October 18th, 2006
It deigns to speak.
Finally a response from Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety
The issues you raise are a concern to all those involved in road safety and it is sensible that these are discussed at the correct forum.
They tell me to raise them at the cycle forum.
That’s a forum that the Highways designers have so far resolutely not attended. I’ve asked LPRS to apply pressure.
I’ve also asked LPRS what forum I should attend as a horseriders and motorcyclist to vent my fustrations about the use of Stone Mastic Asphalt, to which they again kow-towed to the Highways department.
Update
This post originally ended waiting for an LPRS response to the question of Highway Designers using SMA inappropriately.
They have now answered.
The difficulty when designing schemes is that there is a need to make provision for many different road user groups, which may result in a compromise, which I agree can result in certain elements not being the ideal.
Wow. The LPRS have now recognised that Highways Designers make compromises…
Contrast this to their attitude just weeks ago when they maintained that Highways did not compromise when faced with this dilemma:
Safety, budget, timescale. Pick two.
I rather think that the changing nature of LPRS responses does not reflect any actual beliefs about whether Highways makes compromises or not. Instead they merely choose the answer that most conveniently and with least effort to them having to make a real contribution rebutts the problem they are being posed.
However right now they are faced with a more difficult question to anwer. Can you see any links between these points.
a) At 11 out of 50 speed camera sites in Blackpool in 2004 accidents rose. There is no doubt in my mind having been clipped by the wing mirror of a car rapidly braking and trying to hide in the hedge on seeing a camera and taking his eye off other traffic that speed cameras provide a dangerous distraction. LPRS staff, cagers rather than cyclists themselves, do not see a cyclist being hit by a car the problem, so long as the car slows down.
b) In 2005 the national accident rate was cut by 3%.
c) Lancashire bucked the national trend and saw a 3% rise in casualties. For cyclists it’s worse and is up by 15%. Not looking good for meeting their 2010 casualty reduction targets.
According to the LPRS website accidents in Lancashire cost us £370m per annum. If we’d done as well as the national trend Lancashire should have seen a drop in accident costs to £358.9m. Presumably the 3% accident rate increase means a 3% increase in accident costs to £381.1m.
In 2005 another £22.2m was spent in Lancashire than we could reasonably have expected. Meanwhile LPRS sent £1.216 million in profit to Central Government.
I’ve said before that LPRS not working for cyclists.
From the latest accident figures it appears that they are not working for anyone.
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