I am writing concerning the county council’s misguided plan to drop the speed limit from 70mph to 40mph, along part of Oxford’s Northern Bypass.

Considering that this road was built for, and engineered up to, a speed limit of 70mph, with good sight line visibility and is flat and wide I cannot see people obeying a reduced speed limit of 40mph.

Speed Limits cannot be reduced simply by lowering the speed limit.

Lowering the limit is contrary to DfT paper Circular Roads 1/2006. It is also well below the ‘85th percentile’ rule, and thereby brings speed limits into disrepute.

If this reduction goes ahead it will cause the bypass to become more dangerous, not less. Should there then be more accidents the council would be open to being sued.

This is simply another ignorant, illogical, politically motivated counter productive attacks on car drivers, in an effort to make car use unpleasant. It has nothing to do with road safety, it seems to be more to do with local councillors ingratiating themselves with politically correct minority unrepresentative voices.

Lowering the speed limit will not even lower vehicle noise at this location, as some would have you believe, due to the geography of the area. traffic noise also bounces and echoes off the roof tops of surrounding buildings.

In this day and age nobody in their right mind wants to live right alongside a road. It is bad for your health and lowers property values.

And, just like on the Southern Bypass, I personally know of no one who obeys the 50mph speed limit between the Green Road roundabout and Cowley.

If they install traffic lights at the junction for West Barton, all they will achieve is gridlock and worse pollution.

For each set of traffic lights installed, you increase congestion by six per cent, that is a fact.

I would like to know what the Police view of this proposal is. I suspect they wouldn’t agree with it. People should read the Association of British Drivers’ web page Speed Limits, How they are set, And your right to object.

Planting trees alongside a road such as the Northern Bypass would also be dangerous, because if you hit one at speed, you would be killed outright.

I suggest that those who suggested this idea go and look up the death rates for collisions with trees in France.

The other issue with the fields earmarked for the West Barton house building extension is, that they are full of sensitive archeological remains, dating from the Iron and Bronze Ages.

Nicholas Fell, Headington, Oxford