Safe Speed Forums

The only places where chicanes enforce a slow-down is on the racetrack.

Everywhere else they may decrease average speeds along the route but they increase peak speeds as people rush to get through each chicane.

They cause accidents, they cause conflict; they cause global warming*, they do absolutely nothing for road safety.

There is a local road that leads through a residential estate to the local Supermarket. It has a bit of a slope on it and the noisy do gooders claimed that it was highly dangerous due to speeding drivers, so some prat in the council installed a set of chicanes despite there being no record of road accidents on the road at all.

Within a couple of years there had been 4 serious accidents on the road, and numerous minor or unreported ones, and everybody on the estate hates them and are campaigning for them to be removed. The plastic bollards mounted on the chicanes are destroyed weekly by vehicles just going streight over them, and I had assumed that they were caused by "boy racers", but I now realise that it is just the awful design of the chicanes that is at fault.

Back in November I had reason to do some emergency shopping just around dusk on a rainy night, and guess what? In poor light, but not dark enough for headlights to work effectively, and in the rain they just vanish from visibility! There are just 3 dark plastic posts showing white or red reflectors (about 3" square) with red on your side of the road and a sign that indicates priority in the vicinity. In the winter weather and rain and poor light these reflectors reflected nothing. People are hitting these things because they just cannot see them. The fact that the road surface has a particularly low level of grip only makes things worse.

It can only be a matter of time before a car runs into one taking out the posts, and a later vehicle gets deflected by the unmarked curb in the middle of the road into a mother pushing a pram along the pavement - an accident that would be caused by the chicanes.

Incidentally, although it is universally agreed that the installations of these chicanes was one of the worst road safety decisions ever made, they are still there because there is no money available for their removal and replacement by speed humps.


* this might be some environmental bull, but will somebody point out to Gordon Brown the hypocrisy of raising Car taxes to reduce CO2 emissions, and then flying to Mozambique for a photo opportunity with Nelson Mandela.

I hate chicanes. They cause needless sharp changes of direction increasing wear on tyres and suspension bushes, and increase fuel consumption and hence pollution.

They are bad enough in the dry and absolutely lethal in snow/icy conditions. An old man was hurt near me in winter just passed when he skidded over a chicane on an icy road. He was driving at around 12mph prior to. I know this, I was the car behind.

Buses? Hah, theres one chicane here the buses can't quite negotiate, and the kerb on one of the corners is all blackened with rubber as each bus must rub the kerb as it passes through.

Conflicts, aggression, pissed off road users (and it's called traffic calming ).

Don't even get me started on pillow speed bumps. I have to drive over the pavement on one road here as my exhaust catches. I pay my taxes, and it's a public road. I'm absolutely damned if I'm going to be denied the use of it because the council has made the road unpassable to a vehicle of reasonable ride height.

BW - still on a one man (used in the loosest possible sense) crusade to remove every human about humans I see. Let me know how you get on. I won't hold my breath...

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Yeah - life’s tough, then you die! But when you say “challenged”, do you mean those who just broke the law because they were immature and just felt like it (like litter bugs, fly-tippers, vandals and certain kinds of road-slob) or those who constructed a moral case?

It seems to me that you could make your case (feeble as it is) without accruing more speeding tickets if you wanted to. In the meantime (and long may that be), if you will break the law, you will be penalised if you get caught. So get with the programme.

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And so on, and so on....

"basingwerk...

...Posts: 2064"

Rather speaks for itself.

Johnnytheboy:
Joined: 25 Sep 2005
Posts: 295

Hm.. you've got a long way to go, Johnnytheboy. But you are wrong as usual - I haven’t been posting much lately. This campaign is doomed without me helping. The speed limits are here to stay.

Everybody (even you) knows the campaign is nothing to do with road safety, so get off it! It’s just a single-issue campaign by a group of heavy-footed mavericks who need to grow up a little bit.

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I stole this .sig

Hey, basingwerk me ol' mate, surely this is a wind up???
Do you seriously believe what you wrote here?

If so, then your credibility as a poster who usually tries to argue an alternative viewpoint with at least a smidgeon of balance and substance has just dropped a significant amount, in my eyes at least .

Intelligent comments: 0

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

2065......

... and still: 0

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

BW, you are getting sloppy!!

You have altered the quote, and avoided my question regarding your wish for a slavish adhereance to the law!!


And what on earth makes you think that like many others here, I am totting up speeding tickets while we argue our case??
If you look back through my posts and topics, you will see that I have initialised debate on other issues besides speeding or cameras.

In particular, I am on the case of the Highways Authority - who when a road sign is knocked down, fail to reinstate it for nearly two years, or in another case, replaced a bend warning sign two days after a fatal accident - presumably just to cover their a**es because it was 4 months since it got knocked down!
There is a lot more to road safety than speed cameras, or slavishly obeying all laws. If you dont have planning permission for a TV ariel or satelite dish, then YOU are breaking the law. A simple oversight, which causes no harm to anyone.... unless it blows down in a gale and lands on somebody. Of course you wont get transported to Australia nowadays! And I wont stoop to compare you with fly tippers, litter bugs or vandals! Nor the Tolepuddle martyrs!!

But what about that altered quote?

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

It is hard for some. Just look at poor pogo -



He still has plenty of growing up to do before he could argue a case!

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I stole this .sig

Look Ernest, it’s time to start sticking inside the limit. You know it, I know it, even poor pogo knows it (when he stops repeating himself like a nutcase). I accept that you have a right to challenge the law, but until you succeed (which I hope you never will), the mature thing to do is to try to live within the law, if it is not too much trouble for you, thank you very much.

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I stole this .sig

Yeah, I do. I think SafeSpeed is a clever idea, but wholly misguided. As well as individual behaviour, group behaviour is influenced by speed limits. Metrics such as average speeds in built up areas, social norms, group dynamics, and political acceptance are involved. The campaign is blind to most of that, so I conclude that it is about removal of constraints, rather than safety. I might have been swayed, but the campaign has continued to focus on where (it believes) removal of constraints is aligned with safety. But (as SafeSpeed has conceded, I believe) the evidence used to test that alignment has never been adequately confirmed by independent experts.

Unless that is done, I’ll continue to think of this as a hate campaign by mavericks against real safety measures. Fundamentally, speed limits have a political as well as technical dimension, and that is why a campaign based, in the main, on self-interest should fail. Only time will tell.



Don’t cry, supertramp

Here’s something to cheer you up – an article on the Flâneurs, who worshiped slowness, and took their tortoises out shoppng with them. That’s the way to do it!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaneur


PS: Edited to use "mavericks", instead of "fruitcakes", which is slightly less derogatory.

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One thing I've found is by driving more slowly you realise how bad other drivers actually are at negotiating hazards. Most don't even recognise them.

I know – it’s really shocking once you slow up. You have time to see what jerks many drivers really are.

BTW: is it a good thing? Is it better to zoom along too, and fail to realise how bad other drivers are at negotiating hazards? Or are you causing other drivers to act like jerks, by driving more slowly yourself?

What’s the guff on that, mpaton2004?

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It's a mixture probably. By driving more slowly I could be seen as impeding progress and causing frustration, but I simply hate having other drivers cause me distraction by driving 2 feet from my rear bumper. I find if you slow down to increase the gap in front they simply maintain the same distance or drive more aggressively to try and make you pull over.

The biggest thing that irks me is people bombing it down streets containing doubleparked cars at the limit without a care in the world. It happened today, idiot in a VW Beetle pulls out in front of me on a junction then proceeds to accelerate away up to I estimate 40mph down a section of road that is wide enough for one and a bit cars because of the cars parked either side.

Perhaps they drive close to try to force you to speed up. I suspect some drivers comply with that, which is dangerous in itself, as it validates the behaviour in the abuser’s (tiny) mind - they get what they want.



I know – scum bags!



Yeah, how come there are no mobile cameras in that street?

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I stole this .sig

I absolutely agree. I would be happy to see mobile / fixed cameras on every residential street in the country. It's the fact they're mainly on straight roads with relatively few hazards that annoys me.

Those remarks are deeply offensive to me. They are entirely false and I expect you to substantiate them (which you cannot of course) or withdraw them.

And there's no bloody self interest here, let me assure you.

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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