The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says local authorities should do more to encourage cycling and walking to prevent premature deaths and to alleviate the over £6 billion annual loss of productivity from diseases caused by inactivity.
In a briefing aimed at councils, Tackling the causes of premature mortality, NICE lays out the actions that local authorities can take to reduce early death; to address lifestyle issues that lead to poor health; to improve access to services; and to prevent unintentional injuries.
One in every three people who dies in England is aged under 75, says NICE and two-thirds of these deaths are avoidable. Many of the direct causes of death, such as heart disease and cancer, follow long periods of bad health which is often caused by lifestyle factors.
Drawing on a wealth of NICE public health guidance recommendations, from smoking cessation, to physical activity, to detecting chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, the briefing supports local government in making changes needed to improve the health of local people, and saving lives.
NICE says local authorities should: "Create, protect and manage safe spaces for physical activity and plan local facilities and services to ensure they are accessible on foot or by bicycle. This includes reviewing local bye laws that may discourage physical activity and using pricing and educational initiatives."
The briefing also see NICE weigh in to the contentious issue of 20mph speed limits, with a position that's strongly in favour. It says: "Implementing 20 mph zones, with priority given to protecting children and young people in disadvantaged areas who face the greatest risk, could lead to a 100% return on investment in the first 12 months."
As well as the heath and well-being benefits of more activity, NICE says the economic cost of inactivity is huge: "The costs of lost productivity to the wider economy in England due to physical inactivity have been estimated at around £5.5 billion per year from sickness absence and £1 billion per year from people of working age dying prematurely."
Professor Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive at NICE said: “Taking early action to tackle issues such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and obesity could save about 103,000 people from dying early each year in England. This new briefing pulls together recommendations from a wide range of NICE guidance to help local government use effective practical ways to address the direct causes of illness and early death."
21 thoughts on “NICE comes out for active travel and 20mph limits”
double post!
double post!
“The briefing also see NICE
“The briefing also see NICE weigh in to the contentious issue of 20mph speed limits, with a position that’s strongly in favour. It says: “Implementing 20 mph zones, with priority given to protecting children and young people in disadvantaged areas who face the greatest risk, could lead to a 100% return on investment in the first 12 months.”
are NICE going to pay the huge increase in Policing costs that are needed to actually make the 20 mph zones a reality?
Several London boroughs, including my home borough of Camden, have had a borough-wide 20 mph blanket for several years, but there is little to no evidence that it is being policed.
Indeed, the local Police commander admitted to the Camden New Journal newspaper, that he did not have the resources to effectively enforce this policy.
The state of driving in LB Camden is shockingly bad, with motorists regularly speeding, jumping lights, red light gambling, driving through pedestrian crossings when a pedestrian has right of way, driving into the ASL after the lights have turned red, driving whilst using hand held phones, acting aggressively at junctions towards cyclists and pedestrians, etc.
hampstead_bandit wrote:”The
It doesn’t need policing just loads of speed cameras. The more the merrier I say, with all the money from fines ring fenced for pedestrian and cycling route improvements.
We are getting a 20mph limit
We are getting a 20mph limit down our road and several others in the area. All these roads have speed bumps on them anyway which many drivers seem to see as some sort of test how fast they can go over them.
The new 20mph limits won’t be policed so the local council will spend loads of money putting in signs everywhere and there will be no benefit or improvement in driving standards whatsoever.
30mph limits are perfectly fine, they just aren’t policed so people get away with going as fast as they want to.
Luckily bikes aren’t subject
Luckily bikes aren’t subject to speed limits (as I understand it), so the faster amongst us can zoom (safely!) ahead of all the cars!
All road users are subject to
All road users are subject to the road traffic act so yes you can be prosecuted for speeding, just like you can for jumping a red light or even pushing your bike through a red light, read the highway code on the last one.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a driving license, it goes on your driving record and when you apply for your provisional license it appears with the points.
Quote:30mph limits are
No they are not.
http://www.20splentyforus.org.uk/BriefingSheets/Love20.pdf
There is now a growing amount of evidence that 20mph in urban areas reduces accident rates and improves the levels of walking and cycling.
20 mph is a good thing.
seanbolton
The PDF does, as it is, appear to show that a 20mph limit is a brilliant idea. If the statistics point to it being a good thing, then I’m all for it.
From a statistical perspective, however, we cannot draw any definitive conclusions at all from that PDF. It says that the table shows “UK places at 20mph and reporting fewer casualties” – I would also want to know about the places, if there are any, which did not actually have a statistically significant change.
I don’t know if the statistics also take into account possible factors, such as the weather during the chosen time periods (i.e. worst winter ever, versus zero-snow warm winter), or one-off events such as a roadworks, or whether the incident percentage changed in subsequent years. For example, would the lorry in Scotland which went out of control be included in the statistics? If someone jams their foot on the accelerator due to a medical problem, then the speed limit would not have been a factor, but it would still severely skew the statistics.
The number of collisions or fatalities should also be a percentage of the total number of vehicles, not just a basic count. For example, say there were 30% less vehicles in a certain timeframe, then presumably the number of incidents would be correspondingly lower.
The statistics could also be problematic in a similar vein to crime rates – the figures are going down all over the western world, so it’s not necessarily a result of anything done by authorities – it could be antirely “normal” to have fewer incidents. So, for the effects of any 20mph limit to be properly represented, we would need to see a full timeline graph to show the overall trend – perhaps it would have gone down by X% anyway, so the result could be well within the margin of error.
TL;DR: we need more stats & explanation of the statistical methods in any quoted materials 🙂 Listen to old episodes of Radio 4’s “More or Less” for lots of interesting statistics investigations.
Since when do councils listen
Since when do councils listen to NICE guidelines? They dont even listen to the department for transport guidelines when it comes to designing cycle infrastructure!
@Dropped
Completely agree
@Dropped
Completely agree about cameras – you can never have enough Police on the streets to catch the bulk of offenders, but cameras could easily provide adequate coverage, and enough of a depth of coverage to change driver behaviour
TFL have proposed having the current situation with the ASL “bike box” decriminalized, currently a Police officer has to witness a motorist driving across the first stop line and into the bike box after the red traffic light has changed.
Needless to say, I see this driver behaviour every day during my commute, and no one is challenging it apart from irate cyclists – yesterday I saw a black cab drive into right of the bike box next to a group of waiting cyclists in Regents Park, and the Taxi driver was loudly heckled by the cyclists.
With this offence (which equates to jumping a red light i.e. FPN of £100 and 3 points on the license) changed from being a criminal to civil offence, TFL could use cameras with ANPR to apply financial penalties.
Nothing like hitting someone in the pocket, to change their behaviour, as motorists know the chances of a Police person actually witnessing them doing this, as very slim.
hampstead_bandit
Why not have rising bollards or such similar on the edges of ASLs so if a vehicle is illegally in one then they get Tee boned. They will soon learn. Won’t hold up cyclists as we can ride through but will hold up traffic if a fuckwit driver doesn’t pay attention. Every now and then in Cambridge a car gets Tee boned for trying to drive into a restricted area controlled by such bollards. Or how about cameras set to record tossers who break the law and stop or park their vehicles in ASLs. We have cameras to record RLJers why not ones to monitor ASLs? Could be a nice money earner for who ever were to control them and great footage for police camera action.
Agreed, statistics can be
Agreed, statistics can be taken out of context and twisted.
But the 20mph is pretty much proven to reduce casualties (particularly serious injuries and deaths).
But the main benefit is making urban roads ‘feel’ safer for pedestrians and cyclists which helps to raise levels of cycling and walking.
The 30mph limit was brought in in 1934, road conditions, traffic density and street design were a lot different then.
http://www.livingstreets.org.uk/sites/default/files/content/library/toolkits/creatinghealthyenvironments/3.320mphlimits.pdf
Totally agree re: more 20mph
Totally agree re: more 20mph zones, and more camera enforcement – I say this as both a cyclist and the owner of 2 cars…
As long as you are willing to
As long as you are willing to try and ride out the backlash, the easiest way is to go with filtered permeability rather than traffic calming. Costs largely limited to installation of bollards and the streets you want to be 20mph end up that way by default, as they lose any kind of through-route use. Walking and cycling numbers get a boost as they become the obvious choice for more trips.
Not one mention of dedicated
Not one mention of dedicated segregated cycling infrastructure to protect all these unhealthy fuckers who will be wobbling around on bikes. So instead of prescribing pills are NICE going to start dishing out bikes and running shoes instead? =)) And who is going to pay for all these bikes and what type of bikes – Boris bikes?
Simplist thing would be to force smokers to stop smoking, alcoholics to stop drinking and fat fuckers from troffing.
the Police it seems don’t
the Police it seems don’t like filtered permeability as it means criminals can escape them by simply nipping down through a set of bollards on their scooters…
https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/secured-by-design/
Yeah, I saw that one. They
Yeah, I saw that one. They were talking about permeability in all forms there though, pretty much anything that is not a full street going past front doors. If you choose to have such a limited form of a network then you’ll have to be a lot more draconian to get lower speeds and more walking and cycling.
I fully support 20mph, as do
I fully support 20mph, as do most people but enforcing this is impossible with current resources. In fleet, hampshire they have introduced this on some roads that can be used as a bypass of the high street and therefore it does get fairly heavy road use. It does feel incredibly slow @20 in a car and on numerous occasions I have had aggressive drivers right up my backside or even overtaking me making the road even more dangerous.
Unless enforced – and I would love to see the idiots losing their licences – then the other option is education, really, really drive home the message, spend some money on media, not just sticking up another bit of road furniture or a sign.
Many of our European
Many of our European neighbors have a 40 km limit in urban areas, simply swapping out 30 mph for 25 mph does not seem to have occurred to those in authority in the uk, my local authority (Gateshead in the north east) have 20 mph signage only a few yards after 30 mph signs in some places. They are also creating “cycle routes” where people riding cycles are being asked to “join footway” where the footway is half a metre wide in places and often covered in debris it is shocking that funding earmarked for cycle routes is being used to sweep cyclists off roads and onto footways and in fact increasing risk to those who are walking and those who are cycling.
You have to wonder how many
You have to wonder how many more organisations need to stand up and announce the numerous benefits of utility cycling before people will actually take notice?
But, will people ever take notice?
I had notice of a planning application through my door the other day, for the redevelopment of a local college building behind my house to provide some new homes. Amongst the documents supporting the application was a copy of the college’s travel plan, which gave numerous stats as to how people travel to the college.
I was surprised to note that 76% of staff use their own car, despite 61% of staff living less than 10 miles away (and nearly 40% living less than 4 miles away). In more specific response to questions about cycling, 61% simply said they would *never* cycle to work… This is despite the college offering both secure bicycle parking and shower facilities, and being located centrally in a town with good cycle routes in all directions. I know full well that the traffic in the area on an average morning is horrendous too, so it would easily be quicker to cycle short distances to get there.
As they say, you can lead a horse to water…
parksey wrote:As they say,
But they won’t go if it involves battling with traffic?