Top Gear might be off air, but Kemi Badenoch is auditioning to fill Jeremy Clarkson’s shoes as a put-upon motorists, raging from a sofa about red tape, bureaucracy and injustice.

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The Conservative leader told LBC’s Nick Ferrari this week that she'd consider scrapping points for drivers caught speeding in 20mph zones should her party get into power."

They should be getting points on their licence for driving dangerously,” she said, adding that driving at 22mph is “very different from driving dangerously”.

The issue has become increasingly contentious with every road that is modified to have restrictions at the lower limit, with 16% of British streets now having a 20mph limit.

A case study being rolled out to argue that punishments for exceeding the limit are too harsh is that of a north London doctor.

Dr Gary Duffield has racked up three points on his licence three times for speeding at 22mph, 25mph, and then 22mph once more.

He has complained that it is hard to stay below the limit in a car that does not have cruise control. Punishing someone for doing 22mph in a 20 does seem harsh, and also encroaching on what the Met Police has seemed to have suggested is a 10 per cent threshold for prosecution.

But the doctor’s argument that it is difficult to drive under 20 is flawed.

He might not have cruise control, but if he has a manuel and just has his car in first, or probably second, gear he will chug along well within the limit - which is not what he would want to do, but also shows that it’s not the impossible task he describes.

More to the point, though, he describes being unable to check his speedometer to see if he is under 20 and then look up to check the road in front of him.

But this suggests that he is constantly at the absolute limit and towing a fine line between driving in and out of range.

As any speed awareness course (which the man has presumably been offered) will tell you, the speed limit is a maximum and not a target.

Badenoch, though, stopped short of going full Clarkson and demanding an instant end to points being awarded for breaking the 20mph limit.

It might be that there is a quiet acknowledgement that, however they are punished, 20mph zones are there for a reason: to improve pedestrian safety.

Being hit by a car travelling at 20mph is five times less likely to be fatal than one travelling at 30mph.

But those stats are for 20mph. Not 22mph. The chances of a collision being fatal surely grow with every mile-per-hour faster a car is travelling and while those two extra miles per hour might not appear reason enough to add points to a licence - they might be the difference between life and death in the event of a crash.

Badenoch is in a position of being able to make promises to appeal to motorists, with her party well behind in the polls. Right now, she has arguably even less power and influence than Clarkson does.

But even so, she has not committed to stopping points being given - perhaps because she knows that if we are going to have 20mph speed limits then firm punishment is needed to ensure the limits are kept.

William Mata is a writer and SEO editor for LBC.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

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