Sometimes the human race makes me sick
An interesting quote, don't you think. Where does it come from? Now this may surprise you. It comes from Chapter 10 of the Cursed Earth Chronicles, which was part of a Judge Dredd story from around 1978. It was said by Judge Dredd in response to the senseless slaughter of the children of a harmless and defenceless alien.
This is probably the strangest way to start a blog about the removal of road humps in my road, but I'm sorry to say this is exactly how I feel about what has happened. Since the Labour / Lib Dem administration were booted out of office in 2002 by the electorate of Barnet, Barnet Council has been persuing a policy of road hump removal in Barnet. The messiah of this "motorist first" policy is Councillor Brian Coleman and it is the reason for the existence of this blog.
Have you ever been run over? I was in 1988. I was hit, crossing Burnt Oak Broadway in 1988. The driver told the police that he was travelling at 40 mph. let me tell you what it was like. The pain in my thigh, which bore the brunt of the impact was so severe, that I screamed like a baby until I was given some pethadin. Then I was a bit more chilled. The doctors told me that usually people died when they were hit at this speed. They said that if I hadn't been training to run a marathon and I didn't have well developed muscles in my legs, I would be toast. Sadly at the time they missed the stress fractures in my spine, which have caused problems ever since. It rather made me appreciate the difference between 30 pmh and 40 mph.
My son is now 10. Do you have any children (Brian Coleman doesn't so most likely doesn't understand this). On Saturday, I took him for the first time to the City of Manchester Stadium, for the City Vs Wolves game. We had a great day. My kids bringme more joy than anything. When he was 3 years old, I was putting the rubbish out and left the front door of my house open. My son ran out of the house, across the pavement and into the road. As there was a road hump, the car which was travelling down Millway, was doing 20 MPH and stopped short of him. I felt terrible. I would say that any parent who has experienced such a moment would understand. I guess a man such as Coleman doesn't. You make a silly mistake and seconds later, given the grace of God you are on your knees giving thanks for sparing your sons life.
So why the blog? Last Tuesday, we got a letter from Barnet Council saying that the following day our road was being resurfaced. By Friday, our road had a fantastic new surface, free of potholes. It is also free of humps. As it is used as a ratrun between Mill Hill Broadway and the A1/A41, we now have a speed track outside the front door. Before the humps were put in, we'd regularly lose wing mirrors and get scrapes. Had my son ran out today in front of a car, he'd be toast. Were we consulted? No, the letter said that the consultation will follow. Residents of Uphill Road were consulted, all but 3 said they wanted humps retained, Barnet Council ignored them. According to Brian Coleman "The Motorist comes first".
The consultation is a waste of money. Nothing will change Colemans mind. It is money down the drain, to pretend that they care. They don't. The cost of the consultation would save a care assistents job. It is all window dressing. The road has been resurfaced, the consultation should have taken place beforehand. Getting the road amended now will be prohibitively expensive.
If and when my car is damaged, I will be sending Coleman the repair bill and taking the Council to court for it if necessary. If any of my loved ones are injured or killed as a result of cars speeding, then I will sue the council for failing in their duty of care to my family and for negligence in preventing an accident which would not have happened previously.
What really makes me sick though, is that this administration which cares nothing for the children who cross our roads has been re-elected twice now and Coleman has been put in charge of the Fire Authority by Boris Johnson, when his attitude to the well being of the people he has a duty to has been known for years.
Sometimes I'm ashamed to be a Barnet resident.
24 comments:
I drove up your road today Rog and was delighted that the humps had been removed. Can we please stop this incessant persecution of the motorist and anti-car rhetoric. We don’t all speed through residential areas and the boy racers who do, pay little attention to the humps anyway.
It is terrible when accidents happen, especially when children are involved, but there is evidence which suggests that aggressive motorists who are forced to slow down for humps immediately speed up again afterwards to make up for lost time. That is far more dangerous.
The humps in your road stretched the whole way across, thus slowing down emergency vehicles as well. Those few extra seconds could be precious and if you are a patient in the back of an ambulance, do you really want to be thrown around?
There are many options available to local authorities to safely manage and control speed in residential areas without resorting to humps.
On what possible basis do you think the taxpayer should be liable for any future damage caused to your car by a careless driver? The council doesn’t pay for the damage it has done to my suspension and tracking over the years.
On the basis that until last Friday cars observed the speed limit because there was a hump outside my house and the council has removed it.
As they got a democratic mandate to do it, the idiots who voted for this can pay when my wing mirrors get taken out by boy racers.
Of course you were delighted, you don't live in a ratrun and your kids ain't going to get mown down by boy racers.
So Rog, you can actually afford a car now. Well done.
David for once we agree. The poor chap clearly thinks the council should pay for everything.
I suppose his next blog will be about why the council should pay for his supply of tissues whilst he's blogging
Pathetic
There is either a world where we have big savvy citizens, including kids, who are taught early on that the world can be a dangerous place and they need to have their wits about them or one where everyone is risk averse, molly coddled with a false sense of safety prevails.
We've been around this discussion before and avid readers can review our previous spats.
On a practical point I note you are specifically upset as the hump you liked was right outside your door! If everyone had their own hump, they would be so close together that the road would become flat :)
Road humps are just unfair and wrong. They cause death, they damage the cars of the innocent and as everyone knows the faster you drive over them the less you feel them.
People should drive carefully and considerately. Pedestrians should use common sense and have their wits about them.
The robot enforcement of cameras should be dismantled and specialist highways officers should patrol our roads pulling over and educating drivers (not fining them for every minor infraction) to drive better and catching those thousands of criminals driving without insurance and tax and commonly stolen goods or drugs.
Dan,
The term right outside my door was a figure of speech, it was actually outside the door of the house three doors up the road, with another one outside the door of the house six doors down.
Your logic is the same as that used by the gun lobby in the USA. Your philosophy is quite simple "My right to hurtle up Millway at 60mph is more important than your right to have a safe environment for you kids".
The car damage argument is spurious. I've had the humps for 15 years and had no damage. The reason? Because I drive over them at a sensible speed. By making this argument, you are admitting you drive too fast for the road conditions and are not paying attention to the prevailing state of the road.
Try driving slowly and carefully and not only will your car be fine, but the rest of us will be at less risk
I've just read this blog, and the comments. I have to say that the comments, other than Rog's, serve to remind us all what is most objectionable about Conservative attitudes: the selfishness, and the lack of empathy - the reverence for the idea of a form of personal liberty' which must be gratified, no matter what the cost to others. this is not about being anti-car, or persecuting the motorist: it's about asking the motorist to put consideration for the safety and well being of others before your own - a difficult concept for many, I realise.
I think probably none of the rest of you are parents, and simply do not understand the anxiety that speeding in residential areas causes if you do have young children.
I also imagine that you have not seen at closehand, and yes, DCMD and Hope, I am going to repeat this, you have not seen at closehand what happens when someone dies in front of you as a result of someone else's speeding. No matter how much you as a driver may obey the law, or even if you are a passenger in a car obeying the limit,if someone else is not, and their vehicle collides with you, above the limit, you will probably die, because the impact of a speeding car on a human body is immense: and horrific, let me tell you.
In our area, road calming measures were removed, and after it was done, the residents were then sent a consultation letter. This is typical of the cynical and contemptuous way consultation is organised in this borough, as you may have observed. We have had many accidents in the area since, including a fatal one outside our house, in which a man died in the gutter as a result of a driver recklessly speeding up the road. We live near a park: traffic calming measure were removed -there are continually accidents at one spot near the entrance to a play area, where many children attend. The six year old daughter of a friend was knocked down, and nearly killed, and returned to school after several months in a wheelchair. Another woman I know was hit by a car at the same spot, and her baby thrown out of a buggy: luckily they survived, but with injuries.
These incidents are the reality of what happens when drivers break the speeding law in residential areas, and we need traffic calming measures to reduce speed for this reason.If it means that you and Councillor Coleman are annoyed by the disruption, then on behalf of the parents of Barnet let me offer my sincere apologies.
'Mrs T'/Amanda, whoever you are, your rather unsavoury obsession with 'self love' tells us all we need to know about the company you keep. Maybe you should get out more.
Dont Call me Glib...you are missing the point. Democarcy is Dead in Barnet. Coleman,Rayner, Braun and Co have the planning process and our Borough in a death grip. Coleman and friends are milking the system and making no secret of it,becuase they can. The roads around Mill Hill are perilous at best. Uphill Road is used by many hundreds of children everyday.The speed of the traffic means mixed with the constant precence of builders lorries that a tradegy is inevitable. The Millway too is a classic rat run. Parents are encouraged to have their children walk to school, yet The Powers That be do nothing to help make this a safer practice. the Ridgeway at schooltimes is a nightmare, people have been maimed and killed in the past, yet, the chaos insues everday of term time. Coleman does not care, none of the Barnet Tories do..it is not their problem,it is somebody elese's mess. I too shall hold Barnet responsiblefor death or injury caused to me or my loved ones as a result of their refusal to act on these accident black spots, Mill Hill Circus with it lack to traffic cameras is a perfect example of how little they care. Long Live Rog T, Coleman & co, your time to answer will come.
Health and Safety works on the basis that there are no accidents, because there are reasons and causes for everything, some of which you can design out or limit.
Road bumps are part of that. Anyone who does not believe they work should know that Barnet has the second highest number of Road Traffic Accidents of all the London Boroughs (the highest being Westminster, which is unsurprising, given its volume of all kinds of traffic, high number of bars and restaurants, and the number of tourists stepping out looking the wrong way).
@jaybird - 'elf 'n' safety works on the basis that humans are morons and are always likely to do the most stupid thing possible. From this patronising and nanny state view everything must be fiddled and meddled with to protect people from themselves.
In the process people are hurt, life is made a misery, sentient humans are turned into automotons, jobs are lost and in the case of road humps - people die.
There's a few points I'd like to take up here, as a member of the relevant department.
* Rog, the carriageway in Millway was in a terrible state, not just for cars but particularly for pedestrians crossing the road and something had to be done.
* In the vast majority of roads, speed humps are simply not necessary and were put in previously as a very lazy / sledgehammer, walnut type solution to a particular problem in particular areas.
Councillors around the country saw the good effect they had outside schools etc and decided that the default position for many residential roads was speed humps AND a 20mph limit. A blanket decision not supported by any proper research
* The emergency services HATE speed humps and in virtually all consultations try to oppose them
* Roads such as yours should really have other traffic calming measures that are less damaging, to the environment, cars and the surrounding road surface.
* Vehicle emisions are far higher at road humps because of their nature and the way in which drivers approach them; i.e. driving at normal speed up to them, braking hard to slow down, then speeding off again.
* Barnet has a higher number of accidents as a London borough simply because of it's size, relative density of young and old and the fact that some pretty major roads run through it
* As I said in a previous post, we can only recommend practical solutions to political problems.
* Staff here can't understand how people keep voting for Toady either but they do, so we're forced to play with the cards we're dealt. Toad considers that he has a mandate from the people to remove speed humps - as he campaigned so hard against them - so he can remove them wherever he wants...
* I can't see ANYONE being happy about money being spent on Highway Officers to pull people over to educate them in the ways of righteousness!
Please don't take this as a defence of current policy, in some roads speed humps are absolutely the best solution. In the majority of cases though, there are better, safer ways to reduce speed than humps.
Have a nice day
@shedbollox - roads aren't dangerous. Roads are inanimate. Sometimes, some people both a) drive like fools and should be challenged on that and b) some pedestrians don't treat roads with respect and have their wits about them.
There is no inevitability of tragedy in Uphill Road, in fact the reverse. The more that people like you meaninglessly bleat on about how 'dangerous the road' is the more care people will take crossing it and driving down it. With road humps on the road the drivers attention is switched from other cars and pedestrians and becomes focussed on this medieval lump before him. As research shows when lines etc are taken off roads, drivers switch their mental faculties back and make judgements as to what is safe and do not mindlessly, for example, cling to the white line at the centre of a two way road but drive closer to the curb.
@LBB - a government / locally elected police commissioner committed to finding criminals would indeed spend money on highway police officers. They do in other countries. You cannot catch people driving dangerously maintained cars, carrying stolen goods, driving without insurance etc without highway cops.
You may not envisage it, but it is the correct and productive thing to do.
Totally agree about the white line thing too. Anything that makes drivers more sensitive to their environment, as opposed to focussing solely on the road, is a good thing.
p.s. love the 2000AD reference, although I'm sure Judge Dredd would have you rotting in a drokking cube or digging rocks on Titan by now for some minor infraction of the law Rog! :o)
In the world according to Mrs Angry, only parents are authorised to comment on matters relating to road safety. In the words of Rog T, how pathetic.
I grew up on Millway. As a child (many years before speed bumps) my parents wouldn't buy a dog or cat for us because of the road. When we did get a puppy it was run over within 6 weeks.
I lived for years on West Way in Edgware, a fast and wide road. My kids reached the age where they started crossing the road just as the policy to remove road humps came in, more's the pity.
Yes, I agree that kids have to learn to take care on the road but in residential areas cars SHOULD SLOW DOWN. If they won't do this voluntarily (and they don't, as a driver I'm as guilty as the next person) they should be compelled.
Saving pedestrians' lives is more important than saving a couple of minutes.
@caroline - cars should bl**dy well slow down. BUT a) road tables don't do that (old big humps did but they are now outlawed) and b) the faster you go over speed tables the less you feel them.
If there are roads that have problems then specialist highway police should patrol / set traps on a random basis. Those caught speeding way past the limit should be offered a speed awareness course instead of fines and points.
Once it becomes known that highway police have caught people then behaviour will change.
@Mrs Angry - I'm sorry but it is such a cheap shot to make suggesting all those who haven't seen someone die from a RTA have no right to comment. You have no idea whether what happened would have with bumps and humps and even if it would have changed things, it is just one case.
As DCMD has pointed out people die because of the humps. Research has proven this.
DCMD: when you are losing an argument, please don't resort to misquoting other commenters, or twisting their words. I did not say that only parents are entitled to comment on road safety: I said that unless you have children you cannot understand the anxiety a parent feels about speeding in residential areas. I certainly would not have felt the same way before I had children, and seen the dangers from this perspective.
Dan Hope, the same applies: I object to you dismissing my comments as a 'cheap shot' - they are based on experience: before I had the misfortune to be a witness to two fatal accidents, I had different views on road speeds, traffic calming etc. Again, this is not something you can understand unless you have been in the same situation. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that in both cases, these lives would have been saved by the physical obstruction of traffic calming measures - and I don't just mean the humps. The so called evidence which anti-calming factions like to quote is highly dubious and has been shown to be so by other studies.
Speed kills: anything which slows down idiotic, selfish drivers helps protect lives and should be installed wherever appropriate.
Hi Rog, I use Millway to access the Broadway on foot. Funnily enough today walking to the Broadway i ventured to cross Millway about half-way down. I knew the road had been resurfaced but not that the humps had been removed.
As i stepped into the road a car was coming up Millway, by my reckoning I had time to cross the road before that car reached where I was; hmmmmm it seemed that the car actually picked up speed and was practically 30 feet from me when I was in the middle of the road, it's driver beeping horn loudly to warn me of his arrival.
Being the stubborn Irish woman that I am, I did not walk faster, if anything I delayed a little, and said driver had to slow down.
What I believe most drivers are badly in need of is an object lesson of some kind, where they are helped to realise that if a ONE TON car comes in contact with a human, the human generally is more injured than the car.
THEY NEED TO REALISE THAT THEY ARE IN CONTROL OF KILLING MACHINES!!! Personally I'd like to see large signs back and front of a car, and possibly inside the car so the driver would always be aware.
Those signs would read, DRIVING CAN KILL. Just like those on packets of cigarettes. A cigarette is a personal choice, being hit by a vehicle driven by an idiot who is ADDICTED to speed is not a choice FOR THE INJURED PARTY.
We need 20 mile speed limits in built up, residential areas, NOW.
@Mrs Angry. So you want every road turned into a medieval dirty track with physical restrictions to stop people going above a speed that could cause injury?
But you are so so sloppy in your language that you spoil your argument. If 'speed killed' why are motorways the safest roads in the country where people travel at 80mph all the time?
It's never speed that kills, it's inappropriate speed in all the circumstances. It's carelessness that will cause damage. Carelessness from drivers, from bike riders and from pedestrians. There are very very very few accidents and even fewer fatalities. Research shows that it is most common that when both a driver and a pedestrian are both distracted or don't have their wits about them.
We need to look at what REALLY causes accidents not just look for easy solutions that do more harm than good.
Dan Hope, my language is so so sloppy? Darling, the real problem is that you are not reading the words properly, and in the right order. I am talking about speed in residential areas, not on motorways. Speed in residential areas kills, because as you say, it is inappropriate in the circumstances. I am sure that you are a responsible driver, but sadly there are too many reckless drivers who see nothing wrong with breaking the law and breaking the limit. There is no need to drive at a fast speed in a residential area, and it should not really cause you any genuine inconvenience if there are traffic calming measures in place. I agree that these should be sited with some degree of discretion, although discretion is not necessarily something you might expect to find in the qualities of those taking such decisions on our behalf. And now I am going to bed so you can all carry on arguing to your heart's content.
@ Daniel Hope, what causes accidents, injury and death to pedestrians Daniel, is simple. Idiots in control of ONE TON KILLING MACHINES.
Only a rigourously enforced speed limit of 20 mph or possibly less, in residential areas is going to end the numbers of deaths caused by speed and inconsiderate, and possibly criminal driving habits.
@Daniel Hope. As to the driving idiots, they are visible every day, they are the ones controlling ONE TON 4X4S WHILST HOLDING A MOBILE PHONE!!!!!
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