Safe Speed Forums

I think that being elected to a Parish Council must mean that you have all your commonsense and critical faculties removed.

The Parish Magazine from the next village to me has a council meeting report where they go on about trying to get the speed limit on the main A-class road reduced to 30mph from its current NSL, 50 and 40 areas. Everyone ignores the limits at the moment as they are inappropriately low, so why they think that putting up a 30mph sign will make any difference is anyone's guess.

However, one of the reasons used to support their submission to the Local Authority is that there have been several "near misses" at the entrance to a special school for young offenders. This entrance is along a long 50mph straight, has excellent visibility splays each way and has a slip road for traffic turning left into the entrance. The only reason for any near misses here will be total lack of observation by people pulling out. Speed is not a factor - stupidity is.

This is a straight, wide A-class s/c road and should be NSL.

(P.S. The actual reason for wanting the limit lowered is to reduce disturbance from vehicle noise but the loudest vehicles are the frequent tractors racing along at 25 to 30mph.)

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

I resent (and represent) that remark!!

I count myself among their number - although I can report that I am a (sometimes lone) voice at some of our meetings when these issues are discussed!

One of my council colleagues suggested a reduction from NSL to 30mph on a tiny lane past his house.

I went out and tried, and had trouble averaging 25mph.
I suggested that they flattened a severe hump outside his home, to which he said that it was the only thing which slowed traffic.

WRONG - compliant drivers slow, problem drivers think it is a great wheeze to pile over the hump in their Corsas and Pug 206s, at a high enough speed to take off!

Now if a few more of you took up office, then the few of us there already would stand more chance of getting something done!

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

When consulting these road issues what facilities does your (EM) Council have at it's disposal to review, request and research, road data to ensure that a proper road engineering decision is made, than simply what those who sit in authority think about for themselves and their own (and in many ways limited) personal experiences.
Surely there are road engineers that are appointed to look into this are there not ?
And are those engineers employed by Government directly or Council Authority and can they be influenced by local decision makers ?
Engineering and solid well founded solutions to real problems have to be considered, and when examples like the one malcolmw shows, as a really appalling lack of understanding and appreciation for road understanding, that situation cannot help but make many wonder just what is going on.

It sounds to me that Councils need proper research and advice, and then govern appropriately from that advice. Personal opinion and experiences of Councilors, cannot be enough alone, to decide on good road engineering solutions.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/villagespeeds.html

may be helpful.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Any research in Parish and Town Councils is usually limited to personal observations and comment by councillors, representations by the public, or a letter from the clerk to the District, County Council or Highway Authority with questions raised.

Before I became a councillor, as a concerned member of the public I raised the case of Bannerigg on the A591, providing photographs of accident sites, and comments from a police officer I had discussed it with on these forums, and I also obtained crash data for the A591 between Kendal and Windermere, which showed Bannerigg as a black spot.

I made suggestions as to a possible remedy, and the council were advised by another policeman, who was there to give police information to the council, and commented favourably on my research, and the solution proposed.
This was then sent forward to the county road engineer, and two years later he made a complete balls up of the scheme and served up a dogs dinner which has cost a lot of money and achieved little.
Worse still, he has imposed a 50 limit on the section between Ings and Windermere, and a wide central hatched lane, which leads drivers who know that the lines are broken, to use this in the approach to bends - with the risk of meeting oncoming drivers doing the same!

He tries to take credit for coming up with a scheme to solve the problem, and identifying the same - but he really is useless, and everyone with any understanding of the subject says so!

Generally, councillors are like the public - they think in a simplistic way that does not see the full results of the solutions they propose - such as slowing traffic generally leads vehicles to drive closer together, making it harder for drivers to pull out of side roads, which THEY thought would be easier if they were going slower!

It is frustrating, as the councils can only make calls on others, and cannot fund changes.

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

I have written to my parish council on several occasions about their seeming obsession with "speeding in the village" to the exclusion of almost everything else. I have got the usual "thank you for your interest" reply but why is it that there are never any councillors who want to raise limits? If I got on the PC there would be such bad feeling that it would be counter productive. And then there are the true believers in global warming ...

Your point about bunching in higher volume traffic situations is a point that people just don't understand. They think that a lower limit would make it easier to cross the road but it won't. Still, they will ask for a pelican crossing next.

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

Plus as I've pointed out here before, a lower limit means higher traffic levels even without taking driver behaviour in to account; a lot of the time people complain about traffic speeds when what they mean (to a degree, and even if they don't know it) is traffic volume.

Yes, here's a typical comment from our local paper about the high accident rate on a busy trunk road. The last accident was a guy stepping out in front of a car from behind a parked caravan at 3 AM and the accident before was an old guy dying from a heart attack and ploughing into a lorry.


"How can reducing the speed limit and stopping overtaking cause more accidents? In the last couple of years there have been many fatalities between Tern Hill and Newport, as well as the section south of Newport.

There are parts where 60mph may be ok, such as Newport and Hinstock bypasses, but in between a reduction in speed limit is long over due..........Clearly accidents will continue to happen in these conditions until the speed limit is lowered to 30 or 40mph passed peoples houses."

This on one of the country's main trunk roads.....clearly, we have an uphill struggle...the houses he is on about are spaced at about one every half mile to a mile.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.