Can anything be done about speed bumps?

[ubersonic]

Let me paint the picture, my local council loves speed bumps, even when the is no need for them on a road, and where the is and most councils would use mini roundabouts or other traffic calming measure this council just whacks in a bunch of speed bumps, they love them.

Well the road my business is on has a mother load of them that were installed a few years back (despite the never having been an accident on that road in the last decade or more). Then earlier this year they replaced one of those "walk halfway across the road onto an island" crossing things in front of a school with traffic lights (again, no accident has ever occurred there and the old method worked perfectly)

Which can be seen here:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=rhyl&ie=UTF8&hl=en&hq=&hnear=Rhyl,+United+Kingdom&ll=53.310451,-3.479044&spn=0.000939,0.002411&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=53.310451,-3.479044&panoid=y5qWsjL59DHQtgo4X0Go1A&cbp=12,141.52,,0,7.15

Then last week they closed the road for 5 days and we all had to take a 2km detour. No reason given. Now this week we find that they have gone and installed the godfather of all speed bumps, they have completely raised the entire public crossing at the lights so it is the same height as the pavement :O this monster spans the width of the road and is roughly 2 meters long, the ramps at each end are very short and it is forcing drivers to slow down to below 10mph to drive onto it (and most of them floor it after coming off).

Is the any way to complain about this farse? surely the must be some standard they are supposed to comply with? (we do work for this county, they do not care one bit about regulations/HSE/etc unless a newspaper is likely to hear of it)

 

[ubersonic]

Just looks into it, it appears its 150% of regulation height and is of a design known to cause damage to loaded fire engines, but how do I go about reporting this?

 

[ubersonic]

as said i don't see a problem if you drive over them at the speed your meant too
unless you have a car with lowered shocks

My car is perfectly standard and if I attempted to drive over it at the correct speed then I would suffer serious tracking/suspension/and possibly even gearbox damage on impact not to mention exhaust/and potentially fuel tank damage on landing

 

[ubersonic]

That is just utter rubbish!

You can drive up a 125mm kerb going crawling pace without doing any of that damage!!!

As has been said by others and now myself, unless your car is made of cheese or your going for air as your quote implies, travelling over a ramped hump at a reasonable speed for the situation will do no damage to your car even if the hump is slightly higher than standard.

This is a 30mph zone, you should not have to slow to <10mph in a 30mph zone in order to negate a speed hump.

4.5.28 Vehicles travelling over road humps at appropriate speeds should not suffer damage, provided the humps conform to the Highways (Road Hump) Regulations.

My Capri is completely standard ride height wise, yet the ones they have near where my mum used to live I can't physically get over with any passengers in the car, and even without the exhaust scrapes.

And yes I do floor it between the humps as I have to crawl over them at a ridiculous speed, rather than sitting at a nice leisurely 30.

This is one of the downside to speed humps they are known to greatly increase emissions on a road.

ubersonic, is it a speed bump, or a raised crossing?

According to the regulations a raised crossing is a type of speed hump and must comply with the law also.

 

[ubersonic]

The worst bumps by far are the ones with gaps so that emergency vehicles can go full speed over them. (I think that's the reasoning anyway... ??)
A) Cars will pretty much always be parked at the side of the road by them, ruining the whole idea...
B) All of them seem too high, as they can strike the underside of all cars that I have observed.
C) Due to having to slow down too much, then you'll find that people floor it after going over them. This is awesomely safe. I can understand why it happens though...

In the Legnum I find that I have to slow down to about 5-ish to get over any speed bump in Aberdeen. I also have to drive all over the road so I can hit them at the correct angle... :| Hit it at the wrong angle and you'll hear the awesome noise of scraping plastic or metal...
Far more likely to kill the theoretical child whilst I'm fannying about trying to negotiate speed bumps, than I am driving in a straight line at 20mph...

Advice to the OP. Build JCB out of keyboards.

Those type are called speed cushions and should be no higher than 75mm, they were originally used in East Germany, so by installing them our government is promoting communism :O

 

[ubersonic]

Thanks for the help people, the are 35 "speed cushions" on this road and every one is above regulation height. Also the ramps on this new raised section are too short/steep and the section is too high. Now how to go about ranting to the council about it lol...

The limit is there to prevent you from exceeding that figure not to give you target.

Actually its there to do both (conditions allowing) hence why you can fail a driving test for going too slow and can be given a fine and points for doing greatly under the limit in a vehicle capable of sustaining it.

Looking at the google street view link you provided the raised crossing is installed right outside a school where small children/parents with buggies will frequently need to cross the carriageway. I would consider this an appropriate location for such a crossing to improve the safety of pupils and parents accessing the school.

No offence meant but its planners assuming things like that that are making our road system a joke. Why is it needed when the hasn't been a single accident or near miss on this road since time began? The school in question is actually for mentally impaired adolescent children so no small children or buggies are involved, they are not allowed out unsupervised and even if they escape they would be unable to operate a public crossing anyway.

I would be willing to wager that the additional fuel used and its effect on the environment due to the implementation of speed bumps is negligable.

Don't wager too much then, when speed bumps are deployed on a road fuel consumption increases by 20%, CO emissions increase by 70–80%, Hydro-carbons by 70–100%, and CO₂ by 50–60%.


*EDIT*

Just found out that last night an ambulance responding to an emergency had its exhaust back box taken off by the raised crossing lol, guess the council will have already been informed of its non compliance by the FRS ^^

 

[ubersonic]

One of the things that really annoy me is when those speed bumps that go between the wheels so ambulances can floor it over them are spaced 3 wide, because the are always care parked near the outer ones making them unusable so the only option is the central one which = playing chicken with the oncoming traffic >.>

 

[ubersonic]

I'll overtake on or inbetween speed humps if someone, for whatever reason, is going over them very slowly as well.

Obviously I won't blat past them at 40, I won't do it if there's any traffic coming the other way for a very long way, if there's people that might cross the road, or anything like that.

But if there's a car that has to get over speed bumps at 5mph, and I can get over them at 15mph, I'll nip past if the opportunity is there. It's not because I'm angry or they're doing anything wrong, just... if I can get past I will and then I'm on my merry way, and the other person can carry on without someone having to wait behind them. I hate it when people are obviously waiting behind me for whatever reason.

Im not saying your doing anything wrong, hell I do the same thing, but its pretty ironic that we have the above situation which is arguably more dangerous that cars driving down a road caused by speed bumps that allegedly improve road safety.