i spent 6 months in europe.
tempo 30kph limits in Europe seem great to me, but every time I talked to a European taxi driver about those tempo 30kph limits they would get gruff and terse saying that 30kph is too slow in the city/village. one taxi driver I talked to had actually hit a pedestrian who had run across the street, he told me he braked hard but still hit the guy. This same driver, when asked about the new 30kph limit, told me that 30kph was ridiculous in a school zone, he said the limit should be 50kph in a school zone.

What I noticed over in Europe was that once the limit had been lowered to 30kph the drivers needed to drive faster, all of a sudden they were in a rush.