Road safety is an issue raised by our readers at regular intervals, as illustrated by the post last Saturday, which has attracted a lot of interest and comments sharing the author’s concerns. Here are a couple of earlier posts on the same topic:
- Watch your speed (an accident February 2010)
- Speeding and other traffic concerns (Police report on local speed survey to the Parish Council September 2009)
It is great to see the increases in children playing out and in cycle use, and a majority (73%) of parwich.org readers support the idea of a 20mph speed limit in the village.
The Village Action Group raised the idea of the Parwich roads as a shared space (pedestrians having priority) including a 20mph speed limit with the Peak Park who are supportive of the idea. (These ideas grew out of the traffic survey undertaken in preparation for the new Memorial Hall planning application.)
Parwich Parish Council regularly discuss roads and footpaths at their monthly meetings. So look out for details of the next meeting.
Coincidently one of our readers has sent in these notes from a recent National Speed Awareness course:
Having relatively recently been on a Speed Awareness Course for the sole reason of avoiding points on my licence for speeding, I was very impressed with the course run by AA Drive Tech and would recommend anyone who is in the similar position to opt for an Awareness Course rather than a fine and points. Indeed similar courses would be useful as a refresher for all drivers every so many years.
Some ten Police forces including Derbyshire Constabulary have entered into a partnership with AA Drive Tech to provide education rather prosecution when the offences committed are considered marginal. Other ‘police diversionary courses’ relate to mobile phone use, traffic lights and road safety. Here are a few points from the Speed Awareness Course that may be of interest for parwich.org readers:
When using a mobile phone to call emergency assistance in areas where there may be signal problems dial 112 rather than 999. 112 will connect you to the same operators as 999 but has the following advantages:
- 112 automatically connects you to the strongest signal regardless of your network, so you may get through on 112 when you can’t on 999.
- 112 is a Europe wide international number, that connects you to the local emergency services.
- 112 is set up not to disconnect if you drop the phone, which allows tracking of the phone using GPS even if the person ringing falls unconscious.
Speeding is not seen of as a taboo in the way dink driving has become, with 69% of motorists speeding in 30mph areas, however speeding alone without any other contributory factors accounts for 25% of deaths on our roads.
Although the majority of road accidents are in urban areas, the majority of fatalities are in rural areas. (The spread of accidents is urban 71%, rural 25% and motorways 4%, contrasting to the spread of deaths at urban 40%, rural 54% and motorways 6%).
In the light of recent local discussion on speed in Parwich, the following survival rates of pedestrians hit by cars may be of interest.
Car’s speed on impact Pedestrians’ survival rate 20mph
97.5%
30mph
80%
35mph
50%
40mph
10%
This means if motorists in Parwich drive at the speed limit (30mph) one in five pedestrians involved in a collision will die, and this increases dramatically if vehicles exceed the limit.
The speed limit for HGVs on rural single carriageways is 40mph, which includes all the roads to and from Parwich and the A515 and B5056.
I asked the course instructor, who was also a former police officer, his thoughts on the feasibility of a village being created a ‘special area’ with a speed limit of 20mph. He said that unfortunately the main obstacle is that the setting of speed limits tends to be reactive, rather than proactive. It is much easier to get changes after accidents have happened, however making use of the opportunity to borrow mobile speed monitors from the police and conducting local surveys would help prepare a case (though this doesn’t address the issue of people driving within the limit but too fast for safety at that location).
To find out about improving your driving skills and preventing accidents visit the two following websites
If anyone wants to find out more about road safety and local speed cameras in Derbyshire visit the following two websites
PARWICH.ORG 
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