The kind perspective is that drivers don't really have a vision for how much calmer and nicer things would be on their neighborhood streets if everyone drove 30km/h (20mp/h). They also don't really have a good perspective on how little the lower speed limit would affect their commute, and the safety upsides. And so without some more effective communication, they're going to perceive this as a straightforward degradation of their own quality of like (which is tied to their daily driving experience).

My unkind perspective is that drivers are maniacs who have lost the ability to cooperate and compromise with other people in a civilized setting. You can see this if you ever go to a town planning meeting about any road renovations that would add any amenities for non-drivers. It will be filled with surly car drivers who will at minimum disrupt the business of the meeting with angry outbursts, and at worse be on the edge of actual physical violence. The town meeting where we discussed adding a bike lane on the bridge that goes over the train tracks (to the literal "other side of the train tracks") was a very enlightening moment for me, as I had never seen my fellow citizens so political activated by something that I thought was obviously good. They were basically saying the quiet part out loud: that the type of people that would use a bike to cross that bridge are not the kind of people that they want coming over to their side of the community.

I've brought up the idea of a city-wide 20mph limit when talking to town officials after one of these meetings, and their response was basically "yes, that's a good idea, but it's completely politically infeasible because of the backlash we would get, so we choose to not even bring it up as an idea in these meetings so that they don't get too sidetracked".

My theory is car brain. Take a level headed person and put them in a car and you get but if you put the same person on a train you get but if you put them on an underground train you get

My scientific observation is that cars and the London Underground are equally psychologically bad and the conclusion is to explode Britain from orbit. Thank you for listening to my study.

Most people i interact with IRL do not care about studies or data when it comes to the perception that something would make their already miserable commute/workday even slightly longer.

Realistically for most commutes this equates to a couple of minutes extra driving. Most delays are at lights/intersections not low speed limits.

Which makes the Amerikkkan mentality of “lowering the speed limit is Stalin 1984 vuvuzela!” but also “replacing traffic lights/intersections with roundabouts is gommunism” extra ridiculous.

Where I live the city streets speed limit is a relatively low 25 mph/40 kmh. Even then, I don’t like going faster than 20 mph, right around that 30 kmh mark. I tell you, it’s not just some arbitrary number, you really feel safer, more control, better perception, and significantly less braking distance when driving that speed. Yet, I still get honked at semi-regularly by people pissed off that I’m not going fast enough for their liking (often accompanied by them then making a illegal driving maneuver to speed around past me). And it’s not like 20 mph is drastically slower from a “getting to point a to point b” perspective than 25 mph.

So it’s not just a resistance to a regulatory lowering of the speed limit, they are hostile to other drivers that are interfering with their desire to speed on local roads.

Motonormativity or things to that effect

E.g. most motorists back a speed cap on e-bikes but would despise having their speed hard capped on their cars at 70 or whatever the speed limit is in the area.

Because we are not compensated for our work commutes; a couple extra minutes driving is effectively a couple extra minutes of unpaid overtime.

I'm stuck at the "just vibes" level but as I've watched new roads being built in the area, there's gotta be something about "nobody fucking planning anything" and just sticking shit wherever they can legally do it.

So people needing to get around a town are driving on the same roads and routs as people who are trying to commute to work 40 minutes away and semi-trucks pulling a 60 foot trailer and somebody driving a tractor with a brush hog to a neighboring field.

When you've gotta travel farther you start to get anxiety that you're going to be late for work or appointments. Leaving earlier doesn't help as everybody else starts leaving earlier and increases stress as that means you're doing everything earlier (waking up, getting kids outta bed and taken care of, eating breakfast, getting yourself ready to leave, etc).

So even though a reduction in the speed limit makes perfect sense and would absolutely not slow down anybody to the point of being late for anything, as has been mentioned several times in the comments, we're so car brained in the west that anything that would "slow us down" amps up the anxiety that we're not going to get to where we're going in time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonormativity

Lobby by car companies. More killings and acidents on neoliberalism bill.

Imagine trying selling 200km/h cars when 95% of your time you can only reach 50 km/h without receiving speed tickets.

Driving rewires everyones brains into frothing treatlerites and you have to make a conscious effort to resist it.

"We've always done it that way.
And during my childhood, we rode rusty bicycles between brakeless pre-war lorrys filled with loose rubble and still survived!"

I honestly already drive this slowly at max through the main roads in my suburb that are unmarked (everything but the main arteries). Lots of kids and lots of cars in the summer, and lots of ice and snow in the winter. It’s honestly just the safe thing to do. Usually have people riding my ass when I drive like this, but they’ll live. So will all the kids that play outside around here.

really no point in driving slower if the city itself is one giant parking lot with no bake lines and no rail

stacking thousands of dead yankee pedestrians in front of the yankee:

"is this yet a heap???"

Haven't seen mentioned yet - car gearing is not at all conducive to driving at 30km/h. In a manual, you're probably in 2nd and have to be careful with feathering the throttle and balancing the momentum of the car as it shifts with micro inputs on the gas pedal. In an automatic, the car wants to accelerate right past 30. A "slow mode" setting would be nice

I live in Liberal City and we have a few 20mph zones specifically designed to slow drivers because there are a lot of elderly residents in the area. I'll go between 20-25mph in those and have long lines of drivers making unsafe passes around me. After COVID, we're never having another national conversation on "making personal changes to better society for others"

Any road that isn't a highway should be capped at 25km/h (school zone speed in burgerland), and highways should be capped at 65km/h.

I'm unfortunately a bit of a car person (in that I enjoy cars quite a bit), but I really don't understand this impulse with people. Like, it's a crowded space (with pedestrians and other cars), slow the fuck down. It's really that simple!

On top of that, whenever there's a lot of traffic on a highway people need to slow the fuck down. There's times where it's enjoyable to drive fast, but not when there's a lot of other people around you.