Rod King, the founder of 20’s Plenty for Us, received his MBE from the Queen at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 28 November.
Rod King founded 20’s Plenty for Us in 2007 as a voluntary organisation to support communities wanting lower speeds. Since then 20’s Plenty has been highly successful in making the case for lower speeds and now has 216 local campaigns. Rod’s efforts as campaign director are still voluntary, but are now complemented by dedicated staff in York and London.
20’s Plenty’s current “Time for 20” campaign calls for the DfT to change the regulations so that repeater signs are no longer required on 20mph streets, but only on remaining 30mph roads.
Rod King commented: “To be honoured with an MBE for ‘Services to Road Safety’ is significant not only as recognition of my personal efforts but also of the enormous progress which has been made in establishing lower speeds as the norm on community roads.
“We are moving from a past tradition of accepting that motor vehicles could dominate where people lived, worked and shopped into one where we share the streets more equitably and enable people to choose to walk or cycle without fear of fast traffic.”
Click here to read the full 20’s Plenty for Us news release.
20’s Plenty is often assumed to be a road safety campaign but Rod King himself promotes it as being about behavioural change, with wider Utopian aims about nicer communities.
From previous discussions on this website and in conferences, it is clear that the road safety benefits of 20mph are far from clear or proven and I have many reasons to believe 20mph is detrimental to road safety. In those circumstances, as a road safety campaigner, I have no reason congratulate Mr King for anything.
Eric Bridgstock, Independent Road Safety Research, St Albans
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Yet again Mr Bridgstock cannot bring himself to a least congratulate Mr Rod King for his work and commitment to road safety and his achievemnt of gaining a MBE, regardless of his differences with regard to 20mph schemes.
When Mr Bridgstock finally puts together a worthwile campaign based on all the evidence he has, instead of continually being negative to others’ ideas, people may listen. Well done Rod.
Rob Calderdale
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Eric
Rod King received his MBE for “services to road safety” and as such we believe it is appropriate that we should cover it on this newsfeed.
Nick Rawlings, editor, Road Safety News
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I’m surprised and disappointed to see this reported on Road Safety GB when only a shrinking minority of Road Safety Professionals at Harrogate believed that 20mph makes roads safer.
Eric Bridgstock, Independent Road Safety Research, St Albans
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