Thank you for your e-mail of the 20 July 2007, concerning the above.
In accordance with Transport for London criteria, we look at accidents within a three year period, when considering a scheme. There were five reported personal injury accidents along Dorset Road prior to the introduction of the traffic calming. This clearly shows that the road was more dangerous before its introduction.
In respect of the above, I cannot justify taking out the traffic calming.
Yours sincerely,
Subject: Speed Bumps
Dear
Thank you for responding.
Am I allowed some further queries?
I understand the link between speed and accidents. However, there is a 30 mph limit. Was it the number of accidents resulting in injury in the previous 10 years prior to the installation of the bumps that mandated their installation? How many had there been?
I also understand that the design of the bumps was not guesswork and that they were tested. Nonetheless, driving over them at anything approaching the speed limit would be at best very uncomfortable, and obviously likely to damage vehicles or people within them over time. I find them uncomfortable at over 15 mph!
It cannot be right to prevent the minority speeding by forcing everyone to drive at 15 mph. The design of the bumps in ****** Road also makes two-way traffic near impossible over them since cars are then forced to drive over the middle, highest part of the bump, and parked vehicles prevents using the smaller heights near the pavements.
****** Road has neither schools, nor shops, simply housing, and it is a straight road with no obstructions. It cannot be dangerous to have cars travel at up to 30 mph along it. Two zebra crossings might alert drivers and allow even safer road crossing if thought necessary.
Believe me, although new to ******, my dislike of speed bumps is widely shared by many who are anything but boy-racers. The irony is that only the busier roads are free of them!
Regards,
Dear Mr ,
Thank you for your e-mail of the 22 June 2007, I apologise for the delay in my response.
Traffic calming is installed in areas, which have a high personal injury accident record and where it is necessary to reduce vehicle speeds in order to lower the number of accidents that take place. Road humps and speed cushions are implemented under strict guidelines and specifications as set by the Department of Environment, Transport and Regions. Transport Research Laboratory has tested these speed reducing features under laboratory conditions using various types of vehicles.
It is appreciated that in an ideal world traffic calming would not be necessary. However, as the Highway Authority, the Council is obliged to help prevent accidents on the road. The removal of the traffic calming along your road would undoubtedly contribute to an increase in speeds and therefore accidents.
Yours sincerely,
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When someone researched these accidents, they found they were often things like children falling off tricycles on the pavement and a someone committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. State corruption is rife.
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Bumps are a total waste of time.
I have to try and find a way around them very, very slowly in the MX5 and in the "classic" Mini, some were all but impassable.
In the X-Trail I had the other week though, no such bother. Can drive over them at whatever speed I liked, no worries.
So if you're driving a small or low car, you're knackered. Drive a, oh I don't know, say a WhiteVan or a (tries to find a non-offensive way to describe a Chelsea Tractor, fails) and you can go as fast as you like. Let's stop those launatics in 500Kg Minis who will do themselves more damage if they hit anything, and let those in 2.5 tonne (fails again) drive whilst tending to the kids or eating a bacon sandwich while on the phone at 40mph steam on through.
The roads need pinch points where traffic is forced to give way to one another - works on the few roads around here. Probably more expensive to implement (for the council) but does work and will slow down those with high ground clearance.
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Ed, you might want to pursue this further. Given the council above is arguing that the humps are there because of specific accidents, they must hold details of those accidents. You could use the FOI to get those details to gauge their relevance. It might be interesting.
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While it may not have schools or shops do folks need to use/cross it to reach those facilities?
If it's a residential road with housing, presumably occupied at least in part by families with children, then 30 may be far too fast.
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There is an area of my local small market town where the local 'great and good' live (i.e. very large houses, bigger even than mine, some with electric gates and frontage with a couple of BMW's and a Merc on). The people that live along those roads seem to think that speed bumps work. They lobbied hard to get them, and having got them they've also managed to get a 20mph limit. Thinking about it there is a hamlet about 5 miles from me which is v. v. upmarket - has 20mph limit and CCTV. Makes it nice and safe for them and their kids I guess. How strange that these people don't accept the 'speed doesn't kill' argument....
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I'm all in favour of traffic calming, and in general I wish there was a lot more it. I'd be lobbying for it on my own street if it wasn't a steep as the North face of the Eiger. I fear that speed bumps on this street would send some cars into orbit, and the pinch-point solution would be rather dangerous when cars slide down the hill in winter. Best to leave them to skid down into field on the steep, reverse-camber corner. If there was any chance of getting a 20mph limit with enforcement, that'd probably be the best we could do.
But the thing that bugs me about the speed bumps nearby is their inconsistency.
One local road has the full-width rounded one: very effective at high speeds, but easily traversed at 10-15 mph. These are good: they work, and they don't wreck a car unless you really are going too fast.
But another road nearby, a long wide straight avenue with a school on it, used to be a dangerous race-track (50mph+ speeds were common), and the council was quite right to implement calming measures. Unfortunately, when they festooned it with humps, they used an evil design: flat top straight (bit sloped) sloped sides, and a harsh angle between the edges. Even at 5mph they feel harsh, and because they are a series of bumps across the road with gaps inbetween (like stepping stones) rather than a continuous ridge, I am always afraid of doing a mischief to my car's groin. Drivers adjust their position to either perfectly straddle a hump or get a each side's wheel on their own bump, so the result is cars being driven straight at each other. This is seriously dumb.
It's also unnecessary. The main hospital is only half-a-mile away, and the firestation a little further is the opposite direction, so the gaps are not needed for emergency vehicles (which have alternative routes to get beyond this area, so they don't need it for through traffic).
When this road was being clamped, why didn't they use the big rounded bumps or just put in more chicanes (they installed one, but only one).
This dumb approach to traffic calming gives the whole process a bad name :(
I used to think that maybe these horrid flat-top stepping-stones were the only permitted way of building humps with gaps, but it seems not. An area I regularly visit in Cherwell District Council has lots of stepping-stone humps which are nicely-rounded. Not as good as the full-width ridges, but they still work much better than the sharp-edged horrors.
Whatever research has been done into the design of speed bumps, it doesn't seem to have been considered very consistently by the councils. Or is it because our roads dept has been privatised, and the contractor finds it easier to build the sharp stepping-stones? :(
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This dumb approach to traffic calming gives the whole process a bad name :(
As you say NowWheels.
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