grosun

You can drive through London for an hour in mostly 20mph (~30km/h) zones. Thing is, you're unlikely to be averaging anything even like 20. Even when the limit used to be 30 you weren't either. My old car averaged 16mph, & that included trips out of town at motorway speeds.

When the 20 limits were first introduced, lots of people would speed & overtake, but then you'd catch them up at the next traffic light & the one after etc.

I know London's quite an extreme case, but all a 20 limit means in a lot of stop/start urban areas is that you travel to the next stop at a speed which is less hazardous should you hit something/someone, with far more time to react to all the unpredictable things which happen in busy urban areas, thus decreasing the chances of hitting anything in the first place.

Yeah, it's mildly boring, but driving in cities pretty much always is. Just put on some music or a podcast and take it easy.

The UK may be the most confusing; fuel is sold in litres, but fuel efficiency is expressed in MPG, and furthermore the gallons aren't the same as US gallons. I guess at least the miles are the same!

... or bandcamp (increasingly so in my experience)

I'm in the same situation. How did you go about getting it reduced?

Definitely agreed re. the inflexibility of the US system, but "Europe" contains a multiplicity of different parliamentary systems.

The UK for instance is sadly almost as stuck in a bipartisan world as the US, which makes change a slow and painful process (or quick and painful wrt this year's referendum!)

It's only back-patting if you take it that way. Is he supposed to deny his own personal circumstances, or the notion that they'll have an effect on his outlook? Of course things like that shape the way you're likely to view the world, and surely it's best to be upfront about it. To my ears, it didn't come across as boastful at all.