26 April 2004

on 26 April 2004 at 07:56

No-brain method of slowing traffic

I suppose if you asked a small bucket of cement if it could suggest a method of reducing traffic speed, it would advocate putting bumps in the middle of the road.

But it comes as something of a surprise when people who should have slightly more brains than cement come to the same conclusion.

You might think that they would take other things into account – things that never find their way into the one-dimensional statistics that “prove” speed humps work.

• Things like the deaths caused by the inability of emergency services to respond efficiently: the London Ambulance Service says that in its area this could amount to up to 500 deaths a year, which is surprising even to me. • Things like routine pain caused to elderly and infirm passengers in cars, buses and taxis.

• Things like vehicle suspension damage, which Norfolk police says is a minor problem but which could affect vehicle handling and lead to crashes elsewhere.

• Things like noise pollution to nearby residents. Last autumn a builder was driven to digging up a hump with his JCB because it was depriving him and his wife of sleep. Many without access to JCBs would like to do the same.

• Things like injuries to cyclists and pedestrians: I am currently suffering from sprained ankle ligaments and abrasions caused by a bump in the road created during traffic calming operations in the city. I may sue.

All this – my injuries apart – has made the London Assembly recommend ripping out all the capital’s speed humps. But Norfolk is not following suit because (wait for it) “issues that affect London would not necessarily be comparable to Norfolk”. Well, we all know London folk are a breed apart, but can they be all that different? Trowse residents, about to have the humps inflicted on them, may not be convinced.

Speed bumps may reduce accidents, but so would shutting the road completely, putting sugar in cars’ petrol tanks or employing cyclists to slash everyone’s tyres. None of these would be acceptable to most of us.

Just because something has a desired effect, it doesn’t mean we should ignore all of the undesirable effects.

Traffic can be slowed in several ways, if indeed it needs slowing and the bumps don’t appear as a kind of allergic reaction during a bout of political correctness. Even the dreaded chicane pox is much better, and rumble strips and illuminated warning signs are better still. They have been proved to work too.

But speed bumps have become such a knee-jerk reaction that no-one tries to think of anything better. Even hotels have them flung all over their driveways – which has become so irritating that I am planning to check whether they are installed before booking in. “Speed humps? Sorry, I’ll go elsewhere. Give my regards to the cement.”

Secret clothes peg growing fields revealed

Many readers have asked me where clothes pegs come from. I am happy to say that I solved the problem on a recent country walk in the notoriously under-investigated border area of South Norfolk and North Suffolk, where you can go for miles without seeing any signs of sentient life, or even people.

It was here that we stumbled upon an orchard which was cunningly disguised – using apple trees – to look as if apples were grown there. In fact, through the alertness of one of my companions we discovered a cunningly placed wooden tub full of hundreds of clothes pegs, just coming to maturity. We were able to pluck one or two in an environmentally sound sort of way, and they were extremely tasty.

I wonder if readers have come across similar crops in remote parts of East Anglia.

Shot at stopping whales dropping in

Recent speculation on this page concerning beached whales, time-space distortion and the missing Mars probe Beagle 2 has prompted noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek to remind me that his own theory concerning the whales is much more likely.

I will leave readers to decide. Are they aliens in disguise, attempting to drop on us gently but aggressively by parachute (and failing), and were they really responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs? Mr Meek demands to be taken seriously and urges the powers-that-be to investigate more fully his plans for a Blakeney Point super-gun.

Insurance companies go up against God

The decision to flatten headstones in church graveyards at St Nicholas Church in Dersingham is the tip of the iceberg, our church correspondent writes.

It happened as a result of a health and safety audit, part of a risk assessment for insurance purposes. Future demands by insurance companies are likely to involve taking down spires and towers and removing any wall more than 50 years old. Some tall and unstable vicars may also be at risk.

“The entire Anglican church could be laid low,” said churchwardens’ spokesman M F Umbrage yesterday. “And I am not alone in suspecting the motives of the insurance companies.

“Clearly if you believe in a loving God you are less likely to pay huge insurance premiums. God is a competitor for these people.”

Mr Umbrage pointed out that that the church would not have got off the ground if insurance companies had existed 2000 years ago. “Pentecost would have been extinguished by sprinklers,” he said. “They will be banning baptisms next.”

Shock as birds take newt advice

Alarm was expressed last night by Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago at a report that great crested newts had joined forces with certain birds in a campaign to make life more difficult for people.

The newts, who have been successful in gaining huge relocation expenses in return for allowing roads to be built in some areas, are believed to be advising stone curlews and nightjars around Brandon.

As a result, the birds are claiming that a badly needed bypass for Brandon is a “threat” to their habitat in nearby Thetford Forest.

“It’s absurd,” said Mr Houseago. “Birds can fly, can’t they? Some people just can’t get things into perspective.”

12 April 2004

on 12 April 2004 at 05:00

In search of a country car park

I sallied forth on a glorious day at the end of March to take in the newly created boardwalk at Barton Broad, which I was told is a thing of beauty. Happily, I can report that it is indeed stunning. Finding the car park is something else again.

No trouble at all if you’re disabled. You follow the bright orange AA sign in the centre of Neatishead and after a brief worry about whether it can really be this far, you arrive at a bright new, unmistakeable disabled car park on the road to Irstead, where you park.

Being fairly able, of course, I couldn’t. I was directed by a tasteful sign to go back the way I had come for 1.2 kilometres, a handy measurement that I find only slightly less useful than cubits and furlongs. But since my instinct is to do what I’m told, I turned round, searched for the car park for people like me and … eventually arrived back at Neatishead.

Just to show you how able I am, I then proceeded all the way to Barton Turf, where I had encountered Barton Broad before. It was still there – but no bright new car park, and no boardwalk. So I turned round again and did the whole journey in reverse.

And then it happened. Out of the corner of my eye, only eight furlongs and the odd cubit or so from the disabled area, by a freak chance I spied the sign as I passed it. It was in a tasteful light wood designed to blend in with the landscape, and it directed me up a lane on the opposite side of the road to the Broad, and behind a hotel.

I understand about tastefulness and the desire to blend in with the countryside, of course. But didn’t it occur to anyone that a driver might have difficulty in spotting an understated beige sign on the wrong side of the road, directing him to a car park he couldn’t see at a place where he wasn’t expecting it?

Unless it’s just me (which I suppose it could be), what you actually end up with for all your planning is additional pollution and traffic, plus drivers whose skill quickly decreases in direct proportion to their growing frustration. And then of course the toilets were shut, and the two prime spots in the able car park were restricted to disabled people too. I was so annoyed I went and parked in the empty forbidden zone. Go on, sue me.

Roundabout bid to nationalise page

Calls to nationalise this website have been made by a Wicklewood man.

“Too much attention is being paid to market forces, which are highly unreliable,” he said. “It’s about time real issues were tackled, like the sudden appearance of so many mini-roundabouts in Norwich’s medieval road system.

“Everyone knows that in the distant past there were many mini-roundabouts in the area, but the Normans removed them to make the Castle Mound. Now that the Mound has been hollowed out, it seems they are trying to put the mini-roundabouts back without thinking about how traffic has increased.

“That’s the sort of thing we want to know about. Who cares where Dorothea Goodchild is? And as for Professor V A R Scheinlich, I don’t believe he exists, any more than the Liberal Democrats.

“What use is all that to anyone? When do we get an update on garden gnomes and an investigation into why the Green Party has tons of reasonable policies and one idiotic one?

“Worst of all, it just rambles on. Nationalise it, I say. That’s the only way you’ll get any sense out of it.”

Mr Wicklewood, who prefers to remain anonymous, claims he did not say hardly any of the above, which is true enough.

Minding other people's business

In a recent poll on bicycle safety helmets, 62.7 per cent of people who responded said they did not ride a bike. Yet, when the same group were asked if there should be a campaign to make cyclists wear safety helmets, over 85 per cent said yes.

This means that at least 47 of every 100 people questioned did not ride a bike and so knew nothing about safety helmets, but despite that, they wanted cyclists to wear them. Does this mean (a) we are a nation of busybodies? (b) we like a good laugh? (c) we enjoy making pronouncements on things we know nothing about?

I might worry more about this particular example if I wasn’t aware of the large number of non-driving cyclists who have very firm views on how cars should be driven.

Fall-off of buses feared

A perceptive correspondent reports that the sudden deletion of all buses going to Yarmouth from Norwich earlier this month is almost certainly a response from the bus company to the prospect of coastal erosion.

Apparently the bus company says global warming calculations reveal that Yarmouth and all villages between it and Acle will have fallen into the sea by June because of the rising temperatures, sometimes known as “summer”.

The bus service has been withdrawn to avoid losing any vehicles. “It will also reduce carbon emissions,” said a concerned spokesperson. “We are putting lids on our saucepans too.”

Huge surprise on speed cameras

Well, there’s a surprise. Only two months after the Norfolk Speed Camera Promotion Partnership releases exclusive front-page figures showing that its devices work and cut road deaths, a police investigation finds that the partnership is “secret and unaccountable” and that the data used to decide camera sites is either questionable or missing.

This will come as no great shock to motorists who already know that road deaths in Norfolk have increased considerably since the creation of the partnership and who have enough common sense to spot that the positioning of certain cameras cannot be for anything other than fund-raising.

Meanwhile, the delusion that speed is responsible for most accidents continues, despite recent government figures revealing that it is way, way down the list. The Green Party wants to increase 20mph zones and traffic “calming” in Norwich under the mistaken belief that this reduces “noise pollution, emissions and fatalities”, and in Lowestoft the mindless machine that is Suffolk County Council wants to impose a 20mph limit and road humps on the A12 through the town.

Shredder, anyone?