Monday 13 September 2010

Well, Here's A Challenge For Colchester Residents...

Nigel Offen, Lib Dem councillor, thinks there should be a blanket 20mph speed limit on residential streets all across Colchester.

Unfortunately for him, Essex county council is not too keen on the proposed change, and the police, who'd of course have to enforce it, aren't too keen either.

Normally, that would be the end of that.

But Nigel's keen on this idea, and Paul Wilkinson, borough transport policy manager, has suggested a way forward. So he's rallying concerned citizens would-be authoritarian busybodies to his cause:
Faced with frustrating delays, Paul Wilkinson, borough transport policy manager, is suggesting the way forward is for thousands of ordinary Colchester residents to press County Hall to make the change.
Hmmm, I feel this could backfire.

What are you going to do, chaps, if you get people writing in with the opposite view?

Probably ignore it. After all, Nigel's a doctor. One of those who thinks he knows everything there is to know about not just golf and hiring Rottweillers as reception staff diagnosing illness, but about road traffic management too:
“There is a brick wall in the way at the moment.

I have spent a great deal of my life mending people hit at 30mph rather than 20mph.

There is no doubt the value in the adage, ‘speed kills’. It is absolutely true. I don’t see how anyone can possibly argue against it – 20mph would be an awful lot safer.”
There. Nigel has spoken. All you detractors just shut up, and do what he says, m'kay?

He's not the only one:
Dennis Willetts, Tory ward councillor for West Bergholt and Eight Ash Green, agreed, saying: “It is what the people of Colchester want so we are duty-bound to do it.

“If you go around and ask anyone on residential estates, most of them want 20 mph. There is no doubt we should implement this.”
What's the betting if this does get forced through, those residents will a) mostly ignore the speed limit they supposedly wished for and b) whinge about any council tax increase brought in to pay for it?

10 comments:

Angry Exile said...

"There is a brick wall in the way at the moment."

Speed up, Nigel, speed up.

Clarissa said...

This will be the Colchester where (last time I drove there anyway) the speed limit could go from 40 to 30 and back again on a single stretch of straight road without (to my eyes anyway) any obvious reason.

MTG said...

One way or another, every driver has received a good drumming on accidents and speed, although lasting perceptions differ. Myopic solutions from Authorities look no further than the driver.

And from the driver's perspective, it would be so much safer in built up areas, if everyone drove at 20mph. Naturally he/she is safer than other drivers and forever in an excusable rush.

Most modern cars are manufactured to leap to 50 and then bump along at a 'comfortable' 80mph. It is a pain to manually regulate speed down to 20mph. Vehicles and pedestrians remain incompatible and separation in the Netherlands has been in a totally different safety league.

Even so, the Dutch do not have the 'final solution' - if I may borrow the phrase. Only an automated transport system will fulfill the promise of real safety by eliminating human driver error.

Chuckles said...

“It is what the people of Colchester want"

Well 2 of them do, anyway...

Anonymous said...

Dr. Nigel may have spent time fixing people who had been knocked down, but rather than harangue motorists and petition the council, I thing the good doctor's time would be better spent teaching people the Green Cross Code.

dickiebo said...

"I have spent a great deal of my life mending people hit at 30mph rather than 20mph."
I have news for him; he would have to spend even less of his time mending people, if we lowered the speed limit to 5mph! Shall we go for it?

Furor Teutonicus said...

The only "accident" I ever had, the bloody engine was not even switched ON.

Sitting on the motorbike, waiting for the rest of the club to finaly get their bloody act together, and decide if it was 10 fish and chips, or 9 and a deep fried mars bar, when some pissed arsehole, ON FOOT, decided to cross the road, and did not take into account that my bike had front forks rather....longer, than the average motor bike, and he went sprawling into the road.

Police saw it, and booked it as a T.A. MORE bloody annoying, just so the bastards could skew the figures a MOTORCYCLE T.A!!!

So what speed would the arse from Colchester like ME to have been going at to avoid that?

Angry Exile said...

"I have spent a great deal of my life mending people hit at 30mph rather than 20mph."

@dickiebo - actually I doubt he has spent much of his life mending people hit at 30mph. I've done some back of envelope calculations about the energy my car has at 30mph and it's a lot - about 130,000 Joules. Obviously not all of that goes to the pedestrian but if it was me that got hit I'd expect to be buried rather than mended. What Nige has probably forgotten is that in most collisions people hit the brakes. They might not always stop in time (obviously when they do there isn't any collision at all) but in a 30 zone nearly all the hitting happens at much lower speeds anyway. 5-20 I'd guess. I'm sure Nige would then argue that 20mph would therefore mean he'd be fixing people hit at 2-3 mph but I'm not convinced. I think too much obsession with speed leads to drivers concentrating on speedos instead of the road, like the woman I saw a couple of weeks ago doing exactly 70km/h along a dual carriageway completely oblivious to the police car behind her waving at her to get out the fucking way. But to her credit I saw her check the dash several times, no doubt making sure she wasn't speeding.

Personally I'd much rather people looked at the road and didn't concern themselves with speed, and if I was the bansturbation type I'd be calling for speedos to be removed from all cars, or failing that to be disabled under 70km/h. If you're driving anywhere that calls for a lower speed you should be spending all your time looking through the windscreen anyway.

Umbongo said...

My MP - the lovely Lynne Featherstone (another LibDem unexpectedly in government and in charge of the last government's legacy "equality" agenda) - has emailed her constituents to the effect that she and the LibDem councillors on Haringey Council are pushing for a general 20 mph limit in the Borough. She quotes - of course - some particularly crap statistics which "prove" that speed kills: ie it's not the boy racers and others who will ignore this limit as they do the present ones. The obvious solution - as Dickiebo writes - would be a 5mph limit or (am I being paranoid here?) the LibDem dream of abolishing private motor transport.

JuliaM said...

"Speed up, Nigel, speed up."

:D

"This will be the Colchester where (last time I drove there anyway) the speed limit could go from 40 to 30 and back again on a single stretch of straight road without (to my eyes anyway) any obvious reason."

Yes, we have a LOT of that in Essex. And about a year ago the 'old' A13 (now the A1303, or something since they built the new one) suddenly went from 60 to 40 all along it's length.

For no good reason that anyone could see.

"Only an automated transport system will fulfill the promise of real safety by eliminating human driver error."

Unless pedestrians and passengers are similarly automated, it's hard to see how even that could be accident-free.

"Well 2 of them do, anyway..."

Indeed!

"...the good doctor's time would be better spent teaching people the Green Cross Code."

They don't seem to teach that anymore, anywhere.

"I have news for him; he would have to spend even less of his time mending people, if we lowered the speed limit to 5mph!"

If we upped it to 70, that would apply just as well! The coroner might get overworked though..

"Police saw it, and booked it as a T.A. MORE bloody annoying, just so the bastards could skew the figures a MOTORCYCLE T.A!!!"

Just like any accident where someone's had a drink becomes a 'drink related accident', even if it ctually played no part.

Got to keep those statistics up!

"I think too much obsession with speed leads to drivers concentrating on speedos instead of the road...."

Agreed.

"She quotes - of course - some particularly crap statistics which "prove" that speed kills: ie it's not the boy racers and others who will ignore this limit as they do the present ones."

Laws are never obeyed by the lawless. So why, oh why, is our instinct always to scream for a new law?