You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
oh wise STW. I hear it alot from parents that the council or the government should do something on X road before an accident happens. The council or the government usually reply . "There have been no accidents , there is no evidence for putting in safety measures" which of course the parents then reply "will it take an accident to do something".... accusations of blood on your hands etc. What does one say to that?
i saw on another thread on here about putting in a ped. crossing to improve safety, despite there being no accidents and that lots of studies show that building them actually leads to accidents.... but the parents feel better for it...
thoughts, ramblings?
thoughts, ramblings?
Definitely ramblings...
Any decision to spend on pedestrian, safety camera or cycle facilities is always driven by the pattern of KSI stats on that section of road. People really do have to die before action is taken.
the parents then reply “will it take an accident to do something”
That's usually how it works, I believe. Local councils amend speed limits / install traffic-calming and warning signs measures based on a road's history. If the road's history is "zero accidents" then you might struggle.
As I understand it, I am not a council employee, etc etc.
They could always use optical illusions.
Highways engineers make their decisions based only on statistics, not gut feeling. We campaigned for 30 years for speed humps and a 20 mph limit in our street, which is used as a short-cut by rat-runners. Lancashire County Council sent me a copy of their "league table" of streets deserving traffic calming and we were languishing right at the bottom, at around 100th place, because we had only had one accident causing injury to a pedestrian in thirty years.
By contrast streets in the centre of Blackburn our nearby town had dozens of accidents, sadly many of them deaths of pedestrians, so were a mass of traffic-calming measures. Thus, we felt, we were victims of our own success in teaching our kids to stay off the road.
Two years ago LCC decided to make ALL residential streets 20 mph and gave many table tops so the campaign has fizzled out.
Move to France seems to be the answer.
Highways engineers make their decisions based only on statistics, not gut feeling.
I guess that is what I mean though, it's evidence based.It should be shouldn't it? Should they spend taxpayers money but using their gut feeling, or only statistics, a combination?
To play devils advocate - if there are no accidents, does that not make it safe?
Yes, there may be a number of near misses that aren't reported, but I would expect at least some near misses to be reported by the driver to the school (see the idiot from the other thread), even if the kids themselves don;t do anything.
Is the issue narrow/no pavements, or lack of a crossing point or something else?
For example, I can see how a fast road with good pavements but no crossing can be perfectly safe if there are good sight lines and sufficiently low traffic volume that there are lots of crossing gaps without any kids getting impatient. But cars going 60 (or more) down it may give the impression of danger to a parent (who isn't actually walking on that road at all)
I guess that is what I mean though, it’s evidence based. It should be shouldn’t it?
Well if it wasn't we would have traffic calming measures everywhere.
I think if you re-frame it makes more sense, it's not so much doing nothing because the roads deemed safe due to no accidents, it's about spending the probably limited money to do something on roads where there is a proven issue.
Our local authority has definately gone for it in our area on the whole Road safety thing, there's three schools and it would make a prime Rat run but for the restrictions and limits.
In the last couple of months, we've had the limit for the whole area dropped to 20, whch I am very much in favour of, but the only signage is on entry to the estate so every other **** that's missed the sign still tailgates you...
They've added three speed bump/zebra crossings (one of which is already crumbling) they litterally built the speed bumps built over the pot-holes so you have to pick your line on approach or you'll need twice the suspension travel...
It's great...