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More dangerous nonsense from councils. I thought "blind bends" were supposed to be a safety hazard

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Indeed! I also notice the number of roundabouts now that have had stupid fencing put up on their approaches to obscure the view to the right...

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I won't slave for beggar's pay,
likewise gold and jewels,
but I would slave to learn the way
to sink your ship of fools

Q: "How can we make the roads safer?"
A: "I know how. Let's make them more dangerous"

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

Like others, I fear that the LA are touched by the loopy virus.

However, like many misguided safety schemes, there's a grain of truth and sense waiting to be teased out and exploited.

Where signs and markings foster excessive confidence, a reduction should deliver a genuine benefit. Not that I can really think of any obvious examples.

And what's happening with our cats eyes? They seem to be going gradually blind all over the country.

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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

This reminds me of something I read was being done in Wiltshire, a few years ago. There, they were removing the dotted white centre line in roads to make it more difficult to judge whether you had enough room to pass any oncoming vehicle. This, it was hoped, would force motorists to slow down, thereby reducing the number of accidents.

Absolute absurdity!

Maybe it's just "yoof speak"? You know the sort of thing:

"you is well wikkid man, you is dangerours, I mean, like DANGEROUS man, you is like so dangerous, you is, like, SAFE, innit"?

I guess this is taking the Dutch experiment too far. Interestingly, they seem to be barking up the wrong tree widening the M6 along the "Cumbrian Gap" if all this is true! That stretch has always been a reliable deliverer of a KSI or two each year - so they're getting rid of every lay-by on it and widening it. Presumably, if they wanted to make it safer, they'd have to put elevating bollards in each lane that randomly popped up now and again - just to keep driver's on their toes and stop them feeling too safe, you understand!

Why don't think calm down and think sensibly for a minute.

Over-engineered with too many signs and barriers... what could be the real problem out of those two things?

Signs - too many will distract drivers
Barriers - there to protect pedestrians from distracted drivers
Excellent visibility due to removing of objects blocking line-of-sight should not come close to the list of problems

The solution is simple, remove some signs, continue with safe barriers for pedestrians, continue with keeping visibility excellent for motorists

I do not understand how they managed to come to the conclusion to remove all 3 things

Thinking of lines in the centre, one or two lanes around here which are NOT wide enough for two cars two pass - let alone a 4x4 and car, have lines denoting the centre of the road.
Non-local traffic tends to push forward into these zones thinking they will get past - and by the time they realise they wont, it's time to anchor up, and decide who is going to reverse.
Being good at reversing, I find it quicker to stop sooner when I know they wont get past, or if they seem nervous about passing where I have stopped, then reverse back to a gateway or something - would'nt want to scratch that shiny paintwork by getting closer than 18 inches from that wall, would we!

Note van is up against the wall, WITH other vehicles behind, while Volvo 4x4 driver is a long way out from the wall, and could easily reverse back a few feet to a gateway - if the stupid cyclist hadn't decided to cycle up for a closer look at the holdup!
This lane has everything - a narrow hump back bridge, blind brows, dips, sharp bends, and is as narrow as this for much of it's length, yet has dividing lines in one or two places!
Articulated lorries venture down here to avoid going through Kendal's one way system!! Oh, the speed limit is NSL!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

"Overengineered" = "designed for the old speed limit"

Yes a number of drivers will properly assess the situation based on the lack of guidance, but so many more will continue at the speed they have always used and statistics will mean that fatalities will increase.

I think this is part of a plan to either make daft speed limits self enforcing or enable more scameras and lower limits

Where I live they have installed visibility fences on roundabouts and now I encounter right of way violations almost every day. previously I could see them approach and see that they were not going to give way. Now I only have about 10-15m warning which at 40mph (the limit for the road) is less than 1 second.

Thankfully someone crashed into one and it has not been replaced, so I do get a peak warning. when I complained I was told statistics showed they improved safety - but I wonder how RTTM has played in this

you have got to post that in the comments..

but perhaps change "old" to "sensible"

This is good news!!! I posted here some time ago about the problems we have with rat runners / speeders in our village. Our Council have agreed to remove the road markings - this article gives me hope that they may do more!

Just to clarify - we have no street lights, no footpaths, winding / narrow roads and a 30mph limit (a "safe speed" would be more like 20 - 25mph). We have no A or B routes through the village and there are alternative fast roads / main routes available to motorists.

In a nutshell, people are frightened to walk anywhere and residents cannot get out of their driveways safely - there have been several accidents. A plan is underway to make the village a very unpleasant and inconvenient short cut:

Following a meeting to discuss the issue local farmers have offered to take tractors out and herd livestock at peak times, horse riders and the two horse riding schools in the village have agreed that in daylight rush-hour they will go out riding (this has started and is already causing major hold ups!!!). The rat run passes very large houses and cars use the driveways of these houses as "passing places". A number of residents have agreed to put a stop to this by blocking and gating their drives.

We also have requested the planting of trees out from the side of the road in order to obscure straight stretches of road where speeding is prevalent - village residents are willing to pay for this. And we have asked for the Speed Watch scheme to be introduced.

Other very unpleasant things are planned so that motorists are deliberately delayed and held up so that hopefully they get the message and take the roads that were built for them in the first place.

People Power!

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GROOVE ARM

Traffic calming at its illogical worst!




Aren't all roads built for motorists? (as well as other road users)
Besides, I had previously asked you to consider why people are forced to 'rat run', did you ever find an answer?

Last time I travelled the A158 on the approach from the south-east, there were roadworks where they were ripping out the cats-eyes and filling the resulting holes with tarmac. Luckily I now know that there is a left-hand 90 degree bend which if not navigated correctly will mean taking a long diversion through a field.

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Prepare to be Judged

The problem is that these people start from a 100% presumption of accident, and work backwards from there. Sure, if you're having an accident, then slower is better in the majority of cases, but no accident is better again!

Suppose a stretch of road has been "sufficiently" engineered, to the point where it has had no accidents for an appreciable period, and seems unlikely to have any, other than freaks, in the near future. Is removing these measures going to make that stretch safer? What can be safer than no accidents, a few but at slow speeds? What it is more likely to do is to set drivers who are new to the stretch at odds with those who have driven it many times before, and confront those who know what to expect from it with those who would have known what to expect from it if it hadn't been "dumbed down".

So how much do these Witch Doctors and Soothsayers get paid to come up with these proposals, perhaps I should go for a career change:

"I propose that all safety bars be removed from roller-coasters, since that may make people think twice about going on the ones that go faster than 30mph, which is inherently dangerous!"

I think the quote must have a spelling mistake! Obviously "draft Guidelines" should read "DAFT guidlines"! That makes more sense.

I have a couple of questions... You use the term "rat runners" but are these just people making best use of the highway real estate available? Surely if they had a better route, they would use it. It seems the term is used to describe anyone who uses a road in 'our village' that doesn't live there. Everyone has an equal right to use the road assuming they've paid road tax etc. Or are they equally entitled to insist that their road tax is not spent on your roads?

You also use the term "safe speed" - making an assessment of the technical complexity of the road (although you forgot conditions, vehicle and driver, which are the other important dimensions). Claiming a safe speed of 25mph to be the optimal safe speed, may be correct, but then you go on to say you want to obscure straight stretches to deter 'speeders' surely these 'speeders' are just applying the same assessment you did and determining the 'safe speed'.

Your complaint seems more of a rant about traffic volumes than any dangerous or excessive driving. Unless you only just moved in its likely the roads you refer to had a National speed limit on, not so long ago. Did you not assess this risk of increased traffic when you purchased your home. Or did you like most - see the appeal of a reasonably priced home next to an apparently quiet road. Supply and demand have increased and now your home is not worth as much as it might be until you get rid of all this out of town traffic.

If you discourage people from driving past your home they will just have to drive past someone else's. But more seriously if you deliberately make the roads dangerous, you may well contribute to the loss of life and misery of one of these so called rat runners. Perhaps you'd be willing to tell their family that its an acceptable price to pay for piece and quiet?

Well put diy

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

And then one day a villager will get knocked down after walking out from behind a tree in front of another local resident's car, and you'll wonder where it all went wrong.