I have a real conflict of interests with Bannerigg. For me it’s an evocative characterful piece of road, which defined to me years since that I was ‘arriving’ at the lakes for my hols. I’d hate to see it sanitised too much. It’d lose its romanticism (for me anyway
).
There are some issues with it. It catches some people out, and it’s generally those who are unprepared for the kink at the bottom which can throw people onto the wrong side of the road. It’s entirely due to inappropriate speed for the level of observation and anticipation combined with bad position for the bend at the base of the dip.
If you know the road it is a nice bit of road to drive, and I have negotiated it safely in both directions at 75mph+ (in response to serious calls
).
I attended a fatal there a few years ago, the day after dishing a ticket out to the male driver for no sealtbelt. He vowed he would continue not to wear it. He kept his promise for 24 hours, when inappropriate speed caused his Metro to swing across into the southbound carriageway into the path of a 3.5t panel van. The use of his seatbelt would have offered him little extra chance of survival.
The obvious solution to me is for the correct advice to be offered to people prior to the descent. As Pete says the 30mph advisory needs to have a point - how often do people simply ignore the 50mph advisory matrix on the motorway?
If it advised that the road layout required some caution, that would have a much better effect.
I’d like to see VAS (Vehicle Activated Sign) perhaps 50 metres down the northbound descent saying ‘SLOW’ (for speeds over 45??) with a general advisory sign below saying ‘Difficult Double Bend’ or something more catchy.
There are a couple of other problems also at Bannerigg which need to be addressed, and they involve injudicious overtaking by southbound traffic.
Multimap shows the road thus.
And the aerial image can be seen on this link (with usual recognition to Multimap).
Looking at Ernest’s overview, you can see the road as it reaches the summit at Alice Howe from the top of Bannerigg.
My own diagram (drawn from memory) is below.
Traffic can become impatient if stuck behind a heavy slow mover travelling up the hill towards the summit of Alice Howe from Windermere (ie travelling
into the little square inset in Ernest's photo). The instinctive think to do is to move out to overtake on the descent, as there is ~200 metres of broken line, but our heavy slow mover is now using 9.81m/s/s of gravity plus his own horses to accelerate down the hill
. On more than one occasion I have seen this about to happen on the overview while I'm about to make the northbound descent from Bannerigg into the dip. Knowing from personal experience that the Fiesta which is trying to overtake will not outaccelerate the mobilecrane or whatever on descent, and sure as eggs is eggs, when we all arrive at the base of the dip, the Fiesta will still be over the now double white line system on my side of the road still trying to overtake
. Survival instinct has taught me that nice slow observant progress tucked well into the left is the way to deal with that problem.
It would be better dealt with by double white lines all the way through the dip from summit to summit. But there are reasonable and safe overtaking opportunities for bikes and reasonably powered cars with drivers who have their wits about them. Perhaps a chevronned metre wide phantom island with a broken line border would address this problem, removing the desire to overtake by all but the confident.
Another problem is the south bound overtaker on the twin lane ascent from the dip up to Bannerigg summit. The two lanes start on the left hand bend which then starts to climb the hill. The main entrance to Bannerigg farm is the middle entrance of the three shown on multimap. It is a well known farm for retailing locally grown produce, and for that reason on occasion the second lane will have traffic slowing down to turn right. Obviously on occasion it will also have to stop for the northbound lane to clear. What often happens is that the southbound traffic, even (or usually) locals move out to overtake when there is no way of knowing that the second lane is clear. I’m surprised there have been no more serious collisions as a result of this problem, but I have personally attended two serious RTCs there in the last 12 years, caused by precisely this problem.
For me the convenience of being able to overtake at this location is not balanced by the danger posed. There is no great benefit to be gained by the overtake of one or perhaps two vehicles on this 300 metres of dual lane, and it also encourages ludicrous overtakes of queues of four or five cars which can conflict with northbound traffic about to enter the dip.
It would therefore make sense to do away with the second lane on the southbound ascent to Bannerigg, to provide a protected right turn for traffic entering Bannerigg farm from the southbound lane, and a phantom island separating both lanes, initially bordered southbound by a solid line, then by a broken line after the farm to allow overtaking of slow vehicles by bikes or the confident motorist.