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If you have an hour read the following & please let me know what you think about any or all my points, ie Am I going mad?
This is what I sent to my local paper & my mp,
I'm writing after reading about the recent fatal crash on the A140.
This happened about 3 quarters of a mile from the Pulham crossroads so I doubt this was the cause.
I would like to talk about the junction itself.
The problem is that a lot of people don't know how to use it.
You have people waiting to go straight over with someone else opposite waiting to turn across their path & they hesitate as they don't know who has the right of way.
As far as I understand if you are crossing someones path you have to give way.
The crossing works more like whoever gets out first has right of way, if 2 people do this at the same time you have a problem.
Also when traffic is in the central section waiting to turn left or right it is very dangerous, sometimes your view is blocked altogether by a larger vehicle opposite you & it becomes impossible to be safe.
You sometimes end up with people waiting until beckoned or flashed by the other driver opposite, this isn't how it works.
When a car pulls out of a junction & it's one of these drivers that likes to spend as long as possible getting up to speed, & they pull out in front of a line of cars doing 60mph it is just as dangerous as someone speeding.
There is only about 75 yards towards Long Stratton that you can see traffic coming which also causes problems.
There is just too much to look out for when using the junction for it to be safe.
They have suggested a roundabout instead so let's take a look at the nearest to the junction at the Dickleburgh bypass.
These do not have arrows painted to spell out how to use it.
There are 3 sections that go onto the roundabout, 2 lanes that go round & 2 lanes off the other side.
This means the left hand lane is for going immediately left, the middle is for straight over, the right hand section is for straight over or right.
99.9% of drivers use the left hand lane to go straight over, no-one seems to have figured out that if 3 cars tried to go round at once or straight over there aren't enough lanes.
Every single person I know has not figured this out.
I have written to the highways 2 years ago to ask that they paint arrows so that people know what to do, just like they did to the roundabout where the A140 meets the southern Norwich bypass.
Until they did this in Norwich exactly the same problem was evident & a danger to users.
The highways said they would check the accidents for Dickleburgh roundabouts & nothing has been done.
There may be no accidents, as I said no-one uses it correctly, if you did you would be very likely to come into collision with other vehicles.
I do use the lanes correctly & each time I do I take my life in my own hands.
I don't see that using the lanes as others do as right although it would probably be safer, I use the road as the highway code & common sense suggest.
In short, roundabouts aren't the answer, or staggered junctions.
It seems junctions are put at the most stupid locations they could be.
On bends, on the crests of hills, just off the brow of a hill like the Pulham crossroads etc.
I've written to the minister of transport who says logical things like separating opposing traffic, dualling or triple laning roads, underpass railway lines (how dangerous can it get, crossing railway lines), re routing roads that take a stupid route with no real reason for why, straightening roads, lane widening (all roads should be at least wide enough for 3 vehicles so there is always room for emergency vehicles & driver error so a slight 'wander' doesn't mean instant crash), crawler lanes, banning agricultural plant, barriers to prevent wildlife crossing roads & to lessen damage for vehicles leaving the road, wildlife bridges, remove dangerous junctions.. preferably all junctions, junctions like the Pulham crossroads should be a flyover & slip road layout all of which he says are good ideas to reduce crashes but unfeasable because of cost.
The richest government of all time can't afford some concrete & steel or dig a few tunnels..great.
I was thinking of the tax on peoples dreams 'the lottery', high employment so plenty of tax, house price mania so more stamp duty, more inheritance tax, less emergency services/hospital staff would be needed, millions from the speed cameras (these are not safety cameras), road taxes, fuel taxes & of course the uncalculable cost of human life.
Seems I was alone here.
Our country is quite small, highly populated, a strong economic force so...Where on earth is all the money going?
I also thought if we had some really decent roads we could do away with some minor roads altogether so the environment could benefit from less pollution & less road surface too.
Very few B roads suit articulated lorries & farm traffic, where they can't even turn a corner without coming out wide into opposing traffic on the exit, this just shouldn't be, the fewer roads like this the better.
The accident figures for the junction don't reflect how dangerous it is either.
Near misses, slight damage accidents don't get reported to or attended by the police & so the real ability to judge how dangerous it is isn't there.
Out of 15 999 award winners in Norfolk 2001, 3 of us were to do with the Pulham crossroads for 3 different occasions & in the last 12 months I have seen 3 accidents there & I only usually use the junction twice a day so I'm not convinced by the figures or what they really tell us about the junction.
Also the talk of reducing speed, let me just make it clear that in no way is the slowing down of vehicles campaign about reducing accidents.
It is about reducing fatalaties from accidents.
I put the question to the Dept of Transport if I was travelling along at 70mph on a dual carriageway, had a blowout & crashed would this be because of the speed or the tyre blowing.
Their response was that 'if this happened the accident would be because of the blowout but if I died or hit a pedestrian & killed them it would be because of the speed I was doing'.
Shouldn't it be impossible for a car travelling at 70mph to be anywhere near pedestrians anyway?
Isn't it possible for a car travelling at 5mph to kill someone?
Yes it is far more unlikely at low speeds but isn't the real issue which is that the car is being driven where it is possible to do this?
Let's just say none of Einsteins or Newtons rules or theories are used when thinking these things through, maybe no logic is applied at all it would seem.
If speed was the problem there would never be any accidents in supermarket car parks but I expect the majority of people have seen accidents in these places.
Why aren't all Germans who use the autobahns dead?
It doesn't matter how slow you go if people dont know how to use the road there will inevitably be crashes anyway.
We get fined for speeding, I'd like to fine the government or get a reduction on my vehicles taxes when I use the main road & I can't get anywhere near the speed limit because of roadworks, congestion, slow drivers etc
The campaigns should be about reducing fatalaties by reducing accidents not about reducing fatalaties by reducing impact speeds should you have an accident.
To do this, for a start you shouldn't be driving within inches of oncoming traffic, this is the worst case scenario in a lot of ways as it has the highest impact speed of around 120 - 160mph, depending if you stick to the speed limits or push a bit faster.
Hitting a tree is very undesirable too so why is this how the roads are, passing within inches of other traffic with a great big tree beside the road just to make sure.
You shouldn't be able to cross the path of traffic moving at 60-70mph where to them your relative speed is 0, yet we do this up & down the county, the more I think about & use roads the more I think how daft & dangerous it all is.
I'm surprised we get away with the amount of accidents that we do to be honest.
The speed should be kept as constant as possible with braking done on the slip roads.
Not only would peoples journey times be much shorter their vehicles would use less fuel & cause less pollution too.
Stopping, starting, slowing traffic up & down the A140 is ludicrous as well as very frustrating.
It makes me angry that the answers seem obvious for safer road other than speed, there are many more factors to consider & this fat government seems to be applying the mend & make do policies of the last world war.
The real issues aren't being addressed, nothing is moving forward & if the equation of lots of cars = travelling very slowly then what on earth does the future hold, people pull out onto a road & just sit there all day or what.
I haven't had time to write to my mp recently but I urge people to not put up with it, if you have time, write to your mp & let them know how you feel , don't be like lambs to the slaughter spending 15 mins trying to get through Long Stratton, using inadequate roads & anything else bothering you, the power is with the people but only together will they government listen as individually it is very hard to get anything heard at all let alone changed.
I can see this dragging on for decades more with no real progress & I like many others am completely sick of it.
It's like with the Stratton bypass, dropped a decade ago or whatever because not enough local support.
Stuff the local support, sometimes people don't know what's good for them, sometimes quality of life & the economy should be considered too.
Based on £30 an hour, a low rate a skilled man may be being charged out at, 10 mins delay through Stratton with 20k vehicles a day = £100k loss to economy every day.
An accumalitive loss of time of 3333 hours or 139 days of peoples lives! (It's the end of a long day but I hope maths is right)
Pollution for everyone who walks/cycle to work, walks their children to schools.
400 year old houses that have windows to suit, i.e. single pane with gappy frames, don't suit 20k vehicles a day, you can't have a satellite dish as they are listed buildings but 500 tonne lorries vibrating the heck out of the place day & night is ok!!
How much info do you need to make a decision, it's obvious it needs a bypass & has done for at least 10 years.
The amount of muck that comes with this scenario is terrible & maybe what people don't realise is just how bad it is.
We are breathing this in all day which with a recent medical report release that pollution is just as responsible for heart disease as smoking isn't very good at all.
I have seen a pollution monitoring station in Norwich but never in Long Stratton, I expect the levels would be high but it's probably too expensive to put one there to find out.
There is the debate of having the bypass, if it's ever done, as either single or double carriageway too.
If it is single lane, if there is a breakdown, accident or roadworks we will still have the ludicrous delays we have now.
Someone use a bit of logic please.
I can only do so much, I may have babbled on a bit but if you can use any great.
This is just the tip of the iceberg & you could rip into most things in this country at the moment.
The recent notion of people not being proud to be British anymore is completely understandable as we are always getting far less than we deserve.
Actually we get nothing that we should.
I have come up with other road safety issues which might be worth considering.
We now seem to have 16 year old boys, driving the jcb fastrac tractors with hgv trailers.
Just the other day I was approaching the Pulham crossroads, pulling into the central section to turn right.What I can only describe as a young lad was half pulled out into the A140 assuming he would be able to go.
To me this was very dangerous & he was only angry with other road users that he hadn't pulled it off & had to back all 40' up.
What on earth was he thinking, he didn't seem to appreciate the scale of what could go wrong & was driving as young boys do in small cars but in a 40' beast.
With the Fastrac capable of 50mph shouldn't all drivers have to pass a hgv test to drive them? Maybe they do.
Shouldn't the old laws on driving tractors be revised to cover these?
Some of the trailers these guys pull are an absolute death trap too, rotten, battered, poorly maintained unsafe things that obviously aren't officially tested & the majority I've seen should be scrapped.
The year before last we had a fertilizer tanker trailer come through our fence & the tractor driver didn't realise until the next bend, 6 fire crews came out as a chemical alert, the road was closed for 4 hours & this year a fastrac towing a hgv trailer went into the ditch opposite, to me something is adrift there.
Theres seems to of been a lot of cyclists killed recently on our roads too.
I would go back to the thinking that the equation for safety should include the size of vehicles, their speed relative to what else is on the roads & the damage they can cause to what else is around them or using the same road.
A lot of what happens you couldn't get away with on a work or construction site, can you imagine a contractor trying to tell someone responsible for health & safety 'right were going to have articulated lorries coming through here at 50 mph & the other workers walking about won't be wearing hi vis, they won't be protected by barriers & were going to do it at night etc' or 'were going to come hurtling through while people ride pushbikes beside them' it just couldn't happen yet it happens right outside my window of an evening and basically on all our roads.
It's obvious a person on a bike being hit by a car at 60mph on our main roads is 100% likely to die. So why do we let cyclists or pedestrians into that situation.
It's obvious the 'if you hit a child at 30mph' rule doesn't work with a 300 tonne mobile crane. That rule should be 1mph in 300 tonne crane lorry, 30mph on an average car, 40 mph on a motorbike, 50mph on a push bike. These are not exact figures of course but just to help with my point.
It's obvious a motorcyclist moving at speed hitting a moving tree or 'tractor' is going to die. tractors are very dangerous because of their size, weight & speed. This coming into contact with a minimally protected person travelling at high speed is an example of just what shouldn't be. Taking it to an extreme is a good way of seeing how things are or apply it to something else like rail travel maybe, imagine train tracks being used by big trains, fast small trains, massive slow trains, 2 men on one of those hand operated carriage things from the wild west, even with braking more equateable to a car it would be a right mess & unworkable yet that's kind of what we expect to be ok on the roads.
There seems to be a lot of agricultural plant on the road at key times when people are trying to get to work, they don't seem to mind 50 - 100 cars following them & as they are more suited to fields maybe they could stay there. Better use of set aside could give farmers their own 'highway' so with their uniqueness of a large slow vehicle it isn't a problem.
It's obvious a hgv ploughing into the back of a parked car on the hard shoulder will obliterate it.
We should look at things like that, the speed policy doesn't account for all the variables.
Cyclists could have their own mini road that traditional tractors could also use, I know that we are talking about a huge piece of equipment & a fragile human body using the same route but in that case I would say they move at similar speeds so that could work.
If not horses, cyclists, walkers etc have a one roadway or time for use, fastracs, artics, 4x4's & hgv's another, motorcyclists & cars another would be safer.
Hgv's could only use the roads at night, hgv's whatever they hit will cause a lot of damage, the only thing that may stand up to it ok compared to cars, cyclists, humans & alike is another hgv. If they had their own time to use the roads it would be safer for all.
What about the speed camera that caught loads of drivers at the Thickthorn roadworks on the A11. If someone had driven by at 160mph, gone down the road & killed 6 workmen that camera would of done nothing to save them, that is a major flaw with the campaign. Yes you would have a nice picture of them speeding by but the workmen would still be dead.
If however a police car was doing the same operation with the power to stop offenders, radio ahead to another car or chase alerting people with their sirens more likely than not the workmen would not be killed.
If you drive by a camera eating your lunch, talking on the phone, turning to talk to the kids in the back, drink/drug driving, steering with your feet it does absolutely nothing, (since been a girl caught on camera doing make-up) in those respects I don't see how it could be classed as making the roads safer so therefore neither as a safety camera, speed camera yes as that describes exactly what it is.
It seems the only interest is in something that generates income in speeding fines & tax disk violation detection, it's all wrong & that's why I get angry & frustrated about it.
A fact to blow all this away really is that .1% of 16million drivers in this country is 16000, only 3500 about .02% are killed every year on the roads & I use the word only with it being a small amount. To me this strengthens the case the speed campaign is about generating revenue.
If it's really about safety then let's make the roads safer & take the emphasis off speed & other revenue creating measures.
There should be highways coming into place to keep in line with vehicles, to dare I say go quicker, some people talk about 100mph like it's the sound barrier, granted those sorts of speeds are not desirable for some people but there should be a choice of some sort.
Some people I speak to say things like 'well we'll all be flying about in hover cars one day' & oh what a day that will be if we think safety is bad now we've got a whole new kind of bad if that ever happens.
Well that's my lot on this topic, I know you are aware of some of my points already & lobbying the ministers responsible so I don't expect anything to happen but at least unlike everyone I know that shares a lot of my feelings & does nothing usually because they have kids hanging off them, I'm actually trying to do something about it by writing to you, so here it is, I know it's been a long journey but I feel a whole lot better.
After watching another misleading ad I sent the following to the speed campaign website
Re the ad about the young girl saying if you hit me at 40 80% chance of death, hit me at 35 80% chance I live, shouldn't your campaign be aimed at government, either way at 35 or 30mph or whatever the child is still run over, as with all other scenarios this is how it is.
Do you see by saying that statement you aren't looking at the real issue which is the child being run over.
Isn't the answer that you don't mix a ton or more of vehicles with soft human bodies.
The statement of the 35mph what size vehicle does this apply to, a child on a bike, a cyclist, a motorbike, a small car, a large car, a 4 x 4, a 3.5 ton lorry, 7 tonner, a 750ton mobile crane?????
Shouldn't it be impossible to hit a human when driving.
Isn't £112 billion in taxes from new car sales, company cars, fuel, road tax & all the other taxes generated by road use enough to ensure better safety.
Spend the money generated by road use on safer roads then if there are issues after that is done the public might listen.
Campaign against the government only introducing so called safety measures that generate income, campaign against only £7 billion being spent on our roads & the rest going to fat politicians offshore accounts or wherever they 'lose' all this money.
You couldn't get away with doing what we do on our roads on a site controlled by health & safety yet it's all ok for us to do it in everyday life.
Make sense, make roads safer, make our lives less stressful.
I hope all of this spurs people on, we need to stand up & say ENOUGH!
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