T HE NEW £3.5m. premises for the Road Research Laboratory at
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Crowthorne, Berkshire, were opened officially by Mrs. Barbara Castle on Tuesday. And to mark the occasion open days were held to show the facilities and to take the lid off important developments which RRL is engaged upon.
Static displays were set up in a number of sections—one of the more interesting was of electronic equipment developed for use in a practical road-pricing system. The RRL say that they can fully develop a system using electronic counting equipment for mounting on vehicles and used in conjunction with signalling equipment laid under the road surface within two years. Safety takes up a large part of the work of RRL and demonstrations were staged showing the effectiveness of a tensioned-beam guard rail for road edges and dual-carriageway dividing strips and a "break away" steel lighting column that have been developed.
Work being done to improve circulation of traffic on roundabouts was also highlighted —it was said that the aim was to increase the traffic flow possibility from 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles an hour on this sort of junction. And a most important and interesting display was of driver-test procedures which can pick out basically safe from unsafe drivers.