We are constantly told we must decrease speed to make our roads safer.
To do this traffic engineers are putting in vertical and horizontal realignments on existing roads. Speed limits are being reduced. Police cameras are being erected and mobile units despatched to stop this huge menace.
But the amount of deaths on our roads is no longer decreasing substantially, and yet safer routes are being implemented every week. So what is going wrong?
We have bottomed out as a nation as far as casualties are concerned on the highway. In other words, you will never get zero deaths on the roads. It’s not possible. Stupidity, bad driving, lack of concentration, bad luck, weather, faulty mechanics – but all these are random and are impossible to design out.
So should we stop trying to make our roads safer? No. However we’re going about it in the wrong way.
For starters I am not anti-camera, but I am anti-cameras being placed in the wrong locations.
It is a fact that mobile speed cameras and static speed cameras are placed to help reduce speeds, but they are not placed in the locations where they are needed for safety. Have you ever seen them outside schools or sports arenas? Or, outside hospitals or elderly residents housing complexes? NO. This is because camera units have to be self funding. If they were placed where they would be effective in deterring stupid driving, they wouldn’t generate income. So they are placed in areas where speeds are high, and this tends to be where speed limits are being broken. However, the public is not stupid. Many authorities are turning perfectly good 50mph or 40mph designed roads into 30mph roads. This is where the cameras are stationed.
The natural speed of a road is not the limit, but the design, speed curves, widths, verges and locations. A semi-urban 5m wide lane dual carriageway should never be 30mph, yet councils are reducing these speeds due to a problematic junction or roundabout further up the route. Their thinking is if the approach speed is reduced, then the accidents will be reduced. However, my studies have concluded these types of accidents are due to low speed hesitations and mis-timings. Nothing to do with speed, but confi dence - lack of, or too much of.
I have looked at hundreds of accident statistics over the years. Less than 1% of these accidents are due to speed alone. Most are nonconcentration, carelessness, weather, drink/ drugs or non-driver faults (i.e. pedestrian’s fault - very common). Yet there is a common belief that the road must be realigned and the speed reduced, as that is the only answer. This not only misses the point but means the majority of users on that road get a road which is slower for no apparent reason, and so naturally drivers drive to the design speed.
In my opinion, designers must design to the natural speed and desire line of vehicles. Too many are designing to force drivers to follow white lines and speed limits that are clearly wrong. The problem with reducing semiurban road limits to 30mph, is that ‘genuine’ 30mph roads such as those in a built up location, means there is no formal reduction in a speed limit. As you can see in the pictures, why should both of these roads be 30mph?
Drivers will clearly see a lack of danger in the semi-urban route. In fact we all know driving at 30mph past a school at 9am is more dangerous than driving at 90mph on a motorway. Not that you’ll find a speed camera outside a school, but you’ll find a camera over the M4 near Chippenham!
• Mark Ralph is managing director of Traffic Solutions and director of Find The Engineer.
