people want traffic banned, apart from the elite.
And the Greens wonder why they never do well at elections?
20 mph will make no difference if you get hit by a lorry. Both of these recent incidents featured larger vehicles. Now if they said they were banning HGV’s, I’d agree.
It will give both sides more time to react though possibly avoiding the hit. But once hit, you’re right.
If they really wanted to change something they would ban HGV’s.
Well, what do you expect from the hysterical and ignorant green clowns? just more noise from the irrelevant fools who think they can control the weather..
What exactly is chugging along through town centres in second gear have to do with being green? Just burns more fuel and causes more polution.
Using the tragedy of the death or injury to these poor people to score political points and to drive your own agenda could be seen as a little questionable
Will only happen with a London style system, otherwise who
will police it.
I was driving towards Brading yesterday on a 40mph limit road.
A small SGN car overtook a Romahome who was obviously
sticking to the limit.
Even drivers in vehicles with Company Names plastered all over vehicles
Break the rules for everyone to see.
I didn’t get the reg, but the stickers on the rear window states if you ell gas
Obviously no one as replaced the missing letters sm
Accidents happen even at 20mph, whilst the blame most of the time is on the vehicle driver, it does need pointing out pedestrians can be and are to blame in some cases, just walking out regardless, I have seen near misses where there is the crossings by boots in Newport, they cant wait for the lights to change or even cross now where near to the crossings, and this happens in a lot of the towns, simple solution barriers all along the footpath so the only place to cross is at a crossing point, although no doubt it will be the athletics jumping over them
Ah, sounds like more barriers everywhere will make me want to go and chill out in that lovely town centre! Sounds like an awesome holiday attraction!
Yay..gridlock all day then
Not all about the traffic.people just wslk out a lot too or dont look!
20 is plenty, could still do damage to a person yes but drivers get to their destination 3times quicker than a pedestrian and I do not think it is unreasonable for pedestrians to push for tighter measures, so many drivers become complacent and forget the damage they can do. I’m not militant in everything but this I am, too many people lose their lives for what so people can destroy the planet and get sanctimonious about their right to drive or they should have looked like show some decorum not everyone drives try saying to yourselves; I could kill someone if I do not pay attention… stop abdicating your responsibility as a driver and fully accept that you may have to drive a bit slower so what, at least you wont take a life easily
Yeah, seriously, ego on some people who drive 2000-3000kg vehicles is frightening in this country. Everyone always laughs that UK is a ‘nanny state’ but can you seriously blame them with all those adults behaving like kids? No responsibility, just me me me, my car is a long, ehhh… adults.
Perhaps the Greens would like to set an example and maybe leave their vehicles at home.
We all know where this is going. Just have a look at London. You get abuse from cyclists when you are doing 20mph because you are holding them up!
Just wait for the Indegestion zones turning up followed by the LTNs.
When you have to add those costs onto everything you do, see who squeals first? Still we can all console ourselves whilst eating our green food and drinking our green drinks by led candlelight that we have saved the planet…..shame about all those other countries around the world that don’t want to.
Ironically if we lived like India we’d be ok with this planet. But if we keep living the way we are we would need 5 more planets. Think man all the materials needed to build, all our avocados and oranges lemons all that fuel for ships and planes all them showers all that sewage that needs cleaning all the water to recycle. All the paper all so you can buy something or sell, all the power plants needed to fuel everything like the pollution that happens in all these objects are just for making and delivering. We are on a crash course and I’m going to have to pick up the peices because you can’t handle the truth…
Gonna rev my car up at the lights to kill the planet faster and spite them.
Might burn some tyres too
Make sure its diesel because it does more damage to our lungs than petrol can lol
Wow, you’re south a manly, anti-system fighter! Kids will thank you for asthma and cancer!
I drive quite a bit on the mainland and haven’t seen that many, if any, 20mph signs in town centres, country villages with narrow roads yes. Is the combustion engine tuned to work more efficiently at higher revs rather than lower revs, if so lower speeds are more polluting and it won’t reduce pollution, as claimed, but add to it?
Clearly the future plan is to ensure that the plebs walk, cycle and take public transport with the dregs of society, whilst ONLY the better people have cars.
Hence Gov not rushing to install charging points everywhere.
So they will make it so intolerable driving that some will ‘give up’ their cars.
BUT they can never make it so bad as sitting on a bus with violent drug, drunken, low lives make traveling, so they have to try harder or price plebs off the road to achieve their goals.
SEE it how it really is.
Right so theres a big gov conspiracy to force people off the road through passive aggressiveness and they want total dominance over the population through transportation. I see again you separate yourself from what you would describe as a low life thugs, you’ve expressed the same class separation a few times so you obviously consider your self posh? Bet you talk like ol’ Bruce on just a minute lol I wear trackies and a hoodie and would be judged by you and your class and you know Idc, I’m equal to you and I see that, i feel sorry for your bitter enraged ideas about people who have less than you. You are not better than me or anyone else, you are the same… and by the 8 thumbs up you have there are 8 more of you….
I’m literally in top 0.1% of UK residents by income and don’t even own a car simply cause I don’t like the feeling/motion of driving. And I could totally drive, I’m healthy 31yo but want to have a choice to SAFELY not drive and not worry about dying from cars.
Good infrastructure, architecture and urbanism should totally allow you that freedom. I cycle, I use a bus and never really had much problems on the Island with other passengers. I live in a place that’s kinda like 15-minute city already (East Cowes) and it’s awesome. The only stress I have is in places where there’s no pavement or cycle path and cars pass by super fast, with potential to kill me. But I try to avoid those places, that’s why I don’t go to Newport much but to Cowes.
Say you say me ooo say all together
Where the tooth gone
Won’t make no difference to me I walk
There not going to be much of town centres at all soon on island,empty shops everywhere,makes me laugh when I see a arrow saying sandown town centre lol
Yeah, the pedestrianised area in Cowes wins so hard: walk to a spa, a pub, Lobster or plenty of others for dinner, soon for cocktails but there’s also Compass already, stroll on a promenade, hire a Beryl bike for ride further, or come with yours and live it by Red Jet, charge your e-bike, grab a coffee, go read comics, browse antiques and art, go shopping for clothes or books — and all that without worrying that you have to constantly focus to avoid traffic and pass a road safely every other minute, with just a few cars slowly (due to a narrow road and a bent) making their way to Red Jet.
Meanwhile ideas from comments for Newport centre: “lets put metal barriers everywhere” LOL.
Why doesn’t the Council change the direction of traffic on Trafalgar road to allow large goods vehicles avoid the town centre as it was 17 years ago, the unfortunate incident and the previous incident could be prevented by proper traffic arrangements those that make policy need first to drive a large vehicle and to conclude the more houses you build the more large vehicles you will have around.
Great idea , something needs to be done
How many people do not wait for the ‘green man’ to cross the road. Especially old people! They are so unbelievably arrogant in Newport. It happens all the time! Especially at that crossing between M&S and Morrisons. For what? 20 seconds? Had this argument with my Dad in the summer of 2021. He got knocked down and killed in the December at Binstead light’s.