Safe Speed Forums

At High Wycombe in Bucks, the A404 leaving town in a southerly direction is a road known as Marlow Hill. As its name suggests, it leads to Marlow and is a steep hill with an upward gradient when leaving town. Most of this stretch of road has a 40mph limit, all the way to Handy Cross (J4 of the M40), except for that bit at the bottom, closest to town, where the limit is 30.

But now, in accordance with government guidelines, the 30 limit is likely to become 40, so that the limit is consistent with the rest of the road. For this alteration to have been proposed, 40mph must have been deemed to be safe. After all, the stopping distance from 40 up that hill might even be less than from 30 on a level road. Whatever, 40 is considered safe...

...but that hasn't stopped the from grasping a revenue raising opportunity! There's no speed camera, but occasionally there'll be a little white van with a camera in it, and you know the rest of the story.

One poor chap got done twice on the same day by this van, and was fined £120 and had 6 points put on his licence - for doing 37.

I've got to go back that way tomorrow, so I'll take a picture of that road for you to see for yourselves. I'll also be adding this location to the RoadAngel™ database, so that other RoadAngel users may benefit in due course, in case the change does not go ahead. Because even though 40 has been deemed safe, that won't do away with this revenue raising opportunity.

This is a link to the newspaper story in the Bucks Free Press

Just in case the newspaper removes the story from its site by the time you read this thread, I have saved it in a web archive .MHT file. You can get it here. Depending on what browser you use, you may need to right click this link and save the target file. Be sure to save it with a .MHT suffix, and then open the saved file with your browser.