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Remove Highway Blackspots

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26th September 1952

Page 66

Page 66, 26th September 1952 — Remove Highway Blackspots

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REALIZING that it may be many years before our roads can be redesigned and rebuilt to meet modern transport conditions, the British Road Federation has inaugurated a campaign against the accident black spots which, experience has shown, cause the majority of the fatalities.

Forming part of this activity is a widely circulated B.R.F. publication, "The Road Way to Safety." Compiled with the assistance of a number of enlightened county surveyors, this book of 32 pages is mainly occupied by illustrations and diagrams of danger points before and after they have received safety treatment.

In many cases the changes effected have been comparatively inexpensive and have not involved great alterations, but the reduction in the accident rate has been almost startling, varying from 70 to 100 per cent. Roundabouts, banked curves, widening of narrow bridges, improved surfaces, staggered crossings with halt signs, and other detail alterations have had this remarkable result.

An important point, however, is to continue and expedite this process. The Om., which is all that the Government has devoted to it. is absurdly small. According to Mr. R. Gresham Cooke, chairman of the Highways Committee of the B.R.F., there are some 50,000 black spots requiring attention. It has been found that the average cost of carrying this out in each case is about £3,000, which would mean a total cost of some £150m. Against this, however, must be weighed the high price of death, injury and material damage.

Col. G. T. Bennett, hon. secretary of the County Surveyors Society has stated that to his knowledge an expenditure of only £30,000 has already saved 40 people from death.

As Mr. Gresham Cooke has put it, we are running twentieth-century machines on nineteenthcentury roads, which are veritable death traps.

There is no question of road users of motor vehicles not having contributed their full quota to the Road Fund. In the six years ending next March, fuel tax, licence duties and purchase tax will have totalled well over £1,200m. Out of this huge figure our Governments will have spent on the roads only £165m., yet the annual cost of road accidents alone has been estimated at £146m. Millions have been saved to the Exchequer, but at what a cost to the national income and in the lives and safety of our citizens.