I've just had to chose between two houses on the same estate, pretty much the same except one had slightly bigger rooms. However one house required two very large sleeping policemen to be negotiated to get to it. My Caterham wouldn't get over without touching the sump so couldn't buy that one. Even a normal car had problems due to the ramp angle. The top of the hump was covered in scratches. When speaking to the estate agent about it they said it puts off no end of buyers. It must have such a detrimental effect on house prices I wonder why no one has got rid of them - no where else in the estate has them on a no-through road. I know of two sets of traffic calming (both over a long stretch of road) that were removed because of the residents objections - they were the ones wanting them in the first place.
If I pay for road tax surely I should be able to use the roads?
Piers
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Piers - there is a regulation covering the size & shape of humps, so it might be worth rattling the local authority over this. It sounds as though someone at the town hall is a bit too 'anti-car'.
On the subject of 'paying for the roads', I am waiting until our council try to impose congestion charging - then I will hit them with all the legal action I can afford. We drivers pay all our normal taxes plus fuel tax, road tax parking fees, tax on insurance etc, so they have no right to treat us this way... (Blood boils)
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Traffic calming round my way takes the form of negotiating abandoned cars which stay on the road for weeks if not months! Luminous orange police aware stickers form the warning, so no need for permanent signs. Got me thinking that if they abandoned all the double yellows in Derby, ( my neck of the woods)and allowed parking again, it would have much the same effect. No cost to the authorities either.
Mike
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Unfortunately, road humps have to slow *all* traffic to the given speed, and therefore have to be able to slow a big 4x4 to 10 or 20 mph. Those of us with short-travel suspension and low-profile tyres suffer the most. :-(
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Was in the Yorkshire Dales today, but most of it still shut (around Mallam anyway). At the entry to Mallam they have a disinfectant trough to drive through, even our 24V Mondeo Estate grounded the exhaust. A Ferrari would have just got stuck.
Bill
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Humps are even worse for vans or essential services such as buses, ambulances. There seems no consultation before they are foisted on the public.
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Due to attend a meeting at our local school to view/discuss the councils psoposals for traffic calming on a road I have severely criticised in the past for its ludicrous 40mph limit (too high) lack of pedestrian crossings and cars parked all over the place for the school run ( we have 3 schools in a quarter mile stretch of this road). It will be interesting to see what they have in mind, but as Mike Harvey will appreciate, this being in Derby also, some of the madcap schemes they have come up with to date defy logic. One scheme through a village on the outskirts of the city involves those bits of pavement that stick out, reducing the road to half its normal width and give priority to traffic from one direction. Problem is that one of them is situated at the brow of a hill where it is nigh on impossible to see beyond it. Highly dangerous in my view. We have the dreaded 'pyramid type' humps in another part of the city, guaranteed to rearrange your suspension/steering or take your sump off, the result being that drivers tend to try and find a friendly way through which is generally by moving over to the right so only the nearside wheels hit the bump.
I would like to see plans for a reduction in the speed limit to 20 mph, pedestrian crossings at all 3 schools and a total ban on parking on the road (or verge/pavement) at school times. It would also be great if speed cameras were installed along the whole stretch of the road as well but I doubt this will happen. It got so bad with parking outside one of the schools some time ago, that I donned a fluorescent jacket (my daughters Bike one) and armed with my trusty Canon EOS and a clipboard stood oposite the school taking photos of cars parked dangerously and noting their registrations with a view to advising the school of the offenders. The reaction was astonishing the following day with a huge number of cars (mostly 4x4's) now using the car park of a hotel opposite the school. Things quickly returned to normal however. There have been numerous accidents and near misses along this stretch of road and the alarming thing is that most are caused by parents dropping off or collecting their children. Wonder how they would feel if it was their own child involved. One final thing before you all drop to sleep; has anyone else noticed how poor most children are at crossing roads. Whatever happened to the Green Cross Code?
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Oh yes, Breadsall village and Chaddesden Lane!
Mike
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Spot on Mike and not forgetting Boulton Lane at Alvaston.
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I should have added to the previous post that the road now in question is Pastures Hill at Littleover.
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