Safe Speed Forums

Am I first with this...?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/new ... plans.html

Councils will no longer be required to have traffic calming measures, which also include chicanes and narrowed junctions if they want to impose a 20 mph zone.

Instead town halls will only have to put up a series of signs telling motorists of the new lower speed limit.

The move follows a trial in which Portsmouth became the first city in Britain to introduce a 20 mph limit on all of its residential streets and did so without putting in a network of humps and chicanes to slow traffic down.

Transport ministers have said that 20 mph should be the limit around schools and on quiet streets where there are cyclists and pedestrians.

However this would apply to main roads and through routes in towns and cities.

"The number of people killed and seriously injured on Britain's roads has fallen by 40 per cent since the mid-1990s and Britain now has the joint safest roads in the world," said Paul Clark, the road safety minister.

" But too many pedestrians and cyclists – including many children – are still being killed or hurt on the roads around their homes and schools.

“We have seen that 20 mph zones with traffic calming measures can make a real difference to the safety of local roads."

Motoring organisations gave the move a cautious welcome.

"Not many motorists will shed a tear at the demise of the speed bump," said an RAC spokesman.

But he voiced concern at the prospect of extensive 20 mph restrictions.

"It is absolutely right that local authorities set limits on local roads. Motorists are happy to accept reductions when the reasons are clear - such as schools, hospitals and certainly accident blackspots, but they are less welcoming of blanket reductions and we'd hope local authorities will be mindful of this."

Mean while Andrew Howard, the AA's head of road safety, warned that stripping out existing speed humps could be costly. "It is not just a case of sending someone down with a shovel. The road has to be resurfaced."

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

No it isn't. Some of them don't even drive. What do they know?!

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Andrew.

Yes and also, surely, what you need is consistency.

The idea that a local authority knows what's best about road safety for their particular roads is crazy! What you need is someone or some 'Body' who knows about road safety which works throughout the land.

It's like Birmingham City Council saying "we know how much is best to drink and smoke for Birmingham" or "twice over the accepted drink limit is allowable for Birmingham".

What’s the difference between this and setting limits for speeding?

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I wish someone would tell our council about that, they've just installed a take-off ramp near us. God help anyone who hits that in the dark at 30mph...it's not even signposted!......

That is a typical arrogant motorist comment. You don't need to be a driver to be concerned about road safety. Pedestrians and cyclists have a much greater concern with avoiding accidents because of their greater vulnerability. You ask "What do they know" - they know how unpleasant life is for pedestrians when motorists take unregulated charge of the roads.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

That is a ridiculous analogy. The safety or otherwise of drinking or smoking is an absolute so far as location is concerned. Road safety is dependant on a lot of local variables which are better understood by people who have known the area for many years.

Like my Mountain Rescue Team which, by virtue of local knowledge, does a much better job than any group of world class mountaineers could manage.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

It’s called exaggeration for the sake of emphasis, as I’m sure you know. I’ll put it differently then…

Road safety is a complex problem best understood by people who have done in-depth studies and research on the subject. Do you really think for one minute a local authority employs a ‘professional’ who has these qualities on in his CV? I very much doubt it…

Your analogy falls down because it is not like your “Mountain Rescue Team which, by virtue of local knowledge, does a much better job than any group of world class mountaineers could manage”, it's like them trying to design or dictate to you which tools and equipment you use.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Without facts I could not answer that question. I do know that local authority Highway Departments employ employ processional experts on other matters (such as Rights of Ways) so I would not rapidly jump to the conclusion that they have no road safety experts on board.



I don't understand that. Who is the "them" in that anology

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

When you come down to it, road safety is a simple problem.
The less moving vehicles there are, the safer it is.
Everything else just adds complexity to a simple problem.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

The “them” would be your local Mountain Rescue Team. I’m sure they do a fine job but don’t you think if they worked together with world class mountaineers, with their wealth of worldly experience, it would be better?

Well maybe they do just that – Great! I’m not a mountaineer. But isn't it a pity the same isn’t done when it comes to road safety!

Draco gave a good example of one such cock-up, I could give others which are unique to different areas I've personaly seen of equal cock-upness. Would you lke me to post a picture of one or two as proof?*

Here's the rub: If instead of giving carte blanche to local authorities they consulted 'world class' road safety experts we may not get these dangerous or stupid variations and actually help reduce KSI.

*There's one junction, if you can call it that, which springs to mind; a series of islands so close to each other that I have seen drivers literally freak out not knowing what to do or WTF it is! The first I saw like it was in my Home town of Cornwall many years ago. What I saw drivers do is look in every direction to see if it's clear and drive right over the lot. There's one similar in Walsall.

Yeah - great idea local council Always a nice pretty collection of broken glass and blinker lenses there...

Edit to add: Has anyone ever seen the one by Ipswich? I remember talking to someone once who mentioned one by Ipswitch which is ridiculous by anyone’s standards. He described it as one big island surrounded by about six satellite islands and thinks the local council ‘road expert’ must have been smoking something when he came up with that modern art masterpiece of road safety. I'd love to see it

Edit #2: Any HGV PSV drivers here? I also know many roads which have not been designed to take account of these vehicles on main routes and they either have to swing out dangerously far on the wrong side of the road to make the corner, which has resulted in head-on fatalities, or drag the rear wheels over the pavement.

Still happy about local council wisdom and competence on road safety dcb?

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

You are right DCB - but only on the surface. Deeper consideration suggests Ziltro has a good point (although I suspect he also make a leap of an assumption).

All road users are concerned with road safety of course, but it is right and reasonable that those who determine restrictions for motorists must be familiar with the demands asked of them (motorists) from their point of view, otherwise those setting the limitations won't have an appreciation of the fairness of the restrictions they demand. Someone without adequate driving experience who is determining restrictions for motorists run the risk of setting limits unfairly, doing so inevitably leads to disrespect for limits/laws, then unpredictable behaviour....

I can only assume/hope you wouldn't let someone who only ever uses a car and never ridden a bike, to determine lawful restrictions placed on cyclists!

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

In the last few weeks I have had both the time and the energy to increase my running mileage. When doing this I'm on pavements and am obviously a pedestrian. While running I meet a number of cyclists on the pavement and have been keeping score. We're talking normally about 70% of cyclists are either on the pavement or without lights on the road, or on the pavements AND without lights. This vexes me somewhat. A week or two back I saw an officer of the law next to his BMW motorcycle waving a radar at motorists. Now, these reckless maniacs aren't doing me, as a pedestrian, any harm whatsoever. So I strode over to him and said how about stopping a few of the cyclist that are on the pavement when they should be on the road? He told me that there wasn't much he could do about, just fine them £30. I pointed out to him the he was fining motorists that were only committing a technical offence, that certainly were not doing me any harm and he wasn't bothered about people riding into me on a bicycle. Good one.

Stop making straw men. I never said that I was happy with that. What I said was
a) Your analogy with smoking was ridiculous and I stand by that
b) Neither you nor I know the level of road safety expertise available to Highway Authorities.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

You are arguing.. Sorry.. I think or thought you were arguing for autonomous road safety policies by local authorities whereas I am saying it’s good to have expertise from a wider and more experienced field. Why wouldn’t anyone want that if, and only if, it's good?


From France – I would introduce the second set of traffic lights lower down on the posts so drivers at the front can readily see them.

From Germany – I would introduce ‘something’ which could reliably identify and prosecute deliberate tail gaters’ (IMHO more dangerous than speeding and it’s one of my biggest hates!)

The importance of smilies...

“Still happy about local council wisdom and competence on road safety dcb? ”

is very different to

“Are you still happy about local council wisdom and competence on road safety dcb?", which I agree would have been straw man.

Maybe I need to get to know you better but I'll apologise to you for that if you want? (No smiley).

In answer to A) “exaggeration for the sake of emphasis”. Sorry, I’ll try not to use it again when replying to your posts in future if you want?

In answer to B) Agreed, but something is clearly going wrong and I don’t believe local authorities are best placed to always implement or self diagnose their own back yard.

Luv

Tony

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

the only true "road safety experts" are trafpol. Their job is too drive constantly for whatever time their shift is on the roads of their "patch". they see what comes of bad driving and are trained and qualified to drive to the best of most peoples ability...if anyone knows what a safe speed for a decent driver is on any patch of road it should be them...so WHY do local authorities ignore their recommendations so often????? if the trafpol say that a road is good for 60 or 50MPH.....WHY,WHY,WHY do the local authority numpties who rarely leave their desks think that they know better??? (that includes you too greenshield)

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

The short answer is that instead of road safety being the sole criterion for setting speed limits, this process has been corrupted by politics. "Speeding through my village must be stopped" is the cry to the Local Councillors at election time.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

The trouble is that road furniture; speed bumps, stupid islands etc., are all out of the hands of traf pol. which is why I am having a go at the notion that local or even national policies are dumb. I have only to go a couple of miles from work before I see one island which has been badly placed at a ‘T’ Junction.

As a result not one car, especially larger vehicles, can negotiate it properly when coming from the one direction. Instead you have to run over the top of it; it’s a joke! It’s also not far from a driving test centre but I assume they wouldn’t be so unkind as to take a driver that way because you would either fail or have an accident. Someone’s taking the P1$$! It doesn’t even make sense as a traffic calming measure, it’s just downright dangerous.

In another district I pass through they have placed speed bumps, the island type, which makes drivers travel with their wheels either side to minimise the bump and save their suspension. The trouble is it brings vehicles passing in opposite directions dangerously close to each other. Now I know what someone is going to say so I’ll beat ‘whoever’ to it..

"You should slow right down and let your wheels go over the apex of the bump giving more room between opposing traffic".

Again, it makes me wonder if the comedian who came up with this safety feature even drives. If you have to use them at least position them on the road properly.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

What is wrong for considering broader issues than road safety when setting speed limits?

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

You should slow right down and let your wheels go over the apex of the bump giving more room between opposing traffic.

I know that weepej but if they put the island bumps nearer the curb, which currently stand about 3' from the curb, down to say 2' from the curb the traffic would still be doing whatever it does but not so dangerously close to each other.

Alternatively, they could have left the bumps as far from the curb as they are but stagger them so the traffic isn't forced closely together at the same point along the road like that! Same result but less dangerous - correct?

I'm still all about safety my friend; I haven't changed

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.