Safe Speed Forums

Speed most certainly IS one of the problems. Despite what you might think, the 30mph limit here is ignored by numerous drivers. Its a village near Bristol airport so the volume is also huge. We've got a chicane, warning signs, bottlenecks, 30 and 20mph speed limits and a VAS is about to be introduced, along with probably more stuff like speed humps (which are a bloody nuisance, I can't see them helping, and certainly I didnt vote for them).

Until recently there were no pavements through the village and pedestrians were being knocked regularly. It's speed AND volume. There's absolutely nothing about the place that gives people the impression that they are safe to go fast. The village is narrow in the centre, reduced to one and a half cars' width in places. Sticky-out stone walls, ninety degree bends, blind corners and a chicane with priority, which seven tenths of motorists fail to use properly because they're too belligerent and too impatient. The chicane protects a number of properties from motorists who would otherwise be hurtling down a hill towards concealed driveways as they leave the village centre.
The whole region is the subject of intense discussion and local MPs are fully committed to obtaining some sort of relief for all those villages badly affected by airport traffic. A by-pass is the only answer, but that is still years away.

I really fail to see WHY people insist on driving as fast as possible just because they "think" the road looks good enough to belt along. ("oh look, here's a nice straight bit of village road, let's welly it"). Having already suffered a vehicle write-off as the result of a hare-brained motorcyclist hammering through the village, I dont have any sympathy for people who bellyache that they can't put their toe to the floor because of speed restrictions. The 30mph post is there for a reason; you are entering a village with narrow roads, awkward bends and quite a number of hidden residential accesses. If you're stupid enough to want to TRY to do 50 all through the village, then you'll contribute nicely to the next set of accident statistics.

And yes, they DO happen, EVERY week because I help log them for the local community watch. Bashes, scrapes, punctures, head-ons. Drivers are just too fast, too impatient to get from A to B. To them, a village is a hindrance to their wishes for a speed-fix. You are lucky that your village appears to be "self-policing" because ours certainly isnt.

I'm quite interested in knowing the circumstances surrounding this accident.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Sure.
About four years back, now, I think. A car slowed down in the traffic outside our house (which was almost at a standstill anyway, due to the usual congestion), to allow my husband out of the driveway. This car was thus at the back of the queue. The motorbike came tearing down the hill behind, saw that the traffic was stationary, slammed on the anchors, skidded on the wet road and rammed the vehicle, which in turn hit ours. Both written off. Occupants of both cars shaken up but not seriously.
No traffic controls in place at the time, other than the 30mph speed limit. Court case followed ref. the bike; but we never knew much more.

A similar accident occurred also a few years back; this time a car tearing down the hill and wacking into a motorcyclist, also in slow-moving traffic. Car driver had no insurance.
Since then the chicane has been built.

This is strangely contradictory don't you think? All those visible hazards and still huge numbers of people speed. Generally, people adjust their speed to the hazards perceived.



This also contradicts what you are claiming about fast traffic. It may just be the volume that is the issue.



Could you tell us what this community watch entails?

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

veeger,

I take it that you have been 'at' this for some time.

Have the local authority carried out speed surveys in the village? Have you got the results? What are they?

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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 can’t quite get my head round this, you seem to contradict yourself.

You say the car was at the back of a queue, and yet you say the car that hit your husband was behind him. Was there a queue of cars behind waiting for your husband to back out? or was the car that hit your husband the only car between the bike and your husbands car? Also how did you know the bike was tearing down the hill? Or are you just saying this because of the usual “it was a bike so he must have been tearing down the hill”.

With the second accident you say the car was tearing down the hill did you see this for yourself.

Maybe the road surface has something to do with the fact that cars and bikes are having trouble stopping.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

I'm not going to try and answer multiple responses any more than this once.

Firstly; the accidents. The car behind ours was indeed the last in the queue, AFTER he'd allowed ours out of the driveway. hence you have our car....then their car...and it was now end of queue. hence just one car between ours and the motorbike. AND......we come out forwards, not backwards.
I get the feeling you are suggesting that I am incapable of telling the difference between a 30mph motorbike and a fast one. maybe if you'd seen the resulting damage, you'd have a better idea. There were plenty of witnesses.
The second accident, yes I did see it and so did others.
The road surface is no different from any other. If its wet, you're supposed to take more care; at least that's what I was taught 36 years ago.

Whether you want to believe it or not, speed and volume are both issues in this place, even if it does sound contradictory. If you dont want to believe it, then don't, thats up to you.

I and others available log any incidents and pass them to someone who has agreed to keep a log and make it available to the local police, parish council, etc. There are volunteer people who also go out on the road at set periods and take speed readings. The main county council have not done any speed surveys for years, to my knowledge.

Too much nit-picking in this forum. I know what happens in my own area. I think some of you are just looking for excuses to justify driving at whatever speed you like....especially so, judging by some of the comments written in other sectors of this forum that I read this afternoon. In which case, that's it, I'm not participating any more.

If you want to save lives, then challenge assumptions. Road safety isn't a simple matter of 'slowing vehicles' or 'making drivers behave'. It's a highly complex matter of human behaviour.



I doubt that you do REALLY know what's happening in your area. For a start, you havn't got hold of speed survey data. That's the STARTING POINT of any attempt to change speeds. I'd be surprised if the LA don't have speed survey data. I suggest you put in a request under Freedom of Information Act.



Most of the folk around here are here because they care about road safety and have seen the damage done by false assumptions and inadequate information.

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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'm not suggesting anything, I’m just trying to get to the bottom of the problem in your village.

Where were you when the biker hit the car behind your husbands?

So when the biker hit the other car, was your husbands car and the car behind still stationary?

What was the cause of the second accident? What was the biker stopped for? As you say it was an identical accident, was this because someone was coming out of a driveway, or something else?

You say the road surface was the same as any other. There are many types of road surfaces all over the country some are better than others, some get rid of water better than others.

Does the road in your village have many manhole covers or potholes?

You also say these accidents where about 4 years ago. Now that the village road has had all the traffic calming measures put in place, has the amount of accidents dropped, I can’t imagine that you have a problem with speeding cars or bikes any more.

You say you take speed reading on the roads in your village, what kind of speed reading equipment are you using and are the people trained to use it properly?



If that’s the case then we won’t be able to give advise on what the traffic problems might be in your village.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

From all Veeger has said, I'm guessing that the problem is not speed but the high volume of traffic. It may well be that this is excessive for a small village road but it won't go away just by lowering limits.

The council might need to be lobbied to, for example, ban HGVs from taking this route. It is strange that the council has not done any speed checks after repeated accidents and complaints.

I am concerned that Veeger doesn't want us to query the assertions made. Maybe this is something to do with:

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

I've probably missed the boat here but if you're still answering questions, I'm intrigued by the mechanics of this accident.

A bike, hits the back of a car and pushes it into the front corner of another car hard enough to write BOTH cars off! Have I got that right? I'm struggling to picture this in my mind's eye!

I didn't pick this up but, you are right. the relative masses of the cars and the bike make this pretty surprising. The bike rder would most likely go over the top of the rearmost car.

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

I was trying to get to that earlier. I think what all this is about is that people in the village are having trouble getting out of their driveways due to the amount of traffic and that there are no pavements. I suspect (but might be wrong) that Veegers husband was trying to get out of his drive and a car slammed on, the biker hit the back of the car due to the road being wet, the car then hit Veegers husbands car.

I’m suspicious about it because of the points being made else where about reversing into driveways, and she makes a point of saying her husband came out front first.

I also wonder how the second accident was caused, was it by someone trying to get out of their driveway?

I could be wrong about all this, but it would be nice if Veeger came back and explained what’s happening in her village.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

This isn't a rural/urban issue at all. I live in the @rse end of nowhere and I thoroughly object to artificially low rural limits.



Don't post if you don't want to discuss! Why do people assume that they can change everyone's everyone's opinion in one post, then have a hissy fit when it doesn't work. Discuss! Argue! that's what forums are good at.

I'll back you on that one.

If the A27 near my house were still the main road along the south coast there would be far more accidents. The fact remains that many roads in Britain can't cope very well with the volume of traffic they handle, and one of the by-products of not coping is accidents.

I am sure this village is Banwell which is a cut through from weston to the A38 near the airport. Speed can't be an issue here as this village is on a hill with roads too narrow for two cars to go through. If there are a lot of accidents here it would be at low speeds and because of lack of judgment, not knowing if the other person is going to give way. anyone who drove faster then 30 through this village would have to be mad.

I agree, it's the same in my village, volume of traffic exasperated by the fact that twits in the local Council see fit to stick obstacles in the middle of the road with a miniority of twits with too much time on their hands who ask for them.

Unfortunately for villagers, it's the twits in Councils and Government who have been ultimately responsible for vehicles looking to rural routes in order that they get home at a reasonable hour. Our local Council has installed no fewer than 30 sets of traffic lights in out town and the congestion is getting near on unbearable to what it was 5 years ago. When a set of lights fails or they switch them off in order to carry out work, much of the traffic regulates itself. A Police Officer friend of mine is exasperated by the whole situation.

One of the biggest problems is with Councils allowing new flats to be built i back gardens an alike, they strike a deal with the developer who pays for new lights to be installed as part of the development, a roundabout would be perfectley adequate however for some reason has given way to Council controlled lights.

I'm sure that moaning about the lights is going to lead to them being removed, not.
You need to look at the broader picture. people are not voluntarily going to "give up the car", they are going to have to be forced to do so. Nobody in any "democratically elected" office is going to shoot themselves in the head by openly stating that they are going to ban cars, so they ban them by proxy. They make it hard work to go anywhere. And when you get there, hard work to park them. And even harder work to get back.
Traffic lights are perfect for that cause, they can be timed to obstruct traffic and steer traffic away from an area, by the simple method of drivers becoming trained, by the lights, to either not go one way or to go another way.
Too much traffic in one direction ?
Give the lights a longer opening in the other direction. Eventually, traffic [drivers] will learn and go another way.
Why do you think buses, and bus lanes, have lights that the bus can overide for free passage ?
Eventually, even the gps system will have the back roads blanked out....you can bet your life it's being worked on now.
I've driven around this town [bedford] for years....and know very well the routes to use to avoid the "congestion", except that those routes are now infected with "speed bumps" (humps). Funnily, the only ones with humps every 20 yards are the "rat run" routes.
Which is good, except that the only reason this town has got a traffic problem is because there is no way for traffic to get around it....the bypass proposed 50 years ago is only partially created, traffic on the A428 and the A6 HAS to go through the town. Face it, those in power absolutely HATE freedom of travel. Everyone using buses, trains and other "public" transport would be heaven for them. Pollution isn't the problem, it's freedom that is the problem.

"Pollution isn't the problem, it's freedom that is the problem"

Couldn't agree more!

That's the impression they're TRYING to give. The reality though is that motorists provide a huge source of income for the government, so if everyone did switch to public transport, you can bet your ass that other taxes would go up instead.