Road Safety - or not.

[Dan]

As was said earlier its not speed but the inappropriate use of it that kills. Our fastest roads the motorways, are also the safest, by a long chalk. High speed roads are still designed to be just that, we just dont build too many of them any more!

 

Traffic calming and "obstacles" are an easy way to reduce speed in urban areas and much more effective than lower speed limits. In fact I think it was Oxford police who reported one road with a 20mph limit had more accidents than it did before the limit was introduced... why?...because frustrated drivers were trying to overtake in dangerous places. So the debate goes on.

 

Incidentially we have plenty of 20mph limits in Exeter but follow a bus, or a police car as I was the otherday and you'll see that they still do 40!

 

Dan

[John S]

I live in the speed-bump capital of the World (and that is official, apparently) and I've seen bikers screaming down those streets with speed-bumps dodging through the level bits. I've also seen fire engines having to slow to a snails pace to go over those same bumps. Ambulance drivers suffer the same problem, but if I need the emergency services, I do not want them slowed down.

 

Our street is pretty busy, and at night you can hear car drivers going past at about the legal limit, but bikers roar past as if they are above the law.

 

I wonder how many people have died because the ambulance or the fire service got there a bit too late thanks to ill-conceived traffic calming measures....

 

BTW, Two Jags Prescott is MP for this particular part of England :mad:

 

Take care

[Dan]

John S:

Our street is pretty busy, and at night you can hear car drivers going past at about the legal limit, but bikers roar past as if they are above the law.

So we have the answer..... put fireman on bikes! they'd get there dead quick then!

 

Dan

[Colin Payne]

It's a tough one this and I've been on both sides of the fence. I've had bikes, many of them inappropiately fast, and a nice twisty road is like red rag to a bull. It's hard to take the competetive nature out of people and they will always try to take that certain bend faster than they have before. We live in a world where cars do upwards of 120mph for a standard saloon to 180+ from say a Honda Fireblade. Unless these vehicles are limited by our very nature we will try to screw as much as we can out of them. The other side of this for me is that I'm now a coach driver. My speed limits are 30 in a 30, 40 in a 40, 50 on a 60mph national speed limit road and 62 on a 70mph limit dual carriage or motorway. Now the lower speed limits I can break but the motorway limit I can't as the coach is electronically limited. HGVs are limited to 56mph. This means we(the coaches) that are not as heavy can pass the lorrys but we cannot use the outside lane(if M-way has 3 lanes). Now the difference between speeds is 8mph. Same from coach to car except cars can do a heck of a lot more therefore if something goes wrong the closing speed is raised considerably.

As to A-roads such as the A339, well in my opinion there is no solution. If you put humps in it makes the road even more dangerous and emergency vehicles would have their times raised considerably. Put in cameras and the locals would speed hop between them.(Have you been on the A3 lately to see the idiots braking from a ton to 50 in about a 100yards!). No speed limit will slow down the idiots who by their very competitive nature want to go faster and faster. As to people who think limiting cars will help well 70 in a 40 is still attainable though isn't it? Like I said my coach is limited to 62 but I could still do this in a 30!!

Only thing I could think of is that all vehicles are linked to some kind of radio signal that automatically limits the car when it reaches a lower limit. Seems a bit Big Brother but we are all so inconsistant we need help!

Rant Over!

Colin

[chesters1]

went down that very road the other night (to fetch daughter from A&E) HATEFULL road about every mile it has a bend :mad: we had the romans over for 400 years and we didnt learn to straighten roads ,as it was my first time to basingstoke (hey i dont get out much) i found it very confusing there is a big sign saying Basingstoke about 3 or 4 miles from another one saying the same thing :confused: and the hospital seems to be hidden deliberatly for the stranger trying to find it to have a crash trying to spot the "H" sign showing where it is :mad: i told my daughter if she`s rushed to hospital by anbulance again make sure its the Royal Surrey it may be a couple of miles further (from Alton) than Basingstoke but its a darn sight quicker to get to

 

[ 27. March 2004, 12:34 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]