Tag Archives: speeding

Too many drivers speeding where we live

Posted on by • Posted in Everyday life, Spalding, Spalding Wygate ward • Tagged , , , , , , • 2 Comments

Below is the detailed report from Lincs Road Safety Partnership, following the traffic speed surveys I requested on Wygate Park and Park Road in Spalding. Although the numbers of speeding vehicles is relatively low compared to the overall numbers checked, it’s still extremely disappointing to see the numbers in the hundreds. R U 1 of these?

I now have the results of the Archer survey carried out on Wygate Park and Park Rd at Spalding.

In relation to Wygate Park a survey was carried out on Wygate Park near the junction with Law Court monitoring traffic flow in both directions.

Over a five day period a total of 13,713 vehicles were checked 9,992 of these vehicles were travelling towards the town centre. Of vehicles travelling towards the town centre 442 vehicles (4.4%) were travelling at a speed where a speed awareness course would be an appropriate course of action. 189 vehicles (1.9%) were found to be travelling at a speed where prosecution would be an appropriate course of action.

Vehicles travelling towards the A151 21 vehicles ( 3.4%) were travelling at a speed where a speed awareness course would be an appropriate course of action. 25 vehicles (0.6%) were found to be travelling where prosecution would be an appropriate course of action.

In relation to Park Rd the survey was carried outside 214, Park Rd monitoring traffic flow in both directions. Over a five day period a total of 26,095 were checked 10,479 were travelling towards Spalding town centre and 15,616 travelling towards Pinchbeck Rd.

Vehicles travelling towards the town centre 107 (6.1%) were travelling at a speed where a speed awareness course would be an appropriate course of action. 36 vehicles (2.1%) were found to be travelling at a speed where prosecution would have been an appropriate course of action.

Vehicles travelling towards Pinchbeck Rd 286(11.0%) were travelling at a speed where a speed awareness course would be an appropriate course of action. 189 vehicles (7.1%) were travelling at a speed where a prosecution would be an appropriate course of action.

I realise the survey results may not support your impression of vehicles speed using these roads indicated by your correspondence. However, I deal with many complaints relating to speeding and I find ‘Speeding’ is both a very emotive and perceptive subject. To one person speeding may simply mean exceeding a given speed limit,when to another speeding may mean travelling too fast for the conditions whilst staying within the speed limit.

An indication of whether drivers are using a road too fast for conditions is its collision history. I have checked the collision database of all collisions recorded on Wygate Park and Park Rd with eight slight injury collisions on Park Rd and two slight injury collisions for the last three years and out of the ten slight injury collisions none can be attributed to speed.

The aim of the Lincolnshire Road Safety is to try and reduce the amount of fatalities which is distressful for those involved, however caused in the county but we put our resources into the area’s that have high collision figures and a high recorded data in relation to drivers ignoring the speed limit for the road their on. With the ultimate aim to make the roads safer in the whole county.

I will pass on the results of the survey to the local neighbourhood policing team for them to take any action that they feel is necessary during the the course of their patrol.

Modified car enthusiasts bite back

Posted on by • Posted in Everyday life, Spalding • Tagged , , , , , , , • 3 Comments

Several responses to my post on the fallout following the modified car meeting, none of them very happy with my comments. One of them, was a well balanced and passionate plea for a better understanding of those who genuinely enjoy modifying their cars.

Another took the time to criticise my poor grammar, but offered little else. The third one suggested that I should have, or is it of?, been criticising the police for allowing the meeting to go ahead.

Having stirred up these enthusiasts, I suppose I should at least apologise for some of my more sweeping statements and also for classifying them all universally as boy and girl racers. However, I hope they will in turn accept that they were bound to stir up a s**t storm of protest by doing what they did in the first place – taking over a town centre car park without any form of permission.

I was going to suggest that if this had been a rally for mobility scooter enthusiasts, the response would have been very different. However, thinking about the bad behaviour of many of these people on our streets and footpaths, I’m not so sure. So let’s use mothers showing off their baby buggies as the example. Whilst the owners of the car park may have been slightly miffed at the uninvited takeover, the general public would probably have responded by saying, what’s the harm?

Unfortunately for the modified car enthusiasts, they come with a significant amount of baggage when it comes to public perception. Not least the belief of non-enthusiasts, such as myself, that they are all boy and girl racers at heart. Right or wrong, the simple act of congregating in a town centre location, to display the most obvious badge of the boy and girl racer fraternity – the soup-up motor car – was always going to create a negative response from the general population.

Can I therefore suggest that in future, if modified car enthusiasts don’t want to be pilloried in the local press again and see all the good stuff they do for charity ignored, they don’t takeover town centre car parks without notice. Also, if the local press is to be believed, it would also appear that a lot of litter was left behind, a particular bug-bear of mine and something that definitely winds me up.

It would also be nice if they could convince the less socially responsible boy and girl racer element of the modified car enthusiast brigade, to stop peeing off the rest of us!

Modified car rally – the acceptable face of boy and girl racers?

Posted on by • Posted in Everyday life, Spalding • Tagged , , , , , , , • 3 Comments

Outrage at car park takeover by modified car meet, followed by outrage at biased and unfair treatment of modified car owners meet in local press!

Those outraged modified car owners seem to have conveniently forgotten that they didn’t have any sort of permission to takeover the private car park they invaded for their meeting. They’ve also ignored the fact that those people who are unhappy about this coming together, we’re not really expressing their unhappiness at the car park takeover, but much more about the anti-social behaviour they have experienced involving modified car drivers – generally known as boy racers and more recently, girl racers.

I would also of been very interested to see how many of these vehicles were sporting the illegal number plates so many of these car drivers seem to treasure – or is that yet another illegal act they consider to be okay?

If these car enthusiasts really want to improve their reputation with the general population and not continue to be seen as anti-social yobs, then I suggest they clean up their act and encourage the bad eggs amongst their ranks to stop wheel spinning and speeding around our local streets and car parks at any opportunity they get.

If there are any modified car drivers reading this and muttering about the many being condemned by the behaviour of the few – tough. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and paddles about in water, then it’s probably a duck!

P.S. – While you’re at it, see if you can get our local Royal Mail van drivers to act more responsibly when driving around our local streets

What’s concerning you? A 60 second survey

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Everyday life, Government, public sector, Spalding • Tagged , , , , • Leave a comment

I tried this via Twitter, but of course it soon disappears down the list of tweets you’ve received, so let’s try again.  A quick survey to find out what issues are of concern to residents.  For example, are you concerend about council cuts? Thank you in adavance for taking the time to complete it.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/W9BPV3P

Fuel duty U turn – right reason, wrong outcome

Posted on by • Posted in Everyday life, Government • Tagged , , , , , , • 1 Comment

I couldn’t resist resurrecting a previous blog entry, given the recent ‘proposed policy adjustment’, otherwise known as a U turn, by George Osborne.  Much as I hate to admit it and I have no doubt this would incur the wroth of most driving readers (if there were any, readers that is, not drivers), but I think fuel should be more expensive for most non-HGV vehicles- why?  Please read on.  

Eco driving tests – Recently resurrected as an issue by some government spokesperson or other – what a joke this one is!  Talk about wishful thinking.  Witness the driving style of just about anyone, anywhere and you will soon realise that, for some reason best known to the human being when behind the wheel of a car, it doesn’t cost any money to put your foot down.  This is even more so the case when you see young drivers in their beloved hot hatch.  I work(ed) (as of Nov 11)  in an office that overlooks the roundabout outside the Morrison’s supermarket atWardentree Lane.  And before you say it, no I don’t spend all my time looking out of the window to see this, I don’t need to, I can hear it even with the double glazed windows closed.  

For some reason, and younger drivers seem to be some of the worst, crossing over the roundabout and heading towards Pinchbeck causes drivers to launch their vehicles in to what Captain Kirk would call warp factor 8.  The 40 mph limit goes out of the window and the wide open road bekcons, as drivers floor the accelerator pedal in an effort to see how fast they can get to the t-junction, whilst at the same time over taking anything that gets in their way.  Given the fact that eco-driving has been in the test since about 2006 and was being pushed when I did my instructor training, it hasn’t made any difference yet!

Good idea moment – Let’s replace all the speedometers with poundometers (nobody seems to use the speedo anymore anyway).  Instead of showing the speed we’re doing, it would show how much fuel is being used in pounds and pence.   Likewise, the fuel gauge could be calibrated to show how much a full tank of fuel costs – some boffin can figure out how this would automatically calibrate itself every time the fuel price increases.  So, if we filled our car up, the needle would point to £70 at today’s prices.  Each mark on the gauge would be about a £5, so as all those non-eco drivers hoffed along theWardentree Lane section of Brands Hatch, they could watch the pound notes pouring out of their exhaust pipes.

Complainers have lost the plot

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A somewhat bizarre story from Cardiff today, where apparently a speed camera is doing too good of a job, because the camera has only caught one driver in a year.

Am I missing something here? Aren’t speed cameras supposed to discourage drivers from speeding in the first place and not be used as a way of raising cash from them?

It strikes that those criticising this low hit rate have lost the plot and that instead of complaining about it, they should be celebrating the fact that there’s at least one speed camera in the country that is actually doing what it was designed for – discouraging speeding drivers. I can think of many villages in South Holland and many residents in my ward who would love to have such problem to complain about.

Huhne , apparently no better than the rest of us

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The ongoing farce that is Chris Huhne’s game of cat and mouse with the police over his alleged speeding offence, rather sums up the moral degradation issue our country is currently wrestling with.

Those of us who have been elected are regularly told that public service is an honour. We are also told that those of us fortunate enough to gain the public’s trust, through the electoral process, should be prepared to be held to a higher standard of behaviour in office. Chris Huhne’s personal integrity has clearly been called in to question and yet he continues to plead his innocence and desperately hang on to his position as a government minister.

Whilst such behaviour is not exactly the equivalent of rioting or looting, it could be argued that it is actually a form of high class anti-social behaviour. It could also be argued that it should receive the same zero tolerance approach now being demanded for ‘ordinary’ citizens. If it’s good enough for them, then it should be doubly so for those in public office and required to be held to a higher standard.

One could of course argue that Chris Huhne is innocent until proven guilty, but is that an acceptable approach for somebody in a high profile public office? Would not an honourable man, sensitive to the repetitional damage of such grubby goings on, consider his position? History is dotted with the names of honourable politicians who, when their personal integrity was called in to question, stepped aside until their name was cleared – I think David Laws is potentially the most recent example. In doing so, they should be seen as setting an example for other public servants to endeavour to follow.

Unfortunately, Chris Huhne appears to consider himself too important to take such an honourable course of action. Either that, or his moral compass has titled in the same way as all those rioters and looters who took to the streets 10 days ago. Whatever his reasons, it sets a pretty poor example to the rest of us ordinary folk.

Are they too slow, or are you too fast?

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Having been somewhat under the weather this week, I’ve been a bit slow off the mark on making comment on a recent story about slow drivers. However, having seen an editorial piece in today’s Telegraph, that links this with another of my hobby horses – our impatient society – I couldn’t resist.

Apparently, the top gripe for those who drive, which is most of us, is slow drivers. Nobody asked me, so I suspect that claim will be based on one of those surveys where they asked a couple of dozen people and then using some clever sums, turn it in something that can be claimed as representative of all drivers – like I said, they didn’t ask me and I don’t agree.

Having come across relatively few genuinely slow drivers – 20 in a 30mph, or 40 in 60mph, I think there’s a completely different slant on this story. My question to those drivers who claim to see red when confronted with somebody driving too slowly is, what speed were YOU actually doing?

Over the years I’ve encountered many more drivers doing 40+ in a 30, or 50+ in a 40, than I have the opposite. On that basis, I have a strong suspicion that many of these unhappy drivers didn’t actually know what speed they were doing anyway. Alternatively, they felt that most speed limits, especially the lower ones, were too low for their taste and that drivers who observe them are a pain.

I find it particularly infuriating when I hear or read so called experts suggesting that ‘experienced’ drivers know best what their speed to drive at based on the road conditions and that it should be up to them to choose the right speed. This is one of the main arguments being used to resist the imposition of 20mph in residential streets – rubbish I say. It actually requires effort and concentration to drive well and it’s not just about what is happening inside the car. A genuinely good driver will consider what effect the noise of a speeding car has on those living in and around the street or road they are driving on and not just their own selfish wish to get from a to b as fast as possible.