Last week, councillors across Glasgow, including myself, were proud to support a motion to make our streets safer places for everyone.

We supported a motion making clear that our council wishes to extend 20mph speed limits much further across our city’s residential streets.

Far from being a trivial thing, we believe that this will significantly improve life in residential streets, by cutting down on air pollution and reducing the number of road deaths in our city.

Between 2013 and 2017, there were more than 1,000 reported road accidents in the City of Glasgow authority area.

In 2017 alone, more than half of the accidents reported that year happened within 5km of the casualty’s home.

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Extending the implementation of a 20mph speed limit on our roads would be expected to reduce the number of shorter car journeys, as this would lead to a reduction in congestion on our roads by cutting braking distances.

But for me, the key statistic is this: you are seven to 10 times more likely to survive being hit by a car going at 20mph, than doing 30mph. The case is very, very clear.

This is a public health policy that is designed to protect everyone in our communities.

At its heart this is a debate about our streets. Who are they for? What do we want them to do? Are they for people, or are they for cars?

Do we design our streets to make it easier and safer for our children to walk to and from school, or do we design them to potentially cut just a few minutes off a journey for motorists?

We should design them with full cycle lanes to help people get on their bike to get to work. And reducing the number of cars on the street would make bus services more efficient and faster.

We should design streets for people. That’s what we supported.