On the Roads

The drivers of Mitton Oak Road, Shrewsbury, Shropshire will have been painting the town red on 17th March after red paint was spilt on the road. Beer was spilt on the M20 in Kent and on the M4 in Wiltshire, and milk was spilt both on the A205 South Circular in London and on the Western Way, in Exeter.

On the A8 in Edinburgh, a ton of spilt seed blocked the outside lane causing long tailbacks, and loads of potatoes were lost on the A4103 in Herefordshire, the A15 in Lincolnshire and the A1027 in North Yorkshire. Perhaps the strangest spillage was that of latex, from an overturned HGV.

Regal animals spotted on the roads this quarter included a deer on the M25 clockwise, a peacock on the A35 in Dorset and a greyhound on the A406 London North Circular.

From a safety point of view, the AA warned drivers in the vicinity of the M18 in South Yorkshire to close their windows and turn off their in-car ventilation after a spillage on the M18 in the evening rush hour, which also blocked the motorway in both directions

There's been news of pilot schemes in these cities, restricting motorcycle access to certain zones. As London is likely to implement 'congestion charging' in the near future these are of interest to us.

Do you know any details of the schemes proposed in your towns or cities? What are you currently doing about them (aside from going to the 22nd July Trafalgar Square demo, of course)?

Obviously, precedents will be set by these schemes, so they'll have a knock-on effect nation-wide - I'm not just sticking my nose in your business, so please let us know about them via MAG Central.

Mark
L+HC Bureaucracy

The table below shows the top ten messages broadcast by the AA last quarter. As might be expected, the worst two are heavy traffic and slow traffic, but you might not expect to see that five of the top ten messages are telling motorists that a previous problem has now cleared.

Rank Message No of uses

1 heavy traffic 42799

2 slow traffic 35910

3 traffic easing 19736

4 closed due to accident 11991

5 no problems to report 11326

6 accident cleared 11003

7 queuing traffic 10492

8 traffic congestion cleared 8108

9 reopened 6990

10 traffic building up 6945

The number of people killed or injured on Britain's roads fell by two per cent last year.

Figures show that in 1999 there were 320,310 road casualties.

There were 3,423 people killed (two more than 1998), 39,122 seriously injured (down 4 per cent on 1998) and 277,765 slightly injured (down 1 per cent on 1998). There were 235,048 road accidents involving personal injury in 1999, 2 per cent lower than in 1998. Of these, 36,405 involved death or serious injury.

Main results include:

Child casualties fell by 3 per cent. The number of children killed or seriously injured in 1999 was 5,699 (down 6 per cent on 1998). Of those, 3,457 were pedestrians, 7 per cent down on 1998. There were 221 child fatalities, 15 more than in 1998.

Pedestrian casualties fell by 4 per cent in 1999 compared to 1998. Deaths also fell by 4 per cent, and serious injuries fell by 6 per cent.

Serious injuries among pedal cyclists fell by 5 per cent compared to 1998. However the number of cyclists killed rose by 9 per cent. Cycle traffic increased by 5 per cent so the rate of casualties per 100 million vehicle kilometres fell by 5 per cent.

Motorcyclist casualties in 1999 rose by 6 per cent compared with 1998. The number of motorcyclists killed rose 10 per cent. Motorcycle traffic rose by 16 per cent so the rate of casualties per 100 million vehicle kilometres was 8 per cent lower than in 1998.

Road traffic levels rose by 2 per cent in 1999. Consequently, the casualty rate per hundred by distance travelled fell by 3 per cent.

DETR website - http://www.detr.gov.uk

The Environmental Transport Association are organising a car free day in September. If you live in any of the towns listed below, you may wish to monitor the situation and become involved.

Deal (Kent), Sittingbourne (Kent), Kingsbridge (South Devon), Bath, LB Camden, LB Lambeth (may be combined event with LB Southwark), LB Merton, LB Sutton, LB Richmond, Welwyn Garden City, LB Haringey, LB Greenwich, North Tyneside, Canterbury, LB Tower Hamlets, LB Ealing, Lancashire, Edinburgh, Torbay, LB Bromley, Guildford, Newcastle, Sunderland, Southampton, Ashford (Kent), Brighton, LB Hackney, LB Brent, Sedgefield, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Pickering (N Yorks), Richmond Park, Greenwich Park, Winchester, LB Waltham Forest