Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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exiled
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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ForestChav wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 09:34 I think the person who was on about speed cameras on the A82 has already been mentioned here, and though I'm not familiar with the A82 at all in person, I know where it goes and a fair amount of it is following lakes, so is probably crammed in at the bottom of a hill with the lake on the other side. Outside of a built up area means it's probably likely to be NSL or 50, but even then, it looked like some bits you wouldn't be able to get through over 30 with standing water and it generally being too narrow for the trucks to get down without needing to go on the wrong side of the road, and also the number of bends making anticipating these difficult as well. Speed cameras on that would have to be set to the actual limit (plus whatever) and probably wouldn't do anything about any of the issues, which is probably why they don't have them.
Lochside please! The A82 is an interesting combination as there are improved sections, but the parts like the north end of Loch Lomond are twisty enough the speedlimt is hard to reach. Part of its problem is as it is the main access route to the West Highlands it is a road for locals and tourists alike and a lot of the issues can be put down to frustration, the section over Rannoch Moor it is easy to reach the NSL but there are a lot of tourists in summer enjoying the scenery who might not be used to either general UK roads or the variances you can get in the Highlands. The Great Glen section from Fort William to Inverness can also fall victim to the tourists as it runs along the varied lochs with poor lines of sight due to the landscape.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Steven wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:32
jnty wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:01 When these people say it is not safe for children to walk to school, they may well be right in an objective sense, but what they're really talking about most of the time is that it doesn't feel safe and convenient, at least when compared to driving a car. This isn't just a natural fact - even if you live a mile or two away from school, a walk (or cycle) along quiet backstreets will feel very different to a slog along a muddy verge on a busy NSL main road, just as a drive down a free-flowing dual carriageway into a spacious car park will feel different from a crawl along a congested main road followed by a wiggly back-streets drive to get as close as possible to the school gates.
One thing to also bear in mind is that it's not just transport policy that affects this problem. For the last 40-50 years there's been a policy of closing schools in favour of ever larger single-site locations. From a LEA financial point of view, this may be advantageous, but it also means that for a lot of people they simply can't walk down the road to the neighbourhood school any more in any reasonable timeframe.

For example, and bear in mind that we live in a large city for this, so there's no additional rural issues going on, my son's secondary school is about 2.5 miles away, including crossing a number of extremely busy roads, some of which have minimal pedestrian facilities. However, up until about 10 years ago, there was an alternative secondary school about 1 mile away; but this school is no more and the site is cleared.

It was the same for my daughter - the nearest former primary school building was about 0.5 miles away, and an easy walk (if not the most pleasant). However, the school was converted to a Youth Centre in the 1980s, and so instead she ended up as a five year old at a school 1.5 miles away. And this was from a relative inner city starting point as well.

Reversing this ever-larger schools policy will help with the "school run" issues more than anything else.
In addition to that, parents no longer have the right to send their child(ren) to the nearest school - which is crazy in my view.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Chris Bertram wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:37 From memory, North Yorkshire and Durham were the last holdouts against fixed speed cameras, so it would be one or other of them. I have a feeling that Durham may have some Talivans now; N Yorkshire would then be relying on traditional traffic cop enforcement. This allows them to act as a control group against areas with speed cameras, though N Yorks police area is largely rural, with only York, Harrogate and Scarborough as large cities or towns.
North Yorkshire definitely does have Talivans. I see them regularly but they were late adopting them. They were introduced in 2011 as I recall and are mainly used on roads with high fatal accident rates such as the B1257 and A171. No attempt is made to hide them as the intent is to reduce fatality rates in vulnerable users such as cyclists and motorcyclists.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Caught up with the programme this evening, and the big takeaway is the lack of traffic policing. That Lancashire, given its importance in the network, does not have a permanent traffic section is worrying as traffic officers can and do spot issues that a camera for obvious reasons cannot.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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tom66
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Vierwielen wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 21:44 The San Marino figure is a bit of a farce. This site says that it has 1.6 cars per head of population (including children) and that many cars use San Marino as a "flag of convenience" [my terminology] for tax purposes. Its population is 33,000 so assuming the same car ownership as the UK, about 20,000 cars are actually owned by residents. If we factor this in, then the death rate per 100,000 cars is about 9 per annum. Since this works out on average to one actual death per annum, the vagaries of small sample sizes come into play.
It's also a country with no highways and, it appears, almost no roads with a speed limit above 30 mph.

Chances are that reduces the death rate somewhat!
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

Post by NICK 647063 »

KeithW wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 13:03
Chris Bertram wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:37 From memory, North Yorkshire and Durham were the last holdouts against fixed speed cameras, so it would be one or other of them. I have a feeling that Durham may have some Talivans now; N Yorkshire would then be relying on traditional traffic cop enforcement. This allows them to act as a control group against areas with speed cameras, though N Yorks police area is largely rural, with only York, Harrogate and Scarborough as large cities or towns.
North Yorkshire definitely does have Talivans. I see them regularly but they were late adopting them. They were introduced in 2011 as I recall and are mainly used on roads with high fatal accident rates such as the B1257 and A171. No attempt is made to hide them as the intent is to reduce fatality rates in vulnerable users such as cyclists and motorcyclists.
Think they have 12 vans now, I never use the A64 without seeing at least 1 and at times I’ve seen 5 between Leeds and Malton….
Other popular routes are the A168/A19 passed 1 at Topcliffe today, oh and a favourite location is either of the 2 bridges between Wetherby and Walshford on the A1(M).
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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tom66 wrote: Thu Jan 27, 2022 19:46
Vierwielen wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 21:44 The San Marino figure is a bit of a farce. This site says that it has 1.6 cars per head of population (including children) and that many cars use San Marino as a "flag of convenience" [my terminology] for tax purposes. Its population is 33,000 so assuming the same car ownership as the UK, about 20,000 cars are actually owned by residents. If we factor this in, then the death rate per 100,000 cars is about 9 per annum. Since this works out on average to one actual death per annum, the vagaries of small sample sizes come into play.
It's also a country with no highways and, it appears, almost no roads with a speed limit above 30 mph.

Chances are that reduces the death rate somewhat!
Deaths per number of vehicles in a nation, or deaths per head of population are essentially meaningless measures of the safety of the roads on a population level. The standard comparable measure takes into account exposure to danger by distance travelled and is collision severity (killed or killed and seriously injured [KSI]) per million vehicle miles (m.v.miles) in the UK, or collision severity per million vehicle kilometres (m.v.km) in the rest of Europe.

We also use FWI as a measure (variously Fatality Weighted Index or Fatalities and Weighted Injuries - I think it depends on the industry), wherein fatal collisions are 'worth' 1, serious injuries 0.1 and slight injuries 0.01.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

Post by Glenn A »

WHBM wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 23:41 Road fatalities in the UK have dropped, during my period of road interest, from 8,000 in 1966 to 1,750 in 2019, the last year of "normal" traffic flow. This has been achieved by a wide range of measures, among which the highway engineering discipline, including the various professionals on here, can take a good share of the credit for unceasingly trying to get the numbers down. As usage has gone up from 100 to 350 billion vehicle miles in the same interval it's even more of a huge improvement (some elements of which, like bus mileage, have fallen over that time).

We used to say, as the figures fell towards 2,000, that it would bottom out, and we "would never get below 2,000". Not true !

There's an interesting (to some) document on highway statistics and trends here :

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... n-2017.pdf
I could add most cars in 1966 were death traps on wheels. Apart from the poor brakes and tyres, seatbelts were rare and hardly ever used if fitted, steering wheels were non collapsible( leading to severe chest injuries) and dashboards were another hazard. often having hard plastics and exposed switches. Also the amount of D2s and motorways were a lot lower.
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