Safe Speed Forums

Just watched a report on local swampy news about the abnormal number of crashes on a road known as the 40-foot drain in Norfolk.
This is a single lane NSL road, which just happens to run directly alongside a very deep drainage canal.

It is a truly awful piece of road, but is arrow straight. Most accidents caused by moron overtaking and inattention when pulling out from side roads. Reporter goes on to list its faults:

Road subsiding into canal, causing it to be very undulating (true, but hardly a challenge for a modern car).
Monster potholes (hello council).
Daft overtaking (you would have to be bonkers to overtake at NSL speed on this road - it's very narrow with a huge camber drop at the edges).
Total lack of any safety barrier between road and canal.

Conclusion of report; yes, you've guessed it - road needs a speed camera, preferably SPECS!!! Gahhh! Why do they always default to speed cameras for every single road safety issue!

Proper answer (IMHO):

Train drivers not to pull out/overtake on blatantly dangerous roads.
Re-surface/re-engineer road to not be narrow and undulating.
Build a bloody crash barrier!!

But the camera (although the least effective) is the only one to produce a steady revenue stream. So, forget about Education and Engineering, and hello to a single aspect of Enforcement.

Heard of the 3 R of education - Readin,Ritin, rithmitic.
Now meet the 3 E's of road safety - enforcement( to the bone), extraction(of max profit) and embellishment( of false standards)

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Perhaps they are forgetting William McNamara when he said 'Measure what is important, do not make important that which can be measured.'

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

Or wan politician( could have been spanish) - extract, extract, extract.

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Couldn’t agree with you more, BlackadderTF!

This reminds me of a recent near ‘near-miss’ I had on the A49 south of Shrewsbury, a section of highway I know very well.

This is a difficult stretch of winding, rural, NSL single carriage ’A’ road which has a poor safety record. I knew from a recent previous journey that there were road surfacing works going on, which were poorly sign-posted.

Spotting the pathetically small, battered yellow sign, ( actual road works not in sight yet, by the way ) I slowed from about 55mph to 45mph. The lady behind me started tailgating, acting frustrated, and looking as though she was going to overtake!

I began to get worried, wondering what to do. I decided, rightly or wrongly, to go even slower, hoping she would somehow get the message. Just before she started the overtake, she spotted the roadworks, and slotted back behind me. Phew! Relief! I caught her eye in the mirror, and she certainly looked embarrassed.

This behaviour is all too common these days I’m afraid. I get the feeling that because the official message is that your speed is the all-important element of your driving, people believe that because the road is NSL - you are obliged to go that speed, no matter what else is going on!

This is a CLASSIC example of the fundamental flaw in our current road safety policy, "The answer is a speed camera, now what was the question?"

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Too true, good example from on the way to work yesterday morning: Back roads out from my house, narrow, very poor state of repair, tight bends, so even though it's NSL a safe speed is well below that.
I was doing about 40 when a young lady in an old fiesta appeared on my ar*e. She followed me for about half a mile through both tight bends at around a metre off my bumper and I could just see her thinking "but it's 60?? WTF is this pillock doing 40 for??".
She was so damn dangerous that I considered pulling in and letting her kill herself (I had the traction control cut in on one bend, probably due to ice/mud, so I would hate to see what would have happened at the speed she clearly wanted to take them at - damn sure 1.0l early '90s fiestas haven't got TCS).
Stupid bit was that when we both got onto the A1, she tried to overtake by cruising past at 70, only for me to shoot off into the distance at a "safe speed for the conditions".