I have just opened a letter from the Roads Disservice NI, informing me of a "residents' consultation on the traffic calming scheme" for our road. What an utter waste of money. They're going to proceed with it anyway, whether residents object or not, aren't they?
They talk about reducing deaths. What about reducing the speed limit on motorways to 50mph (which I don't advocate)? What about dedicated cycle-lanes with kerbs to separate them from the main road, in order to reduce deaths? Where does it all end? How much do these expensive policies cost the taxpayers? Can we really afford it? How much has the entire exercise cost, from civil service time and resources; to letters and stamps; to design and printing the consultation notices; to employing consultants, designers and draughtsmen; to the reimbursement of contractors for creating humps on our roads?
The baby two-seater isn't keen on road humps. Doubtless, given the pot-holes and sunken trenches on many NI roads, that ought to suffice in slowing down many drivers. You'd need air suspension, a Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Range-Rover or some other monstrous vehicle for them. I consider myself a fairly responsible motorist insofar as I tend to stick to speed limits; that means I travel at 30mph on urban roads and I also observe maximum speed limits on other roads. The baby two-seater prefers to drive over humps at closer to 10mph, despite the legal speed limit of 30mph. This sometimes frustrates impatient drivers who are in a hurry to get somewhere.
Only yesterday, an impatient driver overtook us when we were driving carefully over a hump near Ballyholme.
Road humps are a blunt and crude weapon in the fight against speeding and road deaths. To my mind they are a waste of public funds, when resources should be pumped into more traffic policing and speed cameras.
These obstacles generate more pollution, too, by causing more deceleration, braking and acceleration.
Road humps exist for irresponsible imbeciles and cretins who travel in excess of 40mph on residential roads. Instead of humps, the reckless drivers should be targeted directly.
I'd like the Roads Disservice to spend our money on re-surfacing our roads smoothly before they pile heaps of tarmac ramps on them. Is that blunt enough for them?
Monday, 20 July 2009
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4 comments :
You should move to Australia.
They removed all road humps completely out there, because the humps were the cause of an enormous number of Insurance claims for damage to vehicles
Their humps could have been even worse than ours. :-)
There is nothing wrong with speed bumbs in the right places, but the road service do have a bit of a fetish for them! About 4 years ago they where installed in my old street where i grew up the reason given was to reduce the chances of an accident! To my knowleage and that of my neighbours i was the last one knocked down there in 1984.
Touché!
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