Safe Speed Forums

I was trawling through the web this morning about speedhumps and came across this councillor who made a quote on Solihull's 'have your say on speed humps website. At last there's a councillor who makes sense.

www.solihull-online.com/speed-comments.htm


"Looking down this thread it seems there are good arguments both for and against humps, so I'm not going to reiterate all of them, just the ones that make most sense out of the debate.
Humps undoubtedly slow most traffic, but not necessarily the sort that need to be slowed; boy racers rarely drop their speed going over them, and the noise this produces has to be heard to be believed.
The remainder of us just have to put up with them for the foibles of these few.
I'd also ask folks to remember that the roads are built specifically for the passage of traffic, and to my mind putting obstacles in the way of traffic defeats the basic purpose of building a road - you might just as well leave it as a muddy track with a few boulders strategically dug into the surface.
The way forward here is not to target the car specifically, but to educate the pedestrians and cyclists to keep away from moving traffic.
Speed on its own never killed anyone; it's peoples' lack of perception of speed that does the damage, and it's of little use screaming that the car shouldn't have been doing more that thirty M.P.H. when it hits you - you're just as dead!

Cllr Johnny Bramham, Elmdon."

Solihull has gone hump crazy - where they haven't loaded the area with cameras, or gone mad with 30mph limits protecting fields of cows, and something really needs to be done about it because common sense use of such measures was passed years ago.

I work in the area and having humped, camera'd and chicane'd about every road in the urban zones, they have moved into the rural parts.

The one that really drives me crazy is the "junction speed table" where they raise the road level by about 8" at country road intersections. Basically a very large and poorly signed speed hump on an open country road (30mph of course). Apart from being much too high and steep it means that the traffic on the main road slows down to 10mph as it approaches the junction (assuming it saw the signs) and traffic at the side road is left to guess as to what is happening - that is unless it is a company vehicle in which case it can be taken at the maximum discomfort speed of 30mph - they are much to big to skim unless you try it at about 100mph. In the dark the minimal markings are even harder to detect, and even if you know they are there, they can at best be described as a very dangerous distraction. Certainly they have caused a lot of damage according to the scratch marks on them. Or you do as I do, and change the route to an even smaller and less suitable road which they haven't attacked yet. Such roads are popular with walkers, cyclists and horses, so they are absolutely perfect for diverting the commuter traffic down. [sarcasm]

What sort of emergency response are people living in the country areas going to get? Oh I forgot, it is their fault for choosing to live in the country.