£2m scheme to combat speeding
Friday 20th February 2009, 12:40PM GMT.
More than 120 villages across Shropshire will see their speed limits reviewed as part of a £2 million package designed to combat the menace of speeding motorists.
Another measure could be to install warning signs on roads known for being plagued by speeders which highlight the registration number of cars that are going too fast.
Highways bosses today outlined a number of other initiatives to try to clamp down on motorists who put lives at risk.
They said 122 village speed limits will be looked at over the next two years to see if reduced limits should be introduced.
Rural roads where there have been a number of accidents will also be targeted.
And speed limits in urban areas will also be looked at, with proposals already being considered to cut the speed limit from 60mph to 50mph – or possibly even 40mph – on a stretch of road from Telford Way to Meole Brace in Shrewsbury.
Complained
The speed limit on Telford Way has already been cut from 60mph to 40mph.
Phil Crossland, assistant director strategic highways and transportation at Shropshire County Council, today said speed limits were a key issue for the county.
He said: “Speed limits are one of the most frequently complained about issues that come across my desk.
“It’s clear that communities have a desire for lower speed limits in areas where people live and therefore the council are looking at a complete review of all of our speed limits, hopefully by 2011.”
He said the county was looking to buy one of the vehicle actuated signs – which flash up a speed limit and registration number when drivers speed past – and this would be used on rural roads in an bid to urge drivers to slow down.
“We’re always looking to use the best technology we can and we believe this is worth a trial in Shropshire,” he added.
But he said this would be just one of a number of tools being looked at to tackle the problem, with the speed limit review one of the main issues being looked at.
He said proposals would go out to consultation and subject to funding and approval they would all be introduced by April 2011.
Villages to be reviewed in 2008/2009 include:
- Albrighton
- Bicton
- Astley
- Upper Battlefield
- Childs Ercall
- Quatt
- Worfield
- Wyken
- Lydbury North
- Hopton Wafers
By John Kirk
Shropshire Star on Twitter
Keep updated with the latest breaking news and content on our Twitter feed.
Lifestyle
Interactive Dining Out map
Hundreds of reviews by the Shropshire Star and Express & Star's teams to help you decide where to eat.
Entertainment
All the film reviews
Before you plan a trip to the pictures, get our critics' verdicts on all the latest movie releases.
OUR NEW APP
Get the new Shropshire Star app
Download the Shropshire Star’s new app to your iPad or iPhone to get one week of access to our digital newspapers absolutely FREE.
shropshirestar.com
Popular sections
Useful links
More money making schemes to harrass the motorists. More of a penalty for being a couple of miles over the speed limit than for deliberately stealing from a supermarket.
Yes for serious speeders the cameras are needed but surely there must come a point when big brother britain becomes too much to bear.
Glad I left the country.
Report abuse
I’d like to know how they can justify the cost of “£2 million” for bunging up a couple of signposts (that everyone ignores anyway) and “looking at speed limits in the villages” Crikey…I should apply for a job with the Highways people, strikes me it’s easy money for doing nothing.
Report abuse
I’m sorry David but try living next to a road where drivers speed. If you get caught a few miles over the limit and get fined it’s tough.
Report abuse
I thought the current thinking was to reduce the number of road signs so as to reduce roadside clutter and hence improve road safety. I am also aware that 60mph through villages where houses are right next to the road is possibly excessive and people do not slow down unless there is a lower speed limit.
Report abuse
Does this then mean that the allocated £2 million is coming from the already obviously overstretched highways budget, and that the roads that are supposed to be repaired and maintained are going to suffer further, necessitating even more proposed speed restrictions?
Speed isn’t the only key issue; poor quality roads and levels of maintenance are also key issues but then again its easier and cheaper to reduce than repair to an acceptable standard (with a bonus of collecting fines in some cases). I don’t disagree with speed restrictions where appropriate but I, like many other drivers I guess, see far to many going up for seemingly no reason or ones that are unrealistically low with the result that they get ignored, and as a consequence others that are in place for a reason also do.
Report abuse
By all means apply for a job in Highways John, but don’t expect a £2 million pay packet! I don’t think the money will go to the workers.
Report abuse
I wish they could define “speeding” or “speeders” for me. The speed limits have been the same since 1974 when the NSL dropped from 70MPH to 60MPH, so if these villages have been safe for that many decades, why do they need to be lowered now? Cars are safer than they used to be so there should be no need to lower limits.
As for people who buy houses on main roads and then moan about traffic, where were your brains when you looked at buying there in the first place????
Report abuse
tehy will be doing speed cameras next (an EU invention) damn them, i like to drive, they better not try and slow me down
Report abuse
So 122 villages in 2 years? Just over 1 a week? Just how long does it take?
An £2m? for 122 villages? Thats £16,000 per village!!
Any jobs going in the Highways Dept?
Report abuse
Whilst we are on the topic of speed limits…
The speed limit of “30″ at Albrighton is absolutely ridiculous…. Make it 40!
Why was it imposed?
Report abuse
can i just be the voice of reason and say GOOD well done, slower means safer, and greener too, well done to the council, all of you with children should be glad the roads will be safer now, stop moaning and think about the mothers and daughters who are mown down each year by boy racers on our roads
speed limits are welcome with me atleast
Report abuse
Harlescott: Greener for the typical car means 57mph. At this speed the effect of wind resistance and engine performance gives the best fuel efficiency.
So be kind to your planet and try to do at least 57mph whenever you can.
Report abuse
Less space less speed, simple make roads narrower
by the way lcuy 16 k to put up som solid steel professionally designed signs, design, white line etc, you clearly are ignorant of highway and transport issues, thats cheap!
Report abuse
Seems to me you could get an awful lot of extra policemen for £2m.
These would be better placed to use discretion and to pick up on the so called boy racers. Better use of human resources is what’s needed.
Report abuse
John Shenton, Harlescott salopian
Speed limits have been dropping constantly for the last five years or more but Britain is no longer the safest country in Europe for driving, having dropped to sixth place….WHY???
Obviously lower limits don’t lead to safer roads, do they???
People arn’t complaining because the roads are SAFER, people are complaining because the councils are wasting money and the roads are NOT becoming safer, just more frustrating to drive on and hence causing MORE accidents.
Report abuse
Lucy’s right,
most cars are at their greenest (most efficient) when in fifth gear at about 2,000- 2500 revs which for my car is 50-60MPH.
Keep the limits at 60 for a greener environment.
Report abuse
Unfortunately too many speed limits are being determined by Parish councils. Speed is not the issue, its the poor standard of driving. Sometimes its safe to drive 70 in a 50 zone, just like sometimes its safe to drive 30 on the motorway.
Report abuse
John’s absolutely right. Since when did parish councils become road safety experts?
Report abuse
typical do gooding public sctor lefty beurocrats getting in the way of my driving,
sack them all and spend the money on tax cuts
Report abuse
Surely the Parish Council don’t have a say in speed limits???????
I appreciate that the bible has a lot of subliminal automotive messages, indeed God had a Plymouth because the Bible tells us that “God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in a [Plymouth] Fury.”
But Moses was the real petrol head, because his followers are instructed not to go up a mountain “until the [Dodge] Ram’s horn sounds a long blast.”
No doubt Moses used his truck for work, but when he went cruising, he did so in a flashy sports car, as evidenced by a Bible passage declaring that “the roar of Moses’ Triumph is heard in the hills.”
Moses handed down his car when the exhaust had blown to his protégé, Joshua, evidenced by the Bible saying, “Joshua’s Triumph was heard throughout the land.”
Jesus drove a Honda but didn’t like to talk about it. As proof, I cite a verse in St. John’s gospel where Christ tells the crowd, “For I did not speak of my own Accord…”
And if you think the World Record for people in a Mini was British eccentricity, I’m afraid the idea was pinched from the Apostles, for the Bible says, “The Apostles were in one Accord.” I assume they borrowed Jesus’.
Nevertheless, I fail to see how this makes the Church and its Parish Council an authority on speed limits. Honestly *tut*
Report abuse
What is the point of more signs if the rules are not applied?
Start by enforcing the speed limit in Castle Foregate “after dark”.
Report abuse
Dear John: Poles are plasticoated steel – the signs are aluminium. Just how long does it take to dig two holes per village for the poles? Surley they can find some obliging hardworking Johnny Foreigners who will do it cheap enough?
I know Brown said “British jobs for British workers”, but surley it could be adapted to “Poles for poles”?
Report abuse
Lynn: Well more police on the roads is a very romantic notion but the reality is our current police force is over-stretched with the hieneous Bogus Boy Scout crime wave that is sweeping our county at the moment. See the link for details.
http://www.shropshirestar.com/2009/02/20/police-recruit-stops-youths-scout-scam/
Report abuse
On the way home from work yesterday, I was listening to Shropshire Radio’s resident boor Mr Darvall interviewing the council’s chief of highways, and I had to pull over lest I caused an accident.
Everything that was discussed with regard to “improving road safety” centred, CENTRED, around lower speed limits. A posted speed limit, as borne out by government figures, has almost NOTHING to do with the number of accidents on any given road. Almost nothing. (about 2% of road deaths, as it turns out). Also, let’s not forget there is a crucial difference between exceeding a speed limit being “causative” in a road death and “contributory” to a road death.
Why is public money being used to provide a solution that will be ineffective in 98% of road deaths?
The A442 EP through Telford had its speed limit reduced to 60 from 70, and in the following 12 months accidents actually INCREASED! Another road in Telford had it’s speed limit cut from 60 to 50. Despite (and I have the e-mail from the council to prove it) there being no accidents in the previous five years being caused directly as a result of exceeding the old posted speed limit.
I understand the B4176 is now a blanket 50 limit! Why?!?! It goes through no villages! Most of the villages listed above for speed limit review are villages where the VAST majority of residences are set way back from the road running through it. I know of one village that was INVENTED just to reduce a speed limit: “Morville Heath” on the A458 between Bridgo and Wenlock. “Morville Heath” consists of maybe one farm and one house, both about 5 miles from the 458! Madness!
I fear that those calling for speed limit reductions are being masterminded by parish councillors who are guilty of dribbling along a trunk road at 42mph in a 60 limit, and go puce when someone has the temerity and bare faced cheek to perform a perfectly safe overtake to allow progress at a perfectly safe and legal 60.
Just stop it.
Report abuse
It’s amusing that speed limits should be reduced to help mothers with their kids. I live in a South Shrops village, most of the speeders and loonies / inconsiderate and parkers / tailgaters I have experienced on Shrops roads have been mothers taking or collecting their little darlings to/from school. I agree with Lynn. Get more cops out there pulling people over for more than just speeding. What about non-working or broken lights? Or, poor driving, which also includes innapropriate speed, like dawdling along at 40mph everywhere, in 60mph areas and 30mph limit areas. Just a few examples…
Report abuse
Cleansheets is right.
The Dept. for Transport guidelines(2006) suggests villages should have a 30 MPH limit…..BUT at the same time it’s definition of a village is 20 or more houses fronting the main road. Many of the “villages” with 30MPH limits don’t have 20 or more houses on the main road and other guidlines required by the Dept for Transport are being blatently ignored by local councils in setting these ridiculous speed limits.
Report abuse
Easier solution.
Everyone in the country undergoes a IQ test – Those with a IQ less than 110 are refused a driving licence – those with a driving licence obtaining less than 110 on a IQ test will have driving licence revoked thus ensuring dangerous drivers are taken off the road
Report abuse
Parkman & Lynn. Look, you can just forget more policemen on the beat,they have ordered a nice new shinny helicopter and thats that!
You sound like children grizzling because Santa Claus hasn’t brought them what they wanted.
However there are sites such as Safe Speed who will welcome you to their community, not that your not welcome here, its just that you will find more sympathy from other people on Safe Speed who can’t drive and obseve a speed limit at the same time.
Report abuse
From my experience parish councils do have an input and suggest to the highways department that a speed restriction is required. I raised an objection to the introduction of a rather pointless 30 mph in the area I live and in doing so were referred to the dft website to view the document that the councils work to, currently dftcircular106.pdf I think. Although it’s the local councils that decide whether to carry out the work, it’s all based on a directive from government to stifle vehicle movement.
Report abuse
Yes Rob, it’s the Dept for Transport Guidelines(2006), unfortunately there are many cases where they ignore these guidelines totally.
Report abuse