Councillor Craig Browne joined local residents and volunteers on Thursday, 14th February, for their monthly Community Speedwatch session.
This time they stationed themselves on Brook Lane, just before the bridge over the bypass, and had one of their busiest sessions to date, recording 52 vehicles speeding (one every 69 seconds). Most of the speeding vehicles were travelling towards the village centre.
Councillor Craig Browne said "We felt that it was important to carry out a session between 3pm and 4pm so to coincide with the end of the school day, as this section is on the approach to Alderley Edge School for Girls and is used by many parents as a picking-up location. The School Safety Zone (20 mph limit) begins only another hundred yards along Brook Lane, which makes the results even more disappointing.
During the hour they recorded 39 vehicles speeding under 40 mph, 15 vehicles speeding between 40-49 mph and 2 vehicles speeding in excess of 50 mph. The highest recorded speed was 52 mph.
Councillor Craig Browne added "As always, we are grateful for the help of our volunteers, without whom we would not be able to run these sessions. If you are able to give an hour a month to help us run more sessions, please contact me.
Comments
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Thank you for your comment. I was sorry to learn that you consider efforts to improve road safety to be a waste of time. Community Speedwatch is after all, a recognised national initiative which is also backed by the police (http://www.communityspeedwatch.org).
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that all (or even most) road accidents are a result of excessive speed; however, evidence has long suggested that where accidents do occur (whatever the cause), fatality or serious injury are more likely to be the result where one or more of the vehicles involved have been speeding.
Kind regards
Craig
27 accidents in a three year period in the Village? I'd be surprised if the number of accidents were that low - or are we talking about the Village centre specifically, where traffic generally proceeds slowly between the Heyes Lane and Macclesfield Road junctions?
In any case Verity is correct in that, nationally, the biggest cause of road accidents (by far) is drivers being distracted or failing to see hazards. However, in many of these cases the hazard that they failed to see could have been a speeding motorist.
The number of accidents caused by exceeding the speed limit or use of inappropriate speed is still significantly high as a proportion of all road accidents and it is one area that authorities can (and in my opinion should) take direct action against.
In general the local speed awareness group seem to take up position close to schools or playing fields or residential areas where speeding is a dangerous problem. The location mentioned in the article is a particularly dangerous one as there are usually vehicles parked on the long bend between their position and the AESG entrance and there are several near-misses on a daily basis as drivers heading toward the village who may be unfamiliar with the area, position themselves too centrally in the road and thus in the path of an oncoming vehicle overtaking parked cars.
All the comments against Verity don't seem to back up 'opinions' with any evidence. You question where she gets her facts from and then offer none yourself. Perhaps Craig and Alan can provide some figures and evidence for their claims?
I agree with Verity and wish more of those people who happily take my taxes would make more of an effort to find out the truth rather than taking as fact the opinions of a vocal few. The DFT spends public money producing those comprehensive RTA tables and so I'm surprised Councils and Councillors don't use them more.