Speed Variations

06/08/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Speed Variations
Cllr. Nichola Harrison, whose excellent blog is always a great read despite the fact she’s a lib dem , has posted about a road safety campaign in Cambridge City’s Mill Road where the residents and councillors are working towards various measures including (but not limited to) a 20 MPH speed limit. 
 
Now I’m not generally in favour of 20 MPH speed limits - except outside schools - and I’ve blogged about this before.  But that’s not the point of this post.
 
What I don’t understand is how Nichola seems so confident that these measures will get through and be approved?  I can only assume that she is dealing with very different officers to the ones I am dealing with.  This should not be taken as any criticism of our county officers, who I am absolutely sure are dedicated to their jobs and always seem very nice.  But they, or the system in which they reside perhaps, can be hard work.
  
Our own A1101 death trap, fairly clearly one of the worst, if not the worst, blackspots in the entire county presently remains a 60MPH limit, despite years of accident and death and a long history of being very bad news for some people who travel along it.  Proposals by the local action group and by myself as their county councillor that the forthcoming (we hope) new speed camera set a restriction of 40MPH seem to be crashing into a brick wall (no pun intended). 
  
The officers are dead set on 50MPH which the action group feel is simply not going to solve the problem.  I agree with them on this.  The officers quote official rules and statistics and perfectly plausible reasons why the 40MPH may not be possible because of this legislation or that guideline or this ticked box list.  Which is all well and good.  But surely there is a case for looking at each problem area on its own merits?
   
We had to fight tooth and nail (and most of that fighting was done by the A1101 Action Group, I must stress - I’ve come late to the fray) for proper recognition of the problem and for acknowledgement of the need for a Speed Camera at all.  Now, it seems, we have a new battle to get speeds properly restricted.  Why spend the money on a project that will slow traffic by only 10 MPH?  On a stretch of road that claims lives, delivers injury and breaks hearts with fearsome regularity.
   
I very much hope we will be able to convince the officers and decision-makers that they have got this one wrong.  Accident after accident plagues that dangerous stretch of the road alongside Gypsy Lane. 
  
Just yesterday I was driving it myself and was almost hit by a lunatic going too fast, overtaking right on that misleading point that is the center of all the trouble.  My four-year-old son was in the car with me.   If that is not a chilling way to have this problem brought home then I do not know what is.  Shaking with anger and barely-averted disaster I could do nothing but curse the idiot in the other car under my breath and resolve to pursue this fight with more determination than ever. 
     
None of us want somebody, or somebody’s child, to be the victim of some horrific accident.  Smudging the edges of this problem will not solve it and may result in a dreadful outcome.  We need to tackle it properly - and that means proper speed control and enforcement.  Before another tragedy occurs.
      

Posted in A1101, Liberal Democrats | 5 Comments »