Life-saving at low cost
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Roads are the working place of the professional driver and the -production line" of the transport operator. Humanitarian and commercial interests have the same aim of making them as safe and accident-free as possible, and we hope that representatives of both management and men will make the maximum possible capital out of the striking increase in road safety which Hertfordshire has just achieved.
By undertaking 90 separate improvements — mostly for less than £1000 on four of the county's main traffic routes, A10, A41, A414 and A411, accidents involving personal injury have been reduced by 342 over two years. The average accident reduction over the four routes was an almost incredible 21 per cent, against a comparable national figure of 9 per cent, and on A411 and Al 0 the figures were 29 per cent and 27 per cent respectively.
Results like this, achieved at remarkably low cost, deserve to be shouted from the housetops. How were they achieved? Not by any magical formula: simply by intelligent and intensive work by study groups of highway engineers, traffic and signalling specialists and road safety officers, together with police and technical representatives of the district authorities and the DoE. Eight separate working parties held more than 50 meetings in drawing up final action programmes. The remedial measures, too, were simple things: re-designed junctions, altered carriageway markings, ghost islands painted on the roadway, antiskid resurfacing, the repositioning of pedestrian crossings and the adjustment of speed limits, waiting restrictions and street lighting.
A similar story, on a more specialized front, is reported by the GLC, whose policy of using a special material incorporating calcined bauxite chippings on surfaces at the approach to junctions and roundabouts has resulted in a 31 per cent reduction in the total accident rate at 41 sites — and a 70 per cent cut in wet-weather accidents. What Hertfordshire and London can do, others can do.