Safe Speed Forums

I had the pleasure of driving to Highfields just outside Cambridge yesterday to pick up an eBay purchase and saw a wonderful example of "road safety" measures actually making things worse.

The residential road I was on had been gritted, or at least the main road surface was not icy, however there were "speed plateau's" at every junction and at other random points. The ones where they raise up a section of road for about 5 metres and make them out of a different material, in this case some sort of tiled brick.

They were still icy! Very icy, as in ABS kicking in when slowing from 10mph

I didn't have any mishaps, but while I was doing a 3 point turn a kid on a bike doing about 10mph attempted to steer on one of these things, resulting in a sideways bike and him falling off, cracking his head on the surface.

Fortunately he was wearing a helmet, and just got up and carried on, and his mate following on one of those stupid metal scooters landed a bit better after falling off but could have been nasty, especially if there was a car coming and skidded in the ice.

This surely provides enough evidence in itself to get these nonsenses stopped/removed.

Probably not, unless a few people actually lose their lives first.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I found a similar problem a couple of years ago in Newcastle. The raised platform was at a T jubction corresponding approximately with the pavement on the main road. As the road was icy, after stopping at the junction, I didn't have the traction to raise my rear wheels onto the raised area. The only alternative was to take a run at the junction and use the car's momentum to move forward, but of course with no grip, it is then difficult to stop with the fromt wheels now going down the ramp at the other side.. Parked cars on either side made visibility of approaching traffic difficult. There was no alternative route without similar condtions, so I had to trust my passenger to get out and check that the road was clear. The only safe alternative would have been to wait a few days for the ice to thaw!

Gritting is a grey area..

there is a fine balance on when to grit and how much grit to use, because you need vehicles to force the grit into the road surface and unfortunately most of the traffic calming schems have surfces that dont allow the grit to penetrate thus there is your problem.

Yes i agree take the calming measure off....they are a safety issue