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IN YOUR OPINION
Page 82
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Road Signs—Siting and Design I SEE that the Minister of Transport is to open an exhibi
tion of proposed new road signs on July 4 and I hope that, if they are good, they are adopted widely and rapidly. Although the undeniably important safety factor seems to be the main reason for the new approach to signs, for many road users the question of quickly and easily identifying general signs and street names has been a matter calling for urgent action for at least a decade.
Traffic signs should be legible to drivers with normal eyesight travelling at the design speed of the road, and the signs should be sited so that there is time to take appropriate action, both in daylight and darkness. Some folk seem to think these standards are more easily attained under motorway conditions and, on the whole, I rather agree. But as lane discipline is a major factor in motorway driving I wonder whether overhead signs might not be more suitable than the present side-of-the-road type.
In urban areas buildings often make it difficult to arrange for clear lines of sight but in rural districts there is ample room for road improvements and for larger signs to go with them.
Queues at intersections often obscure present-day signs— and with the recently introduced list of offences for which one can lose one's licence it surely becomes imperative for the responsible authorities to ensure signs, and conditions near signs, which will minimize the strain on drivers to see where they are going without causing accidents.
Perhaps one of the greatest problems for heavy-vehicle drivers is finding the way around by means of street nameplates and the like; the variety of styles and positions and the frequent lack of lighting of them in darkness can make navigating a nightmare in an unfamiliar district. Cannot street names be placed in standard positions with proper illumination and, most important, a standard style so that they are instantly recognizable?
New_ BRTTZE, Southend-on-Sea.
"Rotten" Road Signs O Mr. Marples thinks that road signs in this country are "-) "rotten ". I think most road users would agree, although there is a marked difference in standard in different parts of the country.
A particular Me noir of my own is the irritating habit of mentioning only the next, quite small, town on each read on the signs one sees first before important main road junctions. I think my geography is as good as the next man's, but all too often I find myself confronted with having to decide at very short notice which way to turn when none of the alternatives offered conveys the general direction for which I am looking. The result, as often as not, is that I take the wrong one, have to stop to find which Fs right and turn back. Even when right it is often necessary to stop to check on a map.
A particularly annoying example is the turning off A34, n 1 2
the Birmingham-Manchester road, at Stone. Travelling
north, I was heading for Buxton. A sign saying "A520 Stone " sounded to me as if the road in question merely went into the centre of the town, about half-a-mile away. I continued on A34, had doubts, stopped and looked at the map. Sure enough, A520 was what I wanted, and once in Stone, a sign saying " A520 Leek" appeared, not as clear to the stranger as one indicating that the road leads on to the one for Buxton from Leek, but still reasonably useful. Why couldn't it have appeared at the turning off A34?
Quite apart from annoyance and waste of time, money and energy, bad signposting worsens congestion as drivers fumble for the turning and possibly have to negotiate the same junction twice. There is also an appreciable element of danger—a driver wondering which way to go and perhaps making a very late decision to turn off is much more likely to be in a collision-prone situation than one with a clear idea of where he should go long before he reaches the actual turning.
Northampton. J. CLARE.
Lightweight Machinery Carriers .
IT is interesting to note that in the May 24 issue of The Commercial Motor Mr. Rippon advises our friends to emulate our example, for in our construction of these lightweight machinery carriers the steel platform is used both as a load carrier and as a compression member of the chassis frame as he suggests.
In actual fact we have not reduced tare weight as much as we could have done, for we still incorporate very substantial body side members with built-in ramping ledges so as to permit the operator to load over the sides without detaching the rear wheels. This is considered a worth-while feature, although it adds several hundredweight to the
tare. However, Mr. Ripport is only partly right regarding cost. It is true that these special steels are expensive, but now that we have set out our factory for quantity production of lightweight machinery carriers, we have been able to red BCC Costs most drastically, and many of these models are now offered without extra charge.
London, E.C.2. A, MARENBON, Technical and Sales Director, R. A:Dyson and Co. Ltd.
...from High Yield-point Steel • I HAVE read Mr. H. C. Rippon's letter in the issue of I The Commercial Motor of May 24, on the subject of machinery carriers. In answer to his question, you might like to know that Seammell is producing machinery carriers from high yield-point steel. It is, in fact, currently manufacturing a 30-ton carrier with 24 ft. by 9 ft. deck from high yield-point steel having an unladen weight of 7 ton 13 cwts. 2 qtrs.
Watford, Herts. PETER F. WOOD,
Publicity Manager, Scammell Lorries Ltd.