February 9th, 2006
Safety Partnership?
Further to my post yesterday the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety have been kind enough to send me the current criteria they follow for camera placement.
So I’ve assessed the route I used for nearly ten years, and the route that I now follow against these criteria. The collision data is Lancashire County’s own, taken from their MARIO viewer.
On this collision-scarce stretch of road the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety have a mobile camera unit set up that fails to meet their current criteria for camera sites. The loophole they claim allows them to get away with this is that the camera was plonked there to catch speeding motorists before they had to place them where they would prevent accidents.
Quite clearly, as there were so few collisions before the camera was placed there, this camera must have been placed there for another reason. They tell us it’s not to earn revenue, but this camera seems to fly in the face of that claim, and I’d wager it earns a fair amount of money while contributing a big fat zero to road safety.
Actually that’s not true.
It contributes less than zero. This camera is plonked right next to a fixed camera slap bang in the middle of the cycle lane. If that’s the kind of example the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety are setting then maybe that’s why this cock guy thinks he can get away with it too.
And just up the road from that camera, is this little accident blackspot, where there are, you guessed it, no cameras.
This stretch is one where speeding traffic (well, what else do you deduce from all those accidents?) turning off the highway has priority over cyclists travelling along the highway. Bonkers. Despite placing revenue earning cameras further back along the way Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety will not currently place a camera covering this stretch. Eh? Do they really have a safety agenda?
Well if they really had a safety agenda I’d expect them to get out of their nice warm vans blocking the end of cycle lanes and do something about driving like this, only 200 yards away from another one of their popular, serious-accident free yet revenue earning sites.
Nearer to home, at a junction plagued by red-light jumping car drivers - no, red-light jumping is not the sole preserve of those idiot cyclists that Mad Max feels he needs to write into the Daily Mail about, cars can do it too, one killed a girl here last year - we have this little row of collisions. Those red dots along the bottom of the picture represent impatient motorists colliding with each other as they try and squeeze into one lane. Unfortunately they also squeeze into the cycle lane.
No cameras catching motorist jumping the lights. No-one from Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety stopping those entering the cycle lane and re-educating them. Where are they? Well, it’s only a problem during the evening commute, and do you know I’ve never seen a van out that late except parked up outside the local bobbies. Finished early and gone home have they?
I suspect that Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety are the sort of IAM holier-than-thou car-driving numpties that think that to make roads safer for cyclists you have to teach the victims - us cyclists - how to ride like defferential morons instead of tackling the the root cause of the problem. And do you know, I haven’t seen any evidence on their website of educating motorists to careless or dangerous driving habits - speed and booze excepted.
Frankly I’d have a lot more respect for them if they got off their arses, out of their camera vans and started catching the sorts of safety-caged attempted murderers I have to put up with when commuting.
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February 16th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Great piece of investigative work. Have you sent a paper verson to The Authorities?
February 17th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
No, but I do go to the Lancashire County Council Cycle Liaison meetings and get to speak to the bosses of these guys.
I prefer to meet people because 80% of the message is lost when it’s written down and it can come across as a bit harsh!
February 19th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
Write a letter to the police? I wouldn’t bother.
Got knocked off at a Leyland roundabout on June 30th. Van driver gave incorrect details (not deliberate just dumb as it turns out) so reported it to Police on 11th July (the day I found out details were false). It took 6 ‘phone calls and a detailed but concise 1 page letter to the seargeant (which him and his PC didn’t read in any detail) for them to finally contact the registered keeper on 6th October! 3 months to bother to speak to the guy’s boss! They had the address etc in a printout on the desk on 12th July…..
I did finally get some cash for a lid and rim (made them do insurance ha ha ha ha)
April 18th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Hi Nick
Ive sent some pics etc of the exact same thing above!! I couldnt believe it when i saw the police camera van parked there, i even had a word with the guy running the camera and he just said “im not in the cycle lane” the idiot.
Its so stupid because they re-adjusted the road to make a cycle lane to make it safer and then they go and park and leave absolutely no place for us to go!!
Incidentally, incase you hadnt heard, my mate Dave (www.twinklydave.com) got knocked off his bike on strand road when some idiot opened her door wide open! He was in the cycle lane and had nowhere to go, but straight into the door. He wrote off the car apparantly but luckily he didnt break anything and he hasnt broken any bones either… ;)
April 19th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Sympathies to Twinkly Dave. I’ll look out more carefully now as I commute home on the lower end of Strand Road.