Pomp up the volume

As Cabinet Member with responsibility for Gloucestershire highways, I was concerned by the e-mail from J.S. of Stroud. In situations where there is an accident "hot spot" or where residents have expressed anxiety for their personal safety arising from excessive vehicle speeds, traffic calming offers a potential solution. All such situations are investigated and, where justified, engineering measures (of which speed cushions are one) will be implemented. Whilst road repair is important, the safety of pedestrians and other road users must take precedence and I believe that would be most people's view. Certainly we do not install cushions to line contractor's pockets as your response suggests. Equally, I have no wish that our limited funds for road repair should be used to compensate motorists for damage to their vehicles caused by cushions having been installed incorrectly. Rather, it is in everybody's interest that they are put right. Some time ago we set up a contact number for highway matters across the whole County of Gloucestershire - 08000 514 514. If you could encourage your correspondent to ring it, he will be put straight through to the highway office responsible for the Stroud area. If he identifies the whereabouts of the speed cushions, then the heights will be checked and adjusted if necessary. Regarding road repairs, we take the state of our road network very seriously and since coming into power four years ago, the (Conservative) administration has made increased investment in structural maintenance. This has achieved an improvement in our classified route network but there is still a large backlog, particularly on unclassified routes. We frequently exhort residents through local media to report road defects to us again through the single contact number. Any defect reported will be assessed within a working day and scheduled for repair depending on its severity. Finally your anecdote about Boris Johnson’s lucky escape suggests that the competence of the truck driver must be in question. Surely you are not suggesting that, the driver could claim in court that it was all the fault of the speed hump?

Asked on 8 August 2009 by

Answered by Honest John

That telephone number is very helpful. But you have missed the essence of my reply, which is that speed cushions generally are ripping the inside shoulders of car tyres to bits. If the true causes of crashes were properly investigated and properly compiled (instead of merely being used to apportion blame), I think you would find that at least 75% of crashes due to tyre failure could be attributed to damage to the inside shoulders of car tyres inflicted by speed cushions. And if the death rate from this was set against the true amount of pedestrian "lives saved" by speeds humps you would find that speed humps had killed far more people than they have saved. Did you see the video of the Boris incident? It's true, the truck driver was later charged with driving without due care and attention (for failing to slow sufficiently for the speed hump). But if the speed hump had not been there, the rear door of his truck would not have been jerked open by the flexing of his truck's chassis over the hump and the incident would not have occurred. The fact is, someone placed an obstacle in the Queen's Highway in the path of that truck and that obstacle caused the incident. No hump, no incident.

Tags: councils speed humps driving