Speed bumps - the Ambulance service viewpoint
Peter
possibly no use whatsoever. My own experience is that they are
installed by local councils who appear to have no insight into road
palnning and having installed such measures have to revisit tem within
monthe to expensively re-engineer them.
An intesting article by Gareth Walsh in todays Sunday Times raises
further questions about speed humps:
Quote
Paramedics are warning that speed humps on London streets are killing
hundreds of people a year by increasing ambulance response times.
Sigurd Reinton, chairman of the London Ambulance Service, last week
claimed that more lives are being lost through delays caused by speed
humps and other calming measures than are saved by them.
The situation is about more than road humps, our ambulances also have
to slow down for chicanes and width barriers, often to walking pace,
he said. The fact that side streets have been shut off also has an
impact as we then get caught up in the increased traffic on other
routes.
There is no doubt that the policies are well-intentioned, but I feel
that the introduction of congestion charging offers an ideal
opportunity to review their effectiveness.
Research in Boulder, Colorado, supports Reinton’s claims. It suggests
that for every life saved by traffic calming as many as 85 people may
die because emergency vehicles are being held up. The report found
response times are typically extended by 14% by speed-reduction
measures.
Cardiac arrests were of particular concern in the study: 90% of
victims survive if treated within two minutes, though the rate falls
to just 10% if they go untreated for six minutes. London has
particularly low survival rates: among the 8,000 people who suffer
arrests each year only 2% of the most serious cases are revived.
Liam Fox, the opposition health spokesman, backed Reinton, saying Ken
Livingstone and Transport for London’s obsession with road calming was
actually killing Londoners.
It is a good demonstration of the law of unintended consequence — by
trying to solve one problem they have created another, said Fox. While
trying to save lives they may have actually cost them.
In many ways the answer to the problem in London is to increase the
number of ambulances and rapid response units to counteract the
slow-down in traffic. But that is not being done, and crews are being
asked to achieve quicker and quicker times with the same amount of
equipment and staff, but in a more difficult physical environment.
The ambulance service calculates that each of the capital’s
20,000-30,000 humps can add 15 seconds to a journey, with each
minute’s delay responsible for a 10% reduction in survival rates for
cardiac arrest patients. Reinton says even the strictest traffic
calming could reduce London road deaths by only another 100 a year,
while his crews could save up to 800 more lives annually if calming
measures did not delay them.
Emergency services chiefs have also previously criticised councils for
introducing speed humps without any apparent consideration of their
adverse effects. Although there are no signs of London ambulance crews
claiming injuries as a result of speed humps, two firefighters in
Sacramento, California, suffered spinal injuries in separate incidents
when they hit their heads on the cab roof as their vehicle went over a
hump. One was forced to take early retirement, the other was
permanently disabled.
Humps have come in for criticism for other reasons, too. Although the
official Department for Transport line is that they can increase car
emissions by between 1% and 60%, Austrian researchers found exhaust
pollution can soar tenfold as drivers accelerate away from humps.
Sleeping policemen can increase road noise if large numbers of heavy
vehicles are crossing them, and in some countries drivers are now so
incensed by humps they sound their horns in protest each time they
encounter them, further adding to the noise nuisance.
The humps can cost councils more than the initial installation price
of about £400 each. Local authorities are being forced to pay out
thousands of pounds a year to drivers claiming the humps or badly
maintained roads have damaged their suspension. In Leicester £36,000
has been paid in compensation to motorists over the past five years.
In Brighton taxi drivers have added a fare supplement of up to 20p a
journey to pay for the damage they claim humps are causing to their
cabs.
Motoring organisations report that while many residents are initially
keen to see humps installed along their street, they often quickly go
off the idea.
A spokesman for the RAC said: About six months after humps are
installed, people will generally come back to us saying it has caused
problems with the amount of noise outside properties, and pollution
caused by motorists. Bumps are often seen as an entire solution, but a
few months after they get them people generally want to get rid of
them.
Transport for London (TfL) said it understood Reinton’s concerns but
did everything it could to strike the correct balance. We give great
consideration to balancing the needs of road users and pedestrians,
said Derek Turner, managing director of street management for TfL.
Traffic calming measures should only be installed where it is
necessary to reduce casualties.
End Quote
--
Peter
Remove the INVALID to reply
Phil Bradshaw
news:9smq3vg6vcdgvj8us...@4ax.com...
> I jhave long thought that "traffic calming" measures are of little,
> possibly no use whatsoever. My own experience is that they are
> installed by local councils who appear to have no insight into road
> palnning and having installed such measures have to revisit tem within
> monthe to expensively re-engineer them.
>
says something is a bit wrong with the basic idea of placing obstructions
across the highway.
Re-instatement of cobbled surfaces where appropriate (i.e., just scrape the
tarmac off, although it's not as simple as that in practice) might work
as a speed reduction measure.
Alternatively, the toothless New Roads & Street Works Act means that
statutory undertakers' messes of un-finished holes in the road slows traffic
down anyway...
Mark
> possibly no use whatsoever. My own experience is that they are
> installed by local councils who appear to have no insight into road
> palnning and having installed such measures have to revisit tem within
> monthe to expensively re-engineer them.
No, they're installed to buy the votes of idiots who believe their
lives will actually be made better by putting big bumps in the road
outside their house, and the local construction companies who'll be
paid to build them. It should hardly be surprising that they don't
achieve something they were never intended to do.
Mark
Mike Hughes
<usenet...@nidum.plus.com> writes
>The humps can cost councils more than the initial installation price
>of about £400 each. Local authorities are being forced to pay out
>thousands of pounds a year to drivers claiming the humps or badly
>maintained roads have damaged their suspension. In Leicester £36,000
>has been paid in compensation to motorists over the past five years.
>In Brighton taxi drivers have added a fare supplement of up to 20p a
>journey to pay for the damage they claim humps are causing to their
>cabs.
>
Where does this quote come from? There has been no supplement added to
the fares in Brighton for humps. The latest fare increase of 20p on
night time and holidays was instead of our normal percentage increase.
However, the humps in Brighton do have a significant influence on the
speed with which most of the side streets in Brighton can be negotiated.
There is also an increase in the noise since anything in the boot will
rattle around.
The car I drive (Mondeo) has suffered from some suspension problems much
of which is probably due to the constant use around Brighton's humped
streets.
Mike
--
Mike Hughes, a Brighton *licensed* taxi driver.
At home in Tarring, Worthing, West Sussex, England
Need a taxi from Brighton Worthing Gatwick or Heathrow - please visit this site
www.gatwick-taxi.com