... in Portsmouth:
Motorists won’t have to wait at red traffic lights at quiet times in the future if a new plan gets the go-ahead. All the lights at a junction could be switched to flashing amber – most likely in the middle of the night. Drivers would be expected to proceed with caution, rather than waiting for the red light to change.
Highways staff at Portsmouth city council is applying to the department for transport for permission to trial the scheme in a national first. If all goes to plan, the new lighting rules could be introduced in the city within a year...
A similar system already operates in Spain and France but motoring organisation the AA cast doubt on whether it would work safely in Britain. "It sounds like a great idea but I have concerns," said Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the AA, "The idea that drunks and young drivers are going to get to the flashing lights after midnight and say “after you” is nonsense."
A tentative first step in the right diretion, methinks, but what is the man from Alcoholics Anonymous wailing on about? It is quite true that drunks and young drivers tend to be a bit inconsiderate, but the notion that merely plonking down a few traffic lights at a random selection of junctions to hold them up at random intervals will improve their behaviour is clearly insane.
Meh
3 hours ago
14 comments:
This is a very sensible move, far too many times when I used to pull night shifts at Burger King did it take me in excess of 5 minutes to get 1 mile up the hill due to traffic lights when there were ZERO cars!!
"The idea that drunks and young drivers are going to get to the flashing lights after midnight and say “after you” is nonsense."
What a load of bollocks.
"The idea that drunks and young drivers are going to get to the red lights after midnight and say “I'll wait then” is nonsense."
Someone who ignores $NEW_TRAFFIC_LIGHT_SYSTEM will ignore $OLD_TRAFFIC_LIGHT_SYSTEM.
The flashing amber is surely just a warning to say that the traffic lights are not in operation, and so you shouldn't just whiz through. The reason you will obey that rule is because if you don't you will have a crash. Young people and drunks still don't want to crash.
"Outbreak of common sense"
It will pass. See comment #4 Portsmouth News
Andrew Howard is also a prat becasue what he predicts won't happen is exactly what will happen. This idea was used before in the 1970's. There was a set of lights at the junction of Holborn Viaduct and Old Bailey/Giltsur Street that used exactly this technique and it worked very well. I was an 18 year old driver at the time and I thought it was brilliant and I carefully watched out for other traffic.
The real test of this system will come after the first accident caused by a graduate of the halfwit school of motoring.
Will they abandon the innovation as a knee-jerk response or accept that the accident might well have happened anyway and allow it to continue?
SW, L, indeed. They have this system in plenty of countries and it works fine, so it's not actually an 'experiment'.
OP, yup. If you follow his logic through, what he's really saying is that there should be traffic lights at every single junction, and probably a 200 yard intervals on straight roads.
McH, this is the big problem - there's no way of counting the number of accidents which DON'T happen as a result of traffic lights etc being removed, even though a global before-and-after comparison shows that the number of accidents always goes down.
"If all goes to plan, the new lighting rules could be introduced in the city within a year..."
FFS, bureaucracy or what? WTF does it take them a year to figure out? Reprogramming the lights should take a month, tops or possibly two if you allow for going out to tender. The rest is just job-justification.
Presumably we can hold the AA at least partially responsible for the removal of Zebra crossings then.
Do none of these pressure groups ever ask themselves about personal responsibility? Surely driving is about one of the most responsible activities we do on a regular basis?!
VFTS, your comment went to spam for some reason.
B, yes, bureacracy, and our rent-seeking chums in the private sector. Martin Cassini tracked down a figure for the cash cost of the "traffic calming indutry" (private companies and bureaucrats alike) and it's several £ billion a year.
BE, can you explain the AA/zebra crossing thing?
the cash cost of the "traffic calming indutry" (private companies and bureaucrats alike) and it's several £ billion a year
Chez nous, the local authority spend hundreds of thousands of ££ putting in "traffic-calming" measures - bumps, constrictions and ramps - through a residential part of town ("town" by the way, is 7,000 people tops). I suspect they were "using up money" before a financial year end.
Uproar ever since. Now they're spending hundreds of thousands of ££ ripping it all out again because of never ending protests by people living there.
How fortunate for us all that the Council has evidently been successful in breeding an orchard full of money trees. I wonder if I might get a cutting?
"I suspect they were "using up money" before a financial year end."
Ah, yes, it's that time of year again when the Council throws money at everything in sight, principally roads. Our local completely pointless exercise cum H&S gone mad is a pavement-widening project on one of the roads into town. The old pavement was about 4-5 ft wide. It's now 18" wider, on the side away from the road, but while it is considered safe for sundry pedestrians to use this pavement in close proximity to the traffic, the hi-viz jacketed workmen couldn't possibly work so close, so two lanes of the three-lane road have been closed and lights installed on the remaining lane, holding up everyone going into or out of town for no reason at all.
Sooner than I thought. It has passed.
Today's Pompey News
To save you the trouble of searching, Mordaunt is a cameroid.
(I usually preview a comment before submission, to avoid faux-pas. In this instance, my finger had originally struck the q key instead of a when entering the name. Freudian?)
VFTS, that is a f-ing classic piece of bansturbation. I'd often thought that home delivering booze after hours would be a splendidly profitable business (as long as you can get payment in advance and don't have all the contents of the van stolen).
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