It’s tragic that a young life was taken, but could they not have found a better place to protest than on a central reservation (see the second photo, on page 3) that’s in the middle of this supposedly extra-dangerous road?

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HSJP,

These lanes help traffic flow no end, especially when there are slow moving vehicles at the lights (or you on your high horse).

Without them traffic pulls away slowly when there are slow vehicles present and only one or two vehicles can get through the lights before they change, which inturn causes frustration and light jumping which is just as, or more, dangerous

What is needed, as in all road accident situations, is for drivers and pedestrians to be aware of their surrounding drivers/pedestrians and behave accordingly to the situation.

We are dumbing down roads, to the point where drivers feel that they don’t have to think for themselves anymore and this leads to bad driving and carelessness.

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I agree completely with the idea behind the protests, but was saddened by the actions of one protester on Monday. Whilst sitting in traffic at the crossroads I clearly heard one male protester shouting abuse at someone who had used the second ‘overtaking’ lane at the junction. I agree that this lane should be removed, but any arguement to do so is undermined by thug-like people who shout abuse at drivers who haven’t actually done anything wrong.
We all know its a racetrack along this road in the evening, and we all want something done about it, but lets try and push for a change in the right way, without resorting to this kind of behavior.

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“Wake up councils” These type of comments drive me crazy. What does Mr Peasbody think traffic engineers are doing at the council, that they sleep all day while dangerous traffic schemes pass across their desks unnoticed. Traffic signal schemes are carefully designed and audited where a large number of safety criteria have to be met quite often under difficult site constraints where large traffic flows have to be managed, land take is limited and numerous public utilities lie beneath the road surface hampering possibilities without huge costs.

There is nothing technically wrong with this junction, Trench Lock or Britannia Way. They have all been designed to meet strict design guidance. These schemes are quite often not designed by the council but form part of the planning obligation of a developer to modify the adjacent road network to accommodate their new development. In the case of Harlescott I would suggest this is probably Tesco. The council of course has to audit and agree the proposed works but can only refuse the design on a comprehensive technical case. If the design meets all guidance and regulations do you want to waste £1,000′s of tax payer’s money arguing the case with Tesco?

The issue here is driver behaviour. There are an infinite number of dangerous situations which could occur on UK roads because people drive like fools. You cannot design for every possibility. As stated above by HSJP, if you remove a dual lane approach you decrease the capacity of the junction and increase delay times and this is fundamentally proven to increase driver frustration resulting in risk taking and accident increases. Are we expected to redesign the countries road network so we all drive around on a scalectrix track? If you think this then Wake Up

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Brian 2 what is your simple solution to this problem? it only takes one boy racer to cause another tragedy

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Proposing solutions to this problem is fruitless unless the direct causative factor of the lad’s death is known.

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CCTV cameras fitted to all cars to record incidents of bad driving they do it in the States for insurance purposes?

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It was very sad young ben lost his life whilst crossing the road correctly, what it more sad is the amount of cars using the lane as people say like a race track, but what chance do we stand to get it changed when I myself have witnessed 3 police cars on 3 seperate days using this lane for the same thing-they did NOT have the lights and sirens on just driving to jump the que. People see them do and think ok for them then ok for me-theres no justice, I will carry on supporting the petition to get it changed no matter how long it takes.

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