Safe Speed Forums

Was looking at the bit on PH, by Goodyear about "new" road signs, and realised that i have not seen the old "accident blackspot" sign anywhere for ages - nearest i have seen to it is "signeage system overload" on the A605 ,Peterboro to A14 road, where we see about 15 signs about accidents/think/slow down ( hi pal -any slower and i'm driving on wrong side of road)etc/etc - very PC - but the old sign gave the driver an idea without taking up too much of his time.
Another one seemingly missing is the serious of bends sign - and the comical "Bends for x miles" - say comical as it usually popped up a mile or two later - and to me the comical repeat meant that the idea was refreshed, without system overload.

There's a train of thought that suggests you can only take in six bits of information/direction/warning from a set of signs in one place. I'm not sure this has been tested.

Certainly, there's guidance knocking around somewhere that says you can't put more than 6 destinations on a directional sign.

It's actually an average of seven, and there is plenty of scientific research into this phenomenon. I did experiments on this very subject as part of my psychology elective in my undergraduate years.

Six leaves a safety margin I guess (hah - now there's a laugh).

Anyone seen the roundabouts in Hemel Hempstead, six roundsbouts in a CIRCLE

Yes, rather entertaining isn't it? But it does appear to work.

I think that what is more worrying is the absolute wall of signs that motorists are often faced with and the problem of working out which ones have to be read, and which are just clutter. Personally I think that a road sign that has more than about 8 words on it is pointless except to static traffic, and is possibly quite dangerous due to the amount of time required to read it. These are normally of the form: "A491, 3 Fatalities and 34 Injuries since 2001 Watch your speed", which really makes you wonder whether the idiot that put it up considered the distraction that he was causing?

Yes RW, and when you get them every few miles as on the A605 - you wonder if the idea is to cause more accidents to get more scams on the road.

Swindon? The magic roundabout? Unreal isn't it!!

There's another in Essex somewhere round Basildon I think. A127? I wondered WTH was going on to kick off with, but it seems to work a lot better than you'd expect by looking at it.

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

Yep the good old magic roundabout. Close your eyes and aim in the direction you want to go. The roundabout actually does work very well though!

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"Are you sh**ing me?"
"John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute."

I live in Hemel Hempstead and first went on it on my bicycle as a teenager. I also went there on my 3rd or 4th driving lesson. Its pretty good, although it worked better 10 years ago. Most of the markings have now faded and people have slacked when it comes to lane discipline, very rare do you see/hear of an accident on this rounabout, but poor lane discipline causes too many near misses for my liking.

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www.clubrwd.com - For all things rear wheel drive

I saw a very similar thing (to the Magic Roundabout) in High Wycombe, too. Nearly gave me a heart attack, as I completely wasn't expecting it, and was attempting to navigate at the same time, with an irate passenger who had no idea where we were going! Fun times...

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..