Oxon council plots more speed limits

Pressure group calls for concerted action

'We want more', says Oxon council

Oxfordshire county council plans a raft of ever more draconian speed limits, despite the county's infestation with speed cameras and a rising death toll. That's the picture painted by Mark McArthur-Christie, policy director of the Association of British Drivers.

The new 50mph limits are:

B4027 – A40 at Forest Hill to Islip
A329 – Milton Common to the A418 at Thame
B4012 – Thame to the A40 Tetsworth
B4011 – Ambrosden junction to the county boundary with Bucks
B4437 – Charlbury to Grims Dyke Farm near the A44
A361 – Bradwell Grove to Lechlade
A417 – Faringdon to East Challow

According to McArthur-Christie, the limits will cost £50k to introduce, including visual traffic calming (ie more sign and red paint clutter). He said: "And this is in a county where deaths are racking up so fast I can’t keep pace. Yesterday we were 21 higher than 2005, overnight 4 more people died. So we’re now at 65 deaths in one year in one of the most speed limited, humped, bumped and cameraed counties."

What can you do?

McArthur-Christie has written to the council to object, as follows; "When I started writing this letter on Sunday, we’d had fifty-nine deaths on Oxfordshire’s roads this year. In the time it’s taken me to finish, there have been four more fatalities - that’s twenty four deaths up on last year.

"It is also despite new 50 limits, 30 limits, 20 limits, 107 cameras, plans for more and plans for another raft of yet more 50 limits. That’s despite calming schemes, humps, bumps and chicanes. That’s despite forests of new signs littering the roadside. That’s despite ugly red patches slapped on the road screaming ‘SLOW’.

"What more do we need to show us that external controls like this do not and cannot work to prevent accidents? The county’s ultra-low 50 limits have not prevented crashes on the A415. Their ultra-low 50 limits and cameras have not prevented deaths on the A420. Their new 40 limits and speed cameras on the A40 have not prevented deaths. The headlines this week tell the story.

"When I ride these roads and stick to the limits, people tailgate me, flash and hoot me to move over and attempt overtakes that are potentially lethal out of sheer, maddened frustration. Of course, they shouldn’t. They should behave and be compliant with the limits. But in the real world -- not Council-Land -- they don’t.

"The council seems to believe it can set a limit for every hazard, so we have limits that change constantly. To comply with them precisely means, in effect, driving by numbers. This road safety policy is just like painting by numbers. A very poor facsimile of the real thing.

"We have now got to the point in Oxfordshire where the cure is worse than the illness. We urgently need to review the causes of the crashes that have claimed so many lives and develop a road safety policy that works. The current ‘the answer’s a speed limit, now what’s the question?’ policy doesn’t."

McArthur-Christie is asking people to write to the council to object. The deadline for receipt of responses is 12 January 2007.

All you need to do, said McArthur-Christie, is email an objection to three people: the person who makes the decision on the County’s roads, David Robertson, the key Council Officer, Geoff Barrell, and Keith Mitchell, the Leader of the County Council.