Safe Speed Forums

Someone I know has been repeatedly denied planning permission to develop a plot of land, one of the excuses, er I mean reasons was that the Highways Agency would object to it on the grounds of visibility. Probably crap (it's a long story) but if it is true you have to wonder how they've got the gall to come up with that while they're deliberately obscuring traffic on main roads. Anyone got something like this nearby?

This one isn't local to me, though we have one not unlike it fairly close. This is actually in Wiltshire, and anyone who did the A303 trip to the West Country this bank holiday weekend will recognise it despite the slightly blurred pics.

This is the view approaching the roundabout from the west:


Doesn't look too bad, but once you get close to the roundabout, just at the point when you really want to have a good look out for what traffic may already be on it and where you might fit in a gap (or not) this is what you see:


We've talked before on these forums about being prepared to stop but planning to go when approaching roundabouts, but the clowns that came up with the idea of preventing you seeing whether its safe clearly have one aim in mind - to make nearly everyone stop. It's often possible for a half decent to see where a gap will appear on a roundabout and adjust speed to slot into it safely. But if a driver can see there is no such gap they're not going to go, so what's with the fencing?

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

I think we need to put in an FoI to find out how this scheme is justified.

We need to decide first if it's Highwys Agency or Local Authority. If it's LA, then someone local should do it. If it's HA then I'd be proud to do it.

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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

Thats ridiculous, probably dreamt up by some anti car nutcase!

I'd like to meet the guy that thought up that idea, because in most cases, the people who make life difficult for drivers are left wingers. One of the other big issues with lefties is environmental issues, so I'd have a field day telling this iddiot that not only has he caused more danger on an approach to a junction, he's caused a tree to be uneccessarily cut down!

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

Surprise surprise that's in Wiltshire...There is a roundabout in Swindon that I have to cross most days that has some nice pretty landscaping in the middle of it that prevents you from seeing anything around the other side of it - problem is that the roundabout's so small that you can't see far enough round it to see if its clear to proceed...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, this may be a scheme to stop headlights of cars on the roundabout dazzling those approaching.

More realistically, it's almost certainly a scheme to make people slow down as they can't see anything. If you have a low car then quite often the Armco or chevron signs obscure your view approaching roundabouts.

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

Got one roundabout where the County Council announced that "in the interests of road safety" mounds of earth would be placed on both sides just before the junction.The explanation was to make sure all drivers stopped at the "Give way " signs before the roundabout as they had had a lot of tail enders when some cars stopped to see if the road was clear whilst other drivers could see that nothing was coming/they could safelyperform the manoevre but the car in front stopped suddenly.
A bit more educationto both sorts of drivers might have paid dividents me thinks.
Now at rush hour we have Qs (big uns) at this roundabout with cars stopping , whereas in the past it was possible to be first in line and adjust your speed to pass safely without stopping.
Another bit of blind reading of the rules.
Before someone says "you should stop " - I say why - 1) it's a give way 2) if i approach at a sensibile speed i have the option to accererate or stop ( part of a well known bib COAST rules - NO)

It's a dualled section of the A303, so I suspect probably HA though I'm not certain of this. I'll have a look round the HA site, but unfortunately i can't remember exactly where the damn thing is.

(Edit: the roundabout, not the HA website )

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

Okay, I think I've got it. It's the Countess Roundabout where the A303 crosses the A345. Link.

I'm not sure how to tell if the HA are responsible for this junction or not.

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

The HA are responsible for all trunk roads in England, so if it's on the A303 (which is a trunk road) then the HA should have been responsible for it.

I guess someone needs to ring up the LA and ask. Someone local would be best... (And I'm very busy... )

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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

Well, I'm hardly local being at least an hour east of there, but I take the hint . I'll see if I can find out which LA it would be in, but having just checked the HA website I found a nice big map at the bottom of this page showing all the HA roads... and like RichardB says, it's an HA road. Still, is it possible that it was put up at the LA's request, or that they told the HA they wanted it and were told to go ahead?

BTW, I've been googling to see if I could find out more, and bizarrely this is supposed to be turned into a grade separated junction as part of the Stonehenge road improvement scheme. Sounds like a good idea to me, but WTH do this fencing business in the meantime?

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

We have these now local to Basingstoke, I'll give our LA a call and find out who's responsibility they are.

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Former Military Police Officer and accident investigator

Countess Roundabout is mentioned right at the bottom of this page and the dates are about right (the fencing appeared last year) but I don't know if it's got anything to do with it. No links, no proper name in the address bar, just an IP address. Anyone know how to find out who/what is using a particular IP?

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

OK had a good chat with Hampshire County Council "Engineering Consulting Department" formerly known as the Safety Engineering Team.

These fences were errected a bout a year ago as I recall it, I spoke with the engineer who led the project. There were 10-12 ( ) injury accidents at the roundabout above the M3 (Junction 5) involving side swipes and rear end shunts in a 3 year period.

The fences were errected to force traffic to slow down as it approaches and since they were errected there have been 2 injury accidents (they told me they have been up for 2 years but I think its only a year).

At the same time they put the fences there they also put anti skid surface down and also increased the give way signage.

This was a county scheme and they were contacted a few months ago by Swindon to ask whether this had been successful as Wiltshire were considering the same approach on some of their roundabouts.

The engineer who led the project is called Mick Barrett contact number is via Hant council switchboard 01962 2870500.

Not a formal enquiry but he was very pleased to be talking about it (I got a feeling that it was his baby)

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Former Military Police Officer and accident investigator

Wiltshire County Council

http://www.ripe.net/whois?form_type=simple&full_query_string=&searchtext=195.110.176.50&do_search=Search

There are sites out there that will reveal the registration information about IP addresses effectively duplicating the UNIX "whois" network command.

Another useful technique and one that works with this site is to truncate the address, so the following reveals all:

http://195.110.176.50/documents/

You got me enthused to find out

DNS Stuff have lots of nice tools... First I tried a reverse DNS but it doesn't have a reverse DNS entry. The most useful information I found was from doing an IPWHOIS query:

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=195.110.176.50

Looks like it's Wiltshire County Council.

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Andrew.

Oh you beat me to it!

I didn't know it was as simple as just doing a whois on the IP address

And if you go to http://195.110.176.50/ it redirects you to their main web site

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Andrew.

Responding to Patch:

The problem with introducing a wide range of measures at one time is that you cannot measure the effectiveness of each measure alone.

For example by introducing the high-grip surfaces alone or the additional signage alone the side swipes might have reduced to zero, and the reduced visibility boards might have been a contributory factor in the accidents that they still have.

Ideally you get 7 similar roundabouts with similar rates and try each possible combination (3 x 1 each, 3 x 2 each and 1 x all three) to determine which mechanism works best.

What I still find astounding is the way our local government appears to be organised for maximum cost and duplication. West Sussex have a team and labs for looking at road surfaces and other road safety measures, so do Hampshire, and East Sussex, and Surrey, and Kent, and Wiltshire, and .... OK there might be minor local differences, but is there not a better way of organising things?

Oh I forgot, we need to have at least 30% of the population working in the public sector because that way they won't notice that there are no productive jobs left.

Er yeah I know that trouble is the engineering consulting (formerly the safety engineering team) don't

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Former Military Police Officer and accident investigator

Thanks all about the IP question. I'd actually stumbled across the same page by accident while browsing through the Wilts website. Trust me to do it the hard way. So that page suggests Wilts Council did something to the Countess Roundabout, or at least were aware that something was done. But I also found a whole ten(ish) pages on the HA site called the A303 Route Management Strategy March 2004. Load of waffle basically, but does specifically mention the Countess Roundabout. Emails to both I think.

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