Following my coming together with a cyclist earlier today, where I think poor visibility from someone's overgrown hedge played a part, I've been looking at the council web site to see who to write to about road maintenance (not that the hedge is belongs to the council, but at the cop shop they told me to speak to the council highways mob). Anyhow, clicking around the pages I found this.
http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/Deciding+the+speed+limit?opendocumentQuote:
How does the County Council decide the speed limit?
Setting a speed limit is a complicated task and many things must be considered, such as:
- the alignment of the road;
- the speed most motorists expect to travel along this road;
- the type of road and where it is located.
More details of how this is done can be found on the Policy on Speed Management page.
Okay, fair enough. Presumably that's not an exhaustive list, and it's interesting that they say they consider "the speed most motorists expect to travel along this road". That bit sounds almost 85th percentile-y. So wondering what else was involved I had a look at the Policy on Speed Management page. This is what it says (my emphasis).
http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/Policy+on+Speed+Management?opendocumentQuote:
What is our policy on speed management?
Our policy, which was originally approved by committee in January 2000, states that "The County Council will seek to reduce actual vehicle speeds through the application of the appropriate speed assesment and through education for road users as part of the Speed Management stategy".
The Speed Management Strategy is now under review and when published will include policies for setting speed limits, traffic calming and on police speed enforcement cameras.
Call me picky, but I can't see how they square a policy aimed at a blanket reduction of speed with considering the speed most drivers expect to do down a given road. By and large I don't have any problem with most of the limits in Surrey, at least not the bits I know well. There's a couple of odd ones, like where you can do 60mph on an NSL single carriageway road and get off onto a dual carriageway with a 50mph limit (guess what... that's a new limit
), and another place where two very similar roads running almost parallel have different limits. Still, mostly it seems okay to me. But it's odd that they appear to have two opposing policies on deciding limits, one to accommodate drivers and one to slow 'em all down regardless. They haven't actually established a need for blanket reductions in speed - they seem to just take it for granted. It's also interesting that neither page has anything at all to say on the subject of hazards. Shouldn't the number of hazards along a stretch of road be taken into account when setting the limit? I'm expect Surrey CC do, but it would be good to know for sure.
What I think this actually means is that they're trying to play to both sides. They want it to look like speed limits are set in the best interests of drivers, but on the other hand they knock up this PC mission statement effort that says they're going to put the brakes on all those evil cars. So which is it in reality?
If I was pro-camera I'd be just as bothered by this.
Oh, and call me really picky but they can't spell assessment.
Or strategy.
Oh WTH, my earlier post was full of typos, guess we should let them off.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
Members
So they will have foot in each camp and fall over.....