Safe Speed Forums

One of the hot topics here is driver distraction. As we know, it is easy to get distracted by external things, such as speed cameras, and so not pay enough attention to the road ahead.

An absolutely stunning example of how to cause the maximum amount of distraction possible to motortists was unvieled over the weekend on the A13 in East London.

As the road passes through Dagenham, with the Ford Motor Company on both sides of the road, the speed limit drops to 50mph, then quickly to 40mph, and with the current roadworks to 30mph. A miles or two further on is the last remaining set of traffic lights on the road. This of course causes long queues of stationary or slow moving traffic for up to two or three miles.. right back to where the Ford plant is. Near misses and the occasional rear end shunt are regular occurances there.

This weekend, Ford erected the first of three enormous wind turbines on their land adjacent to the A13, RIGHT at the point where the speed limits drop to 50mph, and where the queues of stationary traffic start to build up. These are not the small kind, but the largest in the country at over 400 feet high... I absolutely guarentee that drivers will look at these as they drive past, and I predict that the first of many more serious rear end shunts will happen with a few days.

I am not objecting in any way to the use of a wind turbine, they are one of the ways forward for renewable energy, and in principle the Ford "Brown Field" site is a superb location.. but did anyone (Including Ken Livingstone, who's office had to grant planning permission) give any consdieration what so ever to the effect that these will have on driver attention on what is already a dangerous piece of road.

Regards,

Biker-Russ

Unveiled? They must have used a bloody enormous sheet! Being sensible for a moment I found a PDF copy of the planning proposal, and skimming through it there appears to have been little or no consideration of the turbines being a possible distraction. All that's said is that TfL had no objections and felt that there would be "no adverse impact", though they seem to be thinking more about congestion caused by additional construction traffic. Two of these things are 100 meters high and the third is 120 meters, and it seems as if all the thought about the effects they might have relates to aesthetics and whether they might be a future toursit attraction.
That's debatable, but this probably isn't the right forum for it. Suffice to say that other options exist that don't need a conventional power station as back up for when it's not windy and wouldn't involve large structures blighting the landscape and distracting motorists. Unfortunately more r&d is needed (or so I believe) and for political reasons governments want to appear green now, not in ten years time. So get used to wind turbines, because we can expect a lot more to be built over the next decade or so.

The irony here is that, as you pointed out, these things make the roads more dangerous - and because of their massive expense, the government is unlikely to let up on speeding fines - in the name of road safety.
To make it worse, IMO these things are a monstrous waste of money. The electricity they produce costs around twenty times that from conventional power stations and, according to many sources, including NumberWatch, if they erected all the wind turbines as is practicable, they would only produce about 2.5% of the country's electricity requirements.

Regards
Peter

I wasn't going to add any more about why I think wind turbines are a bad idea, but then I remembered hearing that they've been known to blow over from time to time. See this page about 3/4 of the way down for some images of turbines that have blown over, as well as some blade losses/failures. One failure is said to be caused by a fire which resulted in the loss of a protective coating on the blades, bits of which then spun off at close to 200 mph (so they claim, I don't know how realistic that is).
Hopefully steps have been taken to ensure that the Dagenham turbines cannot blow over or throw off parts at high speed, as by any standards that would be a hell of a distraction to anyone on the A13 at the time.