The law of unintended consequences. In 1994 I got a cat, he was a lovely short haired British blue called Norman. I named him after the Chingford Skinhead Norman Tebbit, which upset many of my friends on the left who thought it was not a suitable name for a cat. He was rather lucky to have joined the family in 1994 as this coincided with the period of Labour/Lib Dem power in Barnet. You may wonder why this benefitted a moggy? Well almost the first act of the council was to install road humps in Millway (my road). By the time Norman was old enough and smart enough to become a user of the road, the rather strategically placed hump outside our house had been installed. Not that anyone noticed at the time, but there was a resurgence of the cat population in Millway. Cats in Mill Hill have few predators (psychopaths and foxes being the only ones of note) and smart cats can negotiate slow moving traffic. Norman lived a charmed existence. He died of a heart attack in 2004, around the time the local Tories pulled the humps out.
I've been delivering leaflets recently in Millway and I noticed, or rather I didn't notice any moggies at all. I spoke to a couple of neighbours who used to have them, but the story is the same "They just get run over the first time they cross the road". You see Millway is a ratrun from the Broadway to The A41 at Apex Corner. Sadly a large proportion of the people who take advantage of this are what I lovingly like to call dickheads. Millway is .0.65 of a mile long. Prior to the removal of the road humps, the average speed of cars travelling was around 25mph. I would guess that when there is no oncoming traffic, it is now 50mph, which means that at quiet times cars are covering the distance in 46.8 seconds, instead of 93.6 seconds. At this speed a cat has approx 2 seconds to get out of the way a of a speeding car it sees 50 yards away, wheras it has 4 seconds if cars are travelling at 25mph. The stopping time of a car travelling at 25 mph. At 25mph the stopping distance of a car is approx 17 metres. At 50mph it is 53 Metres which is approx the length of 13 cars.
An adult human can see above cars and so has a chance, but a cat doesn't. In a road such as Millway, with ambient noise from the Motorway, it has no chance at all.
Maybe that doesn't bother you. I'm rather partial to moggies, but since the humps went, we have dogs, which stay in the house and the garden. It isn't the end of the world for me, apart from one thing. My son is now 18. He was born in the year 2000 and is a fine lad, studying physics at Manchester University. We go to football together and most of the time get on rather well. When he was 2, back in 2002, the last year of the Lab/Lib Dem administration, I did a very silly thing. I was bringing some shopping in from the car , leaving the front door open and he ran out to meet me. The car was parked on the far side of the road. He ran out straight in front of a car. Fortunately for me, the car had slowed to around 15mph for the hump outside the house, saw him and no harm was done. I know for a fact that if the same scenario happened today, there would be a dead two year old child. Anyone who is a parent will know that is your worst fear. Losing a child is bad enough, but imagine if you were me and a moment's carelessness meant it was your fault?
Personally I believe that people, especially small children (and cats) should be able to cross the road safely on suburban side streets. It may sound like I am trying to score party political points. I am not, I just want safe roads for the residents of Barnet. I don't think road safety should be a political issue at all. I find it shameful that it is.
To me, the issue of the environment is one which is holistic. The same people who want to drive at ridiculous speeds on small roads are the ones who buy cars to impress rather than for their fuel efficiency. They are the ones who object to low emission zones where it affects their gas guzzlers, hypocritically stating that it is not them they are worried about but local businesses with old vans. I like cars, I am not anti driver. I just want people to be responsible and if they can't (which they clearly can't), be made to.
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