Concerns that roads are being designed to INCREASE danger and accidents.

asim18

asim18

asim18

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Firstly most people will be unaware that this is happening but after what I saw last night I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that; roads are being redesigned in order to increase accident rates and endanger human life.

My concerns first came to fruition almost a decade ago when they resurfaced the road I live on.

Example 1:

What they did was, instead of putting the centre line in the centre of the road, they put it about 40:60 to one side instead of 50:50 down the middle.

So if you're heading west along the road, you have a good 8+ feet of space from the parked cars to the centre line, But if you're heading east on this road you barely have 6 feet and you have to constantly drive over the centre line to avoid hitting wing mirrors of parked cars. Why not just give both sides 7 feet each and keep the centre line where it's supposed to be? (ie. a marker for identifying the centre of a road.)

Since this change, there has been a monumental increase in people's wing mirrors being wiped off. In the vicinity of my house alone I have witnessed at least 20 wing mirrors being wiped off in the past decade and it's ALWAYS on the side of the road which has less space.

The thing is I live on the road so I know that the road is dangerous by design so I always keep an extra foot away from the centre line when I am on the wider side of the road. But many people are unaware of the danger, and simply drive very close to the centre line even when they are on the wide side of the road, so any oncoming vehicles in the narrow side only have a couple inches at best. I've witnessed some utterly insane close shaves and incidents PURELY as a result of the dangerously designed road.


Example 2:

Extreme narrowing of entire roads. This particular road has busses going along it, and there is also a bend in the road, now when busses approach this bend, the road is so tight that the front of the bus MUST overhang into the oncoming lane when coming around this bend to avoid kerbing itself on it's near side.

This is a deadly accident waiting to happen.


Example 3: Same stretch of road as example 2 :rolleyes: :

They have paved a cycle lane along the carriageway. Unfortunately half way down the road, the cycle lane is COMPLETELY obstructed by 2 lamp posts. Meaning cyclists suddenly have to swerve into the live traffic, or swerve into pedestrians on the footpath, or go over their handlebars and end up with their noggin jammed between two lamp posts.

Another deadly accident waiting to happen. As I am familiar with the road I always slow down if i see that there is a cyclist on that cycle lane. But imagine what happens when a driver and a cyclist who are both unfamiliar with the road meet.

Example 4:

This one is just mind boggling. Going along the road, it's a nice decent width lane about 8 feet wide, then suddenly, the footpath doubles in width and the road narrows to just 6 feet wide without ANY sort of warning whatsoever. This one needs to have a bollard with the blue arrow which points right, but there is absolutely nothing.

This one is just a few months old and the moment I first saw it I knew it was an accident waiting to happen. Then, last night I witnessed a ford galaxy flung almost a foot into the air and almost tip over after both his left wheels mounted the pavement at 35Mph, good grief it was almost a fatality, or several. I'm still shocked about this particular case of gross negligence/purposeful endangerment of human life. :(




So my question is, what brain dead pillock is responsible for signing off the design of road layouts, and what are his governmental/office contact details. This **** needs to stop now before all our roads (and my faith) are completely destroyed.
 
It does sound like there are some badly designed roads in your area.

That said I doubt they are deliberately being designed to increase accident rates. What would be the purpose of that?
 
The mistake you are making is assuming that absolute logic and common sense goes into planning decisions made by the council/highways agency/utility companies and everybody is joined up in their thinking.
 
Sounds like there is just one person in your local council/road design dept. who's just an idiot, rather than a national deliberate attempt to make roads dangerous under the radar.
 
So are we essentially playing the mental health card?

Someone designs a cycle lane through 2 lamp posts and we're saying there's nothing to see here because the person in charge is stupid/mental issues?

If this pillock has mental health issues maybe he should be sectioned instead of letting him get away with designing roads that could have KILLED an innocent driver last night.

Anyway who is in-charge of this? Secretary of State for Transport? Or is it just a more localised mental case?
 
asim18 said:
So are we essentially playing the mental health card?
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No, just that road planning isn't going to be the highest paid branch of the engineering and design world and so you're not going to get the cream of the crop, you're going to get the stragglers :p

Combine the fact that some of the designers are probably a bit dim and don't really care with some likely odd design briefs about traffic calming etc. and you'll end up with crap designs.

Also, no need to get dramatic, no one is getting killed by hitting a curb at 30mph.
 
mrk said:
Sounds like the design engineer behind the projects was a cyclepath.
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If you were a comedy show on TV I'd watch you.

But jokes aside, yes. Installing two lamp posts in the middle of a cycle lane sounds like something a messed up psycho would do.
 
asim18 said:
If you were a comedy show on TV I'd watch you.

But jokes aside, yes. Installing two lamp posts in the middle of a cycle lane sounds like something a messed up psycho would do.
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Sounds more likely that the department responsible for cycle paths and the department responsible for street lights just don't talk to each other and the low paid grunts building this stuff just shrug and do what they're told because they're not paid enough to worry about the fact it's stupid.
 
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