BOURNE COMMENT

A personal view of issues
and events

by REX NEEDLE

SPEED BUMPS ARE A NECESSARY IRRITATION

Progress often appears to be the acceptance of unpopular laws, rules and regulations, which after a time become an acknowledged part of life that were actually quite sensible in the first place.

There are many such examples in recent years such as the banning of smoking in public places, the introduction of seat belts, the use of the breathalyser and innumerable health and safety restrictions which were all greeted with hoots of derision and howls of anger when first proposed but are now regarded as plain common sense and we would not be without them.

Speed bumps or traffic calming come into this category and despite the clamour of protest whenever they are introduced their presence is soon accepted as a necessary safety precaution.

It all began with the sleeping policeman, the term coined after the first speed bumps or humps were introduced at Chatham, New Jersey, in the United States in 1906 when it was planned to raise its pedestrian crossings five inches above the road level: "This scheme of stopping automobile speeding has been discussed by different municipalities but Chatham is the first place to put it in practice" reported the New York Times.

The average car's top speed at that time was around 30 miles per hour but nevertheless the system worked although it took many years before it was introduced on the other side of the Atlantic where the first speed bump in Europe was installed at Delft in the Netherlands in 1970.

In the United Kingdom, speed bumps had by then begun to appear on private roads although not permitted on public highways and in 1973, the British Transport and Road Research Laboratory published a comprehensive report examining vehicle behaviour for a large variety of different bump designs but it was to be 1980 before they first began to appear in our towns and villages. The name speed bumps followed together with other slang terms such as speed breakers or cushions, judder bars and ramps although speed bumps appears to be the most popular term in this country today while the popular sleeping policeman is now less well used.

The official objective of their use as a traffic calming device is to enforce speed limits through the installation of an obstruction on the road made from a variety of materials including asphalt, concrete, recycled plastic, metal or even vulcanized rubber, thus providing a vertical deflection to slow vehicles in order to improve safety conditions.

Naturally, they do not please everyone, especially those who are always in a hurry or bothered about the possible adverse effect of an uneven road surface on their car and I am reminded of the outburst of indignation around town which greeted their introduction while driving down Beech Avenue, the longest thoroughfare in Bourne of more than a mile in length stretching from Exeter Street to West Road, an inviting prospect for some irresponsible drivers who could not help but put their foot down despite this being a built up area with old people and children always about.

This was a daily hazard for pedestrians and other motorists for many years until Lincolnshire County Council, the highways authority, stepped in with the then controversial preventive measures which involved the installation of speed bumps along the entire length of the street which had, according to the people who lived there, become a “rat run” for speeding drivers.

The traffic calming scheme was introduced in 2009 at a cost of £120,000 with 57 speed bumps or cushions installed in Beech Avenue and two other streets where there had been complaints from residents about vehicles exceeding the 30 mph speed limit. Those affected were Beech Avenue (30), Austerby (10) and Mill Drove (17) despite protests from the town council whose members insisted that this was being done without their sanction.

The Mayor, Councillor Shirley Cliffe, was particularly incensed and she told The Local newspaper on March 6th: "I am exploding. There are far too many. I am dead against them. I know we wanted traffic calming but this is ridiculous. They are frustrating for drivers and residents and people in all of the areas affected will go mad with the noise they will cause.”

There were many other objections, notably old age pensioner Steve Townsend, aged 76, who lives in Beech Avenue where most of them were being laid, who pointed out in a letter to the newspaper that his front bedroom was a mere eight yards from the road and that the future appeared to be one of continuous noise and fumes once they were in place.

Speed bumps have not had a good press with objections that they created excessive noise and vibrations likely to damage nearby properties and were not popular with the drivers of ambulances and fire engines. They have also been blamed for wrecking cars and a long list of potential hazards including broken springs, damaged steering, suspension and tyres including blowouts were likely while motor cycles and cycles could be destabilised if they hit them and even elderly pedestrians had been known to trip and break bones. Yet no one defended them on the grounds that they would stop motorists from exceeding the speed limit and endangering lives in a residential area.

In 2003, following a flood of complaints about damage to vehicles and even the death of a cyclist, 146 speed bumps were removed from the streets of Derby at a cost to the taxpayer of over £460,000 and also brought about the downfall of the city council.

Nevertheless, Lincolnshire County Council went ahead with its own scheme and by mid-April the first thirty were installed along Beech Avenue but the cement was hardly dry before there was another flood of complaints and The Local reported on Friday 17th April that residents regarded them as a nuisance and had called upon the county council to remove them immediately.

One protester, Alan Brain, aged 51, who lived in nearby Poplar Crescent, told the newspaper: “The speed bumps have made Beech Avenue an assault course and drivers are now using alternative routes which were not designed to take that volume of traffic and could cause long term damage.” His criticisms were echoed by town councillor Trevor Holmes (Bourne West) who said that although traffic along Beech Avenue had been reduced, the bumps had merely moved the problem elsewhere.

By July 2009, the project was completed in the Austerby and Mill Drove but again they resulted in a flood of complaints, notably from villagers at Dyke who protested that those in Mill Drove had prompted motorists to use their main street as a short cut, so turning that road it into yet another "rat run”.

The council’s highways manager, Kevin Brumfield, said that the design of the bumps had been widely advertised and comments from the public invited before they were installed although the project would be reviewed after 12 months and in the meantime, anyone with a complaint was advised to contact the town council.

That was six years ago although it seems much longer, but now that the anger died down, the speed bumps have enjoyed a quiet acceptance while Beech Avenue and the other two streets are no longer plagued by speeding motorists and although we still curse quietly when driving slowly over them, there is no denying that our lives are safer for it.

But the tale of this reluctant acceptance of an unpalatable medicine does make us wonder what other innovations from national and local government are in the pipeline for the public benefit but will face months of protest before being finally approved as a good thing because scepticism will always be with us and is usually the first public reaction when faced with yet another official innovation.

Note: This article was published by the Bourne web site on  11th July 2015