RE: Campaign slams road policy failure
Thursday 8th June 2006
Unsafe road?The new EuroRAP roads safety report published recently indicates substantial failures by authorities to improve road safety through proper engineering, according to road safety campaign Safe Speed.
Campaign slams road policy failure
Roads are poorly engineered for safety, says Safe Speed
Unsafe road?
There are two main forces driving the failure, according to the campaign:
- Lack of investment due to 'anti-road policies'
- Wrong solutions due to poor understanding of the nature of road safety
Campaign founder Paul Smith said: "Clearly the government and local authorities do not fully appreciate the nature of their road safety responsibilities. We have seen vast amounts of money spent on cameras and reduced speed limits when proper engineering treatments would have been far more effective.
"These wrong policies may make some roads safer, but they also make drivers worse and the overall effect is bad enough to swamp the substantial benefits arising from improved vehicle safety.
"National road safety policy is driven by politics and dogma when it should be driven by science and understanding. The real foundation of road safety is road user psychology and we won't get road safety back on track until this is understood and properly factored in."
Links
Discussion
It is about time they asked the people who drive on these roads what is wrong with the design.
Some idiotic pencil pushing prat in an office several hundred miles away from the ruined road system is not going to do the job.
Ask the drivers? Then they would be out of a job but many lives saved and many happy motorists.
I have written to the highways agency to tell them about bad traffic junctions and advised how to improve them only get at best "we are cureently lokking into this, thank you for your input", normally "this is totally unaccetable do to the circumstances" this means they won't spend any money or a councilor lives there.
Time to put road planning into the drivers hands, Improve the Main roads and this will reduce the need to use rat runs and lower accidents. Anybody disagree?
Some idiotic pencil pushing prat in an office several hundred miles away from the ruined road system is not going to do the job.
Ask the drivers? Then they would be out of a job but many lives saved and many happy motorists.
I have written to the highways agency to tell them about bad traffic junctions and advised how to improve them only get at best "we are cureently lokking into this, thank you for your input", normally "this is totally unaccetable do to the circumstances" this means they won't spend any money or a councilor lives there.
Time to put road planning into the drivers hands, Improve the Main roads and this will reduce the need to use rat runs and lower accidents. Anybody disagree?
bigjimmy said:
I have asked this before, but who other than us PistonHead people get look at all the findings published by Safe speed?
No-one.
Safespeed said:
We have seen vast amounts of money spent on cameras and reduced speed limits when proper engineering treatments would have been far more effective.
I thought cameras paid for themselves and indeed actually generated revenue?
Furthermore I would have thought that the cost of putting a camera up hardly compares to a road engineering scheme to for example straighten a dangerous bend.
This is an amateur web site author trying to tell professional civil engineers how to do their jobs.
Another rather strange 'press release'.
Furthermore look at the table in the attached link for the number of road safety schemes and their relative successes. The only person obsessed with speed cameras is Safespeed himself.
www.rospa.org.uk/roadsafety/advice/highway/local_schemes.htm
www.rospa.org.uk/roadsafety/advice/highway/local_schemes.htm
spnracing said:
Furthermore look at the table in the attached link for the number of road safety schemes and their relative successes. The only person obsessed with speed cameras is Safespeed himself.
www.rospa.org.uk/roadsafety/advice/highway/local_schemes.htm
And you.www.rospa.org.uk/roadsafety/advice/highway/local_schemes.htm
spnracing said:
Furthermore look at the table in the attached link for the number of road safety schemes and their relative successes. The only person obsessed with speed cameras is Safespeed himself.
www.rospa.org.uk/roadsafety/advice/highway/local_schemes.htm
www.rospa.org.uk/roadsafety/advice/highway/local_schemes.htm
Regression to the mean is your friend - if you're a SCP. You'll never look bad!
Chas-Chiro said:
It is about time they asked the people who drive on these roads what is wrong with the design.
Some idiotic pencil pushing prat in an office several hundred miles away from the ruined road system is not going to do the job.
Some idiotic pencil pushing prat in an office several hundred miles away from the ruined road system is not going to do the job.
Here here. Our village has a main road that leads into Derby. It is a wide road with good deep pavements. It has 3 speed cameras in 3 miles, a pointless bus lane with dedicated traffic lights for right of way - there is a bus stop right after the lights, so the traffic overtakes anyway. The area also has pointless traffic lights on roundabouts that slow people up - i know because I have been using the same route for years, one lane blocks to 'ease' traffic, cadbury style speedbumps. Our council have made a real balls up of the whole thing. On the other side, some of our busy roads are rutted and potholed.
I'd love to have a go at sorting our area out.
As a highways engineer (now working in the Post Office), I used to get SO frustrated by the people who gave us the rules or Guidelines to work to.
In one breath they wanted increased sightlines so you could see further ahead then they would restrict the road width and put in tighter corners to make the road ahead more constrained (and less visible).
Then they would reduce grass cutting on roundabouts so that you couldn't see, when approaching, if there was anyone on the roundabout coming from your right until you were on the give way line and had to brake suddenly or were going at so slow a speed that you couldn't enter the roundabout safely. crash. Or they would install crash barriers in the drivers sight line.
Chicanes in housing estates cause so many near accidents and driver frustration. Frustration is one big cause of accidents
Road signs with confusing information, bad positioning. Cycle lanes that stop and start leaving cyclists unsure of their position and vulnerable.
Got to stop before I blow a fuse....
There is a problem too with Planners and Highway Engineers both wanting different things
Most highway engineers are drivers too.
Tony H
In one breath they wanted increased sightlines so you could see further ahead then they would restrict the road width and put in tighter corners to make the road ahead more constrained (and less visible).
Then they would reduce grass cutting on roundabouts so that you couldn't see, when approaching, if there was anyone on the roundabout coming from your right until you were on the give way line and had to brake suddenly or were going at so slow a speed that you couldn't enter the roundabout safely. crash. Or they would install crash barriers in the drivers sight line.
Chicanes in housing estates cause so many near accidents and driver frustration. Frustration is one big cause of accidents
Road signs with confusing information, bad positioning. Cycle lanes that stop and start leaving cyclists unsure of their position and vulnerable.
Got to stop before I blow a fuse....
There is a problem too with Planners and Highway Engineers both wanting different things
Most highway engineers are drivers too.
Tony H
spnracing said:
bigjimmy said:
I have asked this before, but who other than us PistonHead people get look at all the findings published by Safe speed?
No-one.
Safespeed said:
We have seen vast amounts of money spent on cameras and reduced speed limits when proper engineering treatments would have been far more effective.
I thought cameras paid for themselves and indeed actually generated revenue?
Furthermore I would have thought that the cost of putting a camera up hardly compares to a road engineering scheme to for example straighten a dangerous bend.
This is an amateur web site author trying to tell professional civil engineers how to do their jobs.
Another rather strange 'press release'.
My town has just installed a minigatso for £50k. The local scam prats couldn't justify the outlay - not enought KSIs , so the council forked out for it to keep a grieving couple (assisted by Brake & Roadpeace) who's drunken teenage daughter got run over quiet. I don't know if the scam prats are going to refund the 50k when the camera has paid for itself but I doubt it.
How I read the article - as a layman - is that there are other answers to improving road safety other than simply fixing cameras and reducing speed limits in the hope they will work.
Of course, the total solution to road safety is for everyone to improve their individual driving skills. Generally speaking people tend to have the attitude that they have a right to drive a car how they see fit regardless of the consequences or impact it has on other road users.
On the subject of Cycle Lanes. There seems to be, in London at least, a trend to put new lanes on the pavement. With no segregation between the lane and pedestrians. I ask you, do you need to be a Rocket Scientist to figure out what is going to happen?
Of course, the total solution to road safety is for everyone to improve their individual driving skills. Generally speaking people tend to have the attitude that they have a right to drive a car how they see fit regardless of the consequences or impact it has on other road users.
On the subject of Cycle Lanes. There seems to be, in London at least, a trend to put new lanes on the pavement. With no segregation between the lane and pedestrians. I ask you, do you need to be a Rocket Scientist to figure out what is going to happen?
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