Letter: Road safety is not a rocket science

Correspondent • Published 12 Feb 2010 13:28 0 Comments

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I have written the following to the council officer named in the latest North Area Access Study communication:

Dear Mr Moore, I am writing in connection with the North Area Access Study/Caversham Park Village Local Area Enhancement (CPV LAE).

Through taxes, we all pay a lot of money for Government officials (national, local).

What we expect back for that money is leadership based on expertise and practical knowledge of the problem being tackled. I have to say the CPV LAE demonstrates neither of those qualities.

We all also pay a vast amount through taxation for the police but we never see police catching speeding drivers of this ilk.

They concentrate on the easy-to-catch (but who are doing no real harm) on roads like Vastern Road, and they only bother during 'office hours'.

Whatever the inadequacies of our police, traffic chicanes will not make up for them. All they will do is inconvenience the majority of safe drivers who use the road.

The proposals also include closing lay-bys. This is stupid and there is no other word for it. If they are closed people will park in the road because there are more cars that need to be parked than there are off-road spaces. How you can propose this while at the same time talk about improving sight-lines for junctions beggars belief.

There is proposed anti-skid surfacing. Wherever this stuff is put down, it soon breaks up. The result is an uneven surface that offers worse braking performance.

There is evidence from Europe and Britain that the more crowded a road is with visual information - white lines, refuges, chicanes, parked cars, speed humps - the more dangerous it is for drivers and pedestrians.

It is all too easy to hear a council spokesperson cite the fact that 67% of the people who responded to these proposals were "generally in favour" as a reason to go ahead.

That means nothing - the public are not experts. If that is justification then all we need are referenda on decisions of any sort and workmen to carry them out.

We certainly don't need to be paying the salaries of experts.

Mick Richards

Lowfield Green, Caversham Park Village

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