Residents in a Shropshire village have hit out as hundreds of cars following a diversion route are speeding past their homes - while council bosses still discuss whether to take steps to stop them.
People living in Leighton want a 30mph speed limit to be put in place for cars diverted through their village.
Leighton and Eaton Constantine Parish Council wrote a letter to highways bosses at Shropshire County Council last week after residents raised concerns over the closure of Harley Bank, Much Wenlock, which started on Monday.
They called for the current 60mph limit through Leighton to be reduced while the six-week roadworks are taking place.
But three days after the closure clerk Roger Pittaway has been told the issue is “still being discussed”. He now fears people may be killed before anything is done.
He said: “We have had a report from the police who have had representations from residents in Leighton complaining bitterly about the speed the traffic since the start of the roadworks. It is disgusting that a 60mph limit is still in force in a village, we have been trying to lower it since the 1940s.”
Before the roadworks at Harley Bank began councillors argued drivers would not be familiar with the “downhill twists of the road” through Leighton and Cressage and along the B4380 past Wroxeter and the diversion could result in serious accidents.
The parish council wrote to Jeremy Salisbury, principal highways engineer at Shropshire County Council, requesting a temporary speed limit of 30mph.
Mr Salisbury said today: “We are unable at this time to introduce a mandatory speed limit, however we are looking into what measures can be taken.”
By Rhea Parsons
31 Comments
I would wholly agree with a lower speed limit on that stretch of road. We came through Leighton early yesterday evening at a very sensible speed, only to be nearly driven off the road by a tanker coming speeding past us in the opposite direction.
Helen
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You sound like a very unlucky person Helen. This is the second time in a week you have had a “close shave” or “near miss”. Normally tankers drivers are very good drivers, they have to be with the nature of their loads. Are you perhaps over reacting? What do you mean exactly by “nearly being driven off the road?” That is a serious allegation. Did you report it to the police?
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As usual, let’s talk about it as if it wasn’t important and wait for someone to be killed in the mean time.
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As usual, I suspect that all these cries for lower speed limits, and inflammatory accusations of being threatened by “speeding” vehicles come from those drivers who either a) lack confidence or b) drive at nonsensically slow speeds only to commit other offences in lieu.
As a motorist driving in excess of 25,000 miles per year on all varieties of roads nationwide, it is rare that I see examples of totally inappropriate speed. For example, when travelling to Aylesbury on the M40 and driving at 8 leptons, I overtake quite a few cars. Quite a few also overtake me, and I do not have a problem with that as most of the time traffic and weather conditions are favourable.
What I do see - often on a daily basis - is utter incompetence behind the wheel, that in many cases is genuinely dangerous and is classed as driving without due care and attention.
Not indicating when negotiating a roundabout; not indicating at junctions; approaching a roundabout in the nearside lane then turning right; total lack of observation; total lack of spacial awareness; tailgating; needlessly driving at 40mph in NSL when 60 is entirely appropriate.
It is these drivers who tend to cause accidents through “inattention” and “looking, but failing to see” which are the two main causative factors in all deaths on our roads, and concentrating on exceeding a speed limit as the main problem on our roads is blinkered and dangerous considering it is a causative factor in less than 5% of road deaths.
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Good Grief!!!
Is the standard of driving now so low that people can’t drive properly on “back roads” with “downhill twists?”
I have driven along this road hundreds of times when travelling to Atcham, and Shrewsbury, and I have never had any problems, at any speed, in any weather.
Problems are often caused by drivers over-reacting to road situations, driving at inappropriate speeds, both low and high, and generally causing inconvenience to others.
If people can’t drive along this perfectly adequate stretch of road, such as it is, then they shouldn’t be driving at all.
Why must we always have to make things so that they satisfy the lowest common denominator?
what about raising the standards of driving?
What does the institute of Advanced Motorists have to say about this in their weekly shropshire star article? - How about some much more useful comment on this, rather that going on about how to save fuel (as in their last article)
As I say - I really find it incredible that the inference here is that people can’t drive properly on adequate roads !
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If some of these roads are so “dangerous” perhaps we ought to limit the standard of driver that uses them, maybe only let experienced drivers on these “dangerous” roads and then the nervous drivers could stick to main roads where they feel safe.Just as learners can’t use motorways and poor skiers shouldn’t go down black runs then perhaps we ought to have a grading system on these so called “dangerous” roads to warn poor drivers to use others.
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Alternatively, BRIAN(2), we could remember that we are living in a democratic society, which relies on people respecting others, rather than running them off the road if you, spindrift or askeric dotcom think they are driving too slowly.
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Hi Huw.
Living in a democratic society i’m afraid doesn’t excuse poor driving standards.
Our democratic society also has a driving test to ensure that you are adequately prepared for taking to the roads!!
I also never said anyone was driving too slowly. I said “inappropriate speeds both low and high”
As an experienced driver of over 800,000+ I have to say that courtesy of driving, allowing others “room” to make progress in their “own way” is the hallmark of a good driver.
I certainly don’t know where “running” people off the road has come from Huw! - certainly not from me !!
However - it has to be said that there is nothing more frustrating than following someone on an open road who travels far too slowly, who usually displays no apparent regard for the queue of traffic building up behind. … And
…. of course, in a tolerant, democratic society this “driver” would use his mirror, and let others overtake safely at the earliest opportunity!!
All I am saying is that it is dissapointing that the overall standard of driving is such that people can’t (allegedly) drive on what is a perfectly adequate road, and drive satisfactorily within the speed limits already posted on the said road.
askeric dotcom
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No ones trying to run anyone off the road, Huw but slower skiers don’t get black runs closed or made safer just because they are too dangerous for them and just because I am not a confident swimmer and the sight of the High Diving Board makes me shiver I wouldn’t call for all swimming pools to have a maximum depth of 4 foot and all diving boards to be a max of 3 foot high because I realise that good divers and good swimmers have that right but poor drivers seem to think they can call for downgraded roads just to make them feel “safer”
Just remember THIS IS A DEMOCRACY,Huw we don’t have to pander for the minority.
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Spindrift, good to see you back. Huw has been missing you on the other thread http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/27/call-for-reduction-in-road-speed/ and asking after you, I told him that you were probably bored with his ramblings but suspected that you might be on holiday. He has accused us of stomping on the democratic wishes the locals whatever that means?
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Stop being inflammatory Huw.
Not once have either myself, Brian, or askeric mentioned running people off the road.
No doubt Brian and askeric do exactly what I do when faced with incompetent drivers: adjust their driving style to suit so as to provide sufficient space and time to accommodate any oafish manoevres they may decide to undertake. Or, as I did tonight on the B4176, choose an appropriately clear section of road and overtake as quickly and as smoothly as possible in consideration of all potential hazards in the vicinity, whilst carrying out real time risk assessments prior to committing to the overtake.
It’s called driving to the C.O.A.S.T. principle.
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Askeric dotcom wondered how I could possibly have thought that he wanted people off the roads.
Here is his comment #5 ‘If people can’t drive along this perfectly adequate stretch of road, such as it is, then they shouldn’t be driving at all.’
BRIAN(2) in comment #6 echoed this with his ‘perhaps we ought to limit the standard of driver that uses them’.
spindrift says incompetent drivers are to blame for accidents, rather than speed.
So there is clearly a united line from these three that the roads are not -as I had always thought- shared space for all.
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spindrift, you said Helen was being ‘inflammatory’ with her comment about a speeding tanker.
I would call her contribution ‘useful’ and ’salient’ to the debate on this thread, as it provides evidence for the need for some sort of safety measures to prevent a fatal smash.
In my opinion, a much better example of ‘inflammatory’ language is your comment #3 in the previous debate which BRIAN(2) kindly gave the link for. http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/27/call-for-reduction-in-road-speed/ ‘Yet again, residents try and dictate roads policy in their village / hamlet / town. It is idiocy that must be stomped on right now.’
Isn’t it more inflammatory to ’stomp’ on people’s opinions than -as Helen does- to make a simple observation?
And BRIAN(2), are you unaware that we live in a PLURALIST democracy?
Pluralist democracies guarantee the rights of expression of minorities, even tiny, but well-funded, minorities that deny the scientific consensus on climate change from behind pseudonyms….
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Huw.
As I have said MANY times before, I am NOT going to enter into futile discussion with you.
YOU said ” running off the road” - which imples driving in a manner such as to “force” someone off the road.
That is NOT repeat NOT what I said.
I said, : “if people can’t drive perfectly adequately, then they shouldn’t be driving”.
Now, is such people DECIDE then, not to drive, that would be THEIR decision, and not one of being FORCED off the road.
I take pride in my driving, of over 800,000+ miles, and I OBJECT to being tarnished in this way.
I would NEVER force anyone off the road, in fact I have helped many a driver in distress, by coming to their aid with the benefit of my driving skill , and mechanical knowledge.
Regards
Askeric dotcom
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Huw, Roads are not a shared space for all to drive on, that is why we have driving tests and licences, to let everyone drive on the roads would be disasterous. Incompetent drivers do in fact cause more road accidents than speed, that is a well known fact. How can you call Helen’s contribution “evidence for the need for some sort of safety measure to prevent a fatal smash”?
Helens statement is just her opinion, I doubt if she reported it to the police which she should have done it she felt that “intimidated” and maybe the tanker driver would argue that it was Helen that was too far over the centre of the road so how can you possibly call that “evidence”? Helen claims to have experienced people being nearly run off the road more than once in the last couple of weeks. In my many years and several thousand miles of driving ,I have never experienced this so either Helen must be very unlucky, drives too close to the white line or she over reacts to what was not a very serious situation after all.But people like Helen can cause a road to have a bad reputation which isn’t justified.
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I have not used, nor targetted the word “inflammatory” at, Helen. I targetted the word at you, Huw as implying that myself / Brian / askeric are prone to running slower drivers off the road is just that: inflammatory.
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spindrift, who wants to ’stomp’ on local opinions (see comment #3 http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/27/call-for-reduction-in-road-speed/ ), says that he was not targeting Helen with the word ‘inflammatory’ in his opening paragraph of comment #4.
I would invite objective readers of this thread to re-read his opening paragraph of comment #4 and judge whether this is the case.
As with his climate change denial (see http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/13/group-to-air-views-of-drivers/ ), spindrift’s claims do not bear closer scrutiny.
Face facts, please, spindrift.
You DID accuse Helen of being ‘inflammatory’, and her statement -which everyone can see is a simple observation- is, of course, not in the slightest bit inflammatory.
BRIAN(2)’s attempt to blame Helen for the tanker incident is also inexcusable, but utterly predictable from someone, whose ideological belief that speed has nothing to do with road accidents will override anything which gets in his way.
Over to you askeric dotcom.
As the above article makes abundantly clear, the locals of Leighton and Eaton Constantine are ‘in distress’, and are making the totally reasonable request of getting the speed limit there reduced.
Could you come ‘to their aid with the benefit of [your] driving skill , and mechanical knowledge’?
Or are you, like BRIAN(2) and spindrift, going to keep telling the locals to learn to drive properly and/or get off their road?
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Huw.
This IS my last word.
It is obvious to me that all you want to do is rubbish anyone who demonstrates any sort of skill, and, in certainly in my case, someone who genuinely wants to contribute to a debate in a thoughtful, and informed way.
I do not wish to communicate with you any more.
Regards
askeric dotcom
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Askeric dotcom, I am not rubbishing your skill as a driver and I did not mean to offend you, for which I apologise.
I am just trying to urge you to listen to and respect the justifiable demands of locals in Leighton and Eaton Constantine to have some say in the speed of their road.
They think this is potentially a life-and-death issue.
Bearing in mind that 2,943 people died on the roads in 2007, and that safety measures introduced nationally since 2000 are leading to a drop in the number of road casuatlies, I think their case is a very strong one.
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Huw,
I can certainly continue to show you up to all for your lack of knowledge on anything to do with motoring or the law of such or local knowledge because I know that I am much more experienced than you in these fields. People like yourself who speak out against something they have little or no knowledge of must be careful, perhaps it is better that you stick to debates on climate change which you do seem to know something about and leave the issues of whether the B4380 is a dangerous road or not to people who actually know where it is and who actually use it. I know I wouldn’t get into an argument over climate change, horses, needlework, stamp collecting or anything I knew very little about for the fear of feeling foolish.
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Askeric, if you read the debate referred to in the above link you would see that Huw has continuously changed what others are supposed to have said just to enable him to change the argument round to his point. He doesn’t seem to accept that he knows little about Leighton, the B4380 and how road speed limits are set but continues to argue his point when most people would have realised that they were beaten.
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Huw, where did i say “speed has nothing to do with road accidents”? If you cannot answer the debate on facts that people have actually said not your version of what has been said then perhaps it is an admission on your part of the fact that this debate is not “going your way”?
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Huw , where did I attempt to blame Helen for the tanker incident? I said that if asked “maybe the tanker driver would argue that Helen was too far over the centre of the road” making it an arguably case and not as you said “evidence for the need for some sort of safety measures to prevent a fatal smash”. As I asked before and you ducked away from it, How can that be called “evidence”? Is it not the word of one person against someone who cannot argue their case back?
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BRIAN(2) says [Huw ‘doesn’t seem to accept that he knows little about Leighton’.
However, this is not the case. I have always accepted that.
If you read your way through the link, http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/27/call-for-reduction-in-road-speed/ you will see that I was simply affirming my confidence that the locals have a much better idea of what is appropriate for their road than those who want to stomp on their opinions.
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Huw,
You comment on the fact that casualties on the roads have fallen since 2000 but do you not accept that cars have become safer over the last seven years with more cars having passenger airbags, ABS and other traction control devices, which will obviously contribute to casualty figures falling, so these reductions may not necessarily be entirely down to speed cameras or reductions in speed limits?
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For the avoidance of any future doubt, I am not in denial of climate change; I am just aware of two sides of an argument on a subject that I like to digest polarising attitudes on. I suppose it’s like the church / faith / religion. I am not going to blindly accept one argument without studying / reading the other viewpoint. I am open minded on such subjects, and to think and do otherwise - to me - is blinkered and one-dimensional.
Back on topic.
There have been circa 3,000 deaths per year on our roads since 1993. I have not read the stats for 2007, but I suspect that they differ little from the 2006 stats where it is shown that “exceeding the speed limit” accounts - for the over 25 age group - for 2% of road deaths.
To conclude, and in my defence, I have not - in this discussion - suggested that local drivers learn to drive / get off the road.
PS
Huw, as a German expert, what is your view on de-limited stetches of autobahnen?
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Could we get back to the subject of this thread, which both BRIAN(2) and spindrift are avoiding, which is that democratically accountable parish councillors, who know their road and local residents better than anyone, want to have their safety concerns taken seriously.
2 participants in this debate hide behind pseudonyms, suggesting a lack of confidence in their ideas, and have not made it clear why locals are wrong to be concerned about their safety.
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The main suject of this debate Huw is whether the B4380 is a dangerous road and needs a lower speed limit ie. 30MPH because many of the drivers using it , according to the locals, do not know it and are making it dangerous. I have proven to you using Dept for Transport Guidelines that it is not a road which classifies as needing a 30 mph limit…who should know better than the Dept for Transport what makes a road dangerous? You jumped into this debate (item 7) saying that people were trying to “run people off the road” which you cannot back up because no one has actually said that. You refuse to answer my last three questions. I hope that your observasional skills when driving and cycling are better than you reading of what people are actually saying on this debate, Huw.
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According to the article above, BRIAN(2), the locals don’t want ‘hundreds of cars following a diversion route … speeding past their home’.
Roger Pittaway, who -NB- gives his own name rather than a pseudonym, ‘fears people may be killed before anything is done’.
The police -NB fully accountable to local residents- have had representations from residents in Leighton complaining bitterly about the speed the traffic since the start of the roadworks.
They think it is ‘disgusting’ that a 60mph limit is still in force in a village; they have been trying to lower it since the 1940s.
Speed seems to be the major concern of the residents.
Somehow, your argument about air-bags or ABS, doesn’t seem to resonate with them for some reason or other.
According to you, Leighton doesn’t count as a village in the Dept for Transport’s definition.
OK, then, I would be supportive of re-defining it as a village if it means potentially saving lives.
You ask ‘who should know better than the Dept for Transport what makes a road dangerous?’
Since 2000, the Dept for Transport’s strategy for reducing road casualties seems to have focused quite successfully on speed cameras and speed limits.
Do the Dept for Transport recognize what makes a road dangerous or not?
The locals of Leighton and Eaton Constantine Parish and their councillors, who are not afraid to name themselves, seem to recognize the correlation between speed limits and safety, as do I.
Why don’t you?
And why don’t you reveal your true name, BRIAN(2)?
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You have failed to answer any of my last questions. You have been given evidence from Dept of Transport and you have had the opinions of three very experienced drivers who obviously drive for a living and drive these types of road much more than you do and yet you are too blind to see the obvious. I cannot see the point of continuing this debate if you cannot do us the courtesy of answering simple questions. However I will answer your question as a courtesy to you and as a conclusion to this debate.
You ask “why the locals should not have their fears of safety taken seriously”.
My answer to this is;
(a) If the police feel that there was a safety issue on that road then something would have been done about it.
(b) Local councillors and local councils IN MY OPINION should not have the powers to reduce speed limits on a whim unless Department for Transport Guidlines(2006) AND the Police’s recommendations have been followed to the book.
(c) Many thousands of motorists use that road on a yearly basis, they have as much right to say whether the road is dangerous as a handful of locals….especially people who don’t even know where it is.
And that is my last word on the subject.
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spindrift says he is ‘not in denial of climate change’.
However, as this thread ( http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/13/group-to-air-views-of-drivers/ ) confirms, spindrift is unable even to substantiate his reasonable-sounding claim that there are ‘two sides’ to the argument.
Yes, there ARE two sides to this debate.
On the one side is the scientific consensus (or what David Attenborough calls the truth) about climate change.
On the other side are generously funded false grassroots campaign groups, like the sane-sounding ‘Association of British Drivers’ or ‘Safe Speed’ who devote whole sections of their website to insane climate change denial.
Click on to this link http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/13/group-to-air-views-of-drivers/ and see spindrift’s comment #6 to see that he is a big supporter of both of these organisations.
Above he says there are ‘two sides’ of the climate change ‘debate’.
However, he must surely concede that there is only ONE side on the blinkered and one-dimensional Association of British Drivers website.
And he must surely also concede that the letter from Paul Smith featured on the Safe Speed website urging motorists to ‘get angry’ is inflammatory.
I don’t think the locals of Leighton and Eaton Constantine will take kindly to being lectured to by people whose arguments about speed are as fraudulent as their arguments about climate change.
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