A week or two ago they resurfaced our road. It’s a city centre cul de sac, and plenty of people park there, some of them with permits. The day before the resurfacing, notes were put through doors and on cars to warn us all about it – the idea being that cars should be removed so that the resurfacing could be done efficiently.
Yes – that’s right. Twenty-four hours. What could possibly go wrong? Hollow laughter could be heard on all sides. In the event, magically, only one car remained unmoved. A non-resident of the street had parked there while he went on a long holiday.
The result, of course, was a peculiar almost oblong slice of road that remained in its old, shaky state. The uneven, squarish lump at the bottom remains in place too, despite being uncovered and available for improvement. It’s been like that for years – decades, in fact. Well, it’s cheaper than a speed hump.
Driving easily from one part of town to another seems to be very low down on the list of council priorities. There seems to be a kind of ingrained anti-motorist culture, not only in towns but in the country too. Thousands of potholes go unrepaired, road signs are overgrown to the point of invisibility and when the roads are repaired, or dug up for one reason or another, it all takes far too long.
Much of the time the workers are conspicuous by their absence; all that the driver sees is red lights, cones and barriers. No sign of movement at all. This has become so obvious that at one long-running (or should I say long-crawling?) roadworks just outside Norwich the contractors have felt compelled to erect a sign telling drivers that they are working “out of sight”. Indeed they are.
It’s probably a key question prospective workers are asked by the HR department: “Can you work out of sight?” “Great, you’re hired.” Of course, that’s true of many council workers, who are putting in their stint invisibly, at home. But that’s another story.
Highways authorities nowadays seem to think that their whole raison d’étre is to slow people down. Maybe that’s true of business too: it would explain our poor performance as a country. The reason for it all is supposed to be safety. Perhaps we should pause for a minute and ask ourselves where we would be now if our ancestors had prized safety above everything else.
But I digress. Safety is an illusion anyway. Take speed limits.
The general feeling seems to be that the slower you go the safer you are. But this is not true. Oh yes, you can produce statistics showing that if you hit someone when you’re going faster, you’re more likely to kill them. You can prove anything with statistics, but that may be true. However, wouldn’t it be better not to hit them at all? After all, you can kill someone while backing out of your drive.
Speed limits make driving more difficult. By all means have advisory notices, but if you’re constantly trying to spot speed cameras when you should be paying attention to the details of driving well, you could easily come a cropper. And being fined, or losing your licence, becomes a prime consideration. There are already enough considerations, such as erratically driven e-bikes, e-scooters ignoring red lights and superior cyclists with cameras on their helmets.
There is at present a drive (ha!) to get speed limits on urban roads across the country reduced to 20mph. This sprung partly from a gentleman who went to Germany, liked what he saw in one town and came up with the phrase “Twenty’s Plenty”, for which, astonishingly, he got an MBE. Really? Well, we can all do that. Fifty’s Nifty. Knighthood, please.
The fact is that 20mph is not plenty for nearly all roads – certainly not for well-used through routes. It is simply a recipe for hold-ups, irritation and dozing off at the wheel. If we need speed limits, they should reflect good driving. I suggest raising 30mph to 35mph, and 20 to 25mph. I would go higher, but we have to take into account the gentleman who wandered out into the road the other day as I passed and waved his fist at me. I was doing a maximum of 15mph, because that was the right speed for the very tight conditions. The speed limit was 20.
I guess he may have been a member of the local highways committee, who I can only assume is composed largely of people who either don’t drive or who drive very badly. Or who simply love rules and hate people enjoying themselves. Or who are simply talked out of doing the right thing by health and safety obsessives.
How about a rule about dithering? A prime cause of accidents, but you never hear anyone in authority complaining about it. How about getting rid of speed bumps? Dangerous to man and beast.
I could go on. So could you. But I’m slowing down. Aren’t we all?