Rotherham Speed Reduction Scheme Hailed Major Success As Drivers Face Choice Between Speeding And Keeping Vital Internal Organs
2016-12-05
A traffic calming scheme trialed in Rotherham looks set to be rolled out across the country after significantly reducing the average driving speed in the town. The scheme was the brainchild of Tony Todger from Rotherham Borough Council, who perhaps surprisingly, has no official role in the road safety department.
“I like to think outside of my main area of responsibility,” Tony told us, “so when I saw that drivers were still going much too quickly in the borough, I came up with a plan to combat it.”
Rather than focus on education or enforcement as previous unsuccessful plans to reduce speeds have done, Tony’s plan is more direct in that it stops people being able to speed in the first place.
“What we did,” said Tony, “is stop repairing the roads. So eventually they got so bad that drivers had to travel at well under the speed limit just to protect their internal organs and stop vital parts of their car from falling off. What we were aiming for is something akin to what you’d find in Eritrea or some Godforsaken Greek island. There’s’ no speeding there. Of course there have been a few mishaps, but local garages, tyre bays and chiropractors have benefited so I see that as a zero sum game.”
Tony says the council were keen to keep the trial secret and so had to resort to a little deception. “Every now and then we’d send out a low loader with a small pile of Tarmac on the back, and a couple of council workers would idly shovel a bit into the holes and stamp on it.” he told us. “Obviously it washed out the first time it rained, but it fooled people into thinking we were actually doing something.”
Tony, whose day job involves control of road maintenance budgets, offers a robust response when we put it to him that a number of cyclist had been hurt following accidents on the uneven and pot-holed roads “Sod em”, he said. “They’re either scally kids causing havoc or middle aged, middle class tossers in Lycra who should be doing something useful like mowing the lawn instead. This is all about road safety and I’m not going to let a few whingers deflect us.”
