Safe Speed Forums

Lights work if they respond quickly. If they don't respond quickly when a person presses the button, they are a dangerous waste of money.



I don't believe any of that. I believe drivers get in that state because we are all at it – we all act shoddily, speeding, tailgating and cutting it too fine. This is true (more or less) to different degrees. Actual aggressive driving is perhaps rarer, although I was on the A47 last week and over half the driver were tailgating or had less than 2 seconds gap. We are all bastards, only some of us are less bastardly than others!

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I broadly accept your point. I think it's an important point. And under the influence of the policy that you support it's getting considerably worse.

We need policies that move these important road safety parameters in the right direction.

Or perhaps you believe that putting us under pressure makes us more tolerant?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I am also for push-button controlled crossings rather than zebra crossings. If they were phased decently well, i.e. they changed reasonably frequently, then you woudn't get pedestrians getting impatient.

By the way, that is more common, I find, at a traffic light at a cross-roads with an all-pedestrian phase. I live right by one of those. And if I'm a second late in getting to the button I miss the pedestrian phase.

(Most junctions, if there is sufficient space, can be implemented without an all-pedestrian phase at all).

I do think that pelican crossings (with the flashing amber phase) are to be preferred.

There are some people who respond well to what you are trying to do, but some people just take advantage. I know what you are doing, but you need a stick for the real road slobs, as well as some carrots! It's the balance that we have to find.

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Another basingwerkism that I'd agree with. We've got a fair amount of stick already, though quite a bit in the wrong places. Now then... how about some carrots if we're going to get that balance we both agree is needed?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

For once in your life conduct a straight argument!

You know full well that I support a good standard of roads policing.

We do have to find the balance. And we can't even start until we have stopped making it worse. Only then can we fuss and tweak and improve the rate of improvement.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

We can probably all agree that it is good to try to minimise accidents, good to try to minimise the severity of accidents when they do happen, and we can probably also all agree that it is good to try to minimise journey times if we can do so without negative consequences. Thus, as technology and knowledge progress, I would hope that we can try to achieve all these things together, rather than having to trade one off against the other. A bit like how cars nowadays can be both faster and more fuel efficient than cars of years ago.

In this case, it has been suggested by basingwerk that we could trade off journey times and accidents, increasing journey times to reduce accidents. I have two issues with this - firstly, the jury seems to be out on whether the increase in journey times would have the desired effect on accidents. Secondly, it just seems so unimaginative - surely we can do better than this. For example, it might be expensive, but a little subway could be constructed - there's plenty of space for it to exit on the river side of the road, and some of the land from the flats on the other side could potentially be purchased to create space there.

I like the idea of a new type of light controlled crossing where if the button is released, the request is cancelled. I like it because it's imaginative, and an attempt to make things better for everyone, rather than believing that you can only make one thing better by making something else worse.

Such a control sounds nice in theory but is probably wrong practically - how long is the pedestrian supposed to press the button before the light changes? And how many will realise that they must keep hold of the button? Pedestrians are just not used to it.

I have considered the possiblity of humped roads rather than subway crossings, i.e. the traffic goes about 3m up then 3m down again whilst pedestrians cross without going down at all. I don't know how feasible this would be (and how difficult it would be for cyclists, though I doubt it would be that steep), but certainly on main roads. (Crossing a road of 6 lanes takes longer, so traffic is held up longer at pedestrian phases).

But that wouldn't work, these are urban roads that are never gritted - imaging the chaos a few cm of snow would cause

But would be fun for driving at speed - have you seen that indoor motor cross stuff where they jump from one hump to the next. You could even have scenarios where cars land on top of queuing vehicles hidden on the wrong side of a hump!

Wouldn't bother cyclists around here at all - they would just carry on riding along the pavements like they do now...

It's funny the pedestrian crossing thing has come up this week as I was very nearly run over by the traffic light grand prix that started when the crossing I was using went to flashing amber from red.

This is a common problem in London, and I was actually run over by some nutter on a scooter during the flashing amber sequence of the crossing at the start of that stupid 20mph limit on Lower Thames Street.

Thankfully no major injury. It must have been the protective force field emitted by the SPECS cameras or something...

I like the idea of press and hold. Perhaps we could invent a crossing button that keeps hold of your finger until the lights change!