Another major smash on Forest Road

On Friday afternoon there was yet another major car smash on Forest Road. It occurred at the junction with Hale End Road. I cycled past about 90 minutes after it happened and took these pictures.





















This is a location I have blogged about on a number of previous occasions. On this stretch of Forest Road thousands of drivers break the 30 mph speed limit continuously throughout the day, as I blogged about here.

Forest Road (aka the A503) is a major route which crosses the borough from the North Circular and M11 motorway in the east to Tottenham in the west. Most of it passes through a dense residential area, with schools, shops and homes. The A503 is a four lane highway at major junctions. It has an atrocious record of crashes and fatalities. The major problem is excessive speed, though there is also the problem of red light jumping. There are no cameras to catch red light jumpers at any of the junctions, and there are just two speed cameras, only one of which is in the built-up residential section of this very long road.

Hale End Road is another dangerous location, where almost all drivers, indifferent to the presence of a primary school and a school for children with special needs, break the 20 mph speed limit, as I blogged about here. I have also blogged about this particular junction, which is unacceptably dangerous for cyclists because it lacks an Advanced Stop Line, which means that cyclists continuing across the junction come into conflict with traffic turning left, as shown here. Finally, just beyond the site of this collision there used to a solar powered advisory speed sign, which the Council removed and did not replace. The pole which used to support the speed sign is still there, on the corner by Woodstock Road.








































What caused this crash? The car shown above collided with the car shown below (which was moved to this location after the crash). The less badly damaged car was either turning into or out of Hale End Road when it was involved in a collision with the other car, which was evidently travelling east along Forest Road. There is a report on the crash here (although it is wrong in saying that the car landed in a front garden; the grass on the corner is public land).

Episodes like this once again underline the need for black boxes in vehicles, which would precisely identify the time of a collision and the speed at which the vehicle was travelling. Such devices could be cheaply installed in new cars but have always been fiercely resisted by the car manufacturing lobby. If we knew the exact time of this collision it would be possible to show if one or both of these drivers was jumping the lights. We would also know the speed at the time of impact. I find it very hard to believe that the driver of the car which either slewed through the gap in the railings or was catapulted over the railings, crashing into the brick wall on the corner, was driving at 30 mph or less.





















This latest spectacular collision yet again reinforces the urgency of siting speed cameras along the entire length of Forest Road and putting cameras in at every major junction to catch those drivers who speed through at red. Imagine if a group of twenty primary school children had been waiting on the corner to cross here on their way back to their nearby school after a class trip; this would have been a massacre. Forest Road is a lethal location, where drivers contemptuously flout traffic law. This is the road where just under a year ago a cyclist was run down and killed by a speeding hit-and-run driver yet where this crap council puts parking before the safety of cyclists.

The other point worth noting is that the driver of the car which so spectacularly crashed seems to have escaped with relatively minor injuries. Twenty or thirty years ago the driver would probably have died. Nowadays reckless drivers are personally cushioned from the consequences of their lethal risk taking by rigid steel safety cages and air bags. Vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists enjoy no such protection. Nor do those in cheaper cars. The second car in this crash evidently didn't have air bags; the car which so spectacularly crashed had at least two, which inflated and can be seen in the photographs.

Footnote. I went back yesterday and took some more photos of the site. In the first two pictures below you can see the approach to the Hale End Road junction going east along Forest Road. This is almost certainly the direction the driver of the spectacularly crashed car was heading. It is a lethal junction because it is just beyond the brow of a hill. For cyclists, the cycling lane fizzles out and there is no ASL to protect from left-turning lorries. Motorists tend to drive at speed towards these lights. They are also in a hurry because regulars know that beyond the junction the carriageway shrinks to one lane, so there is the classic jockeying for first place beyond the lights. If you look carefully in the first photo you can see in the distance the pole on the corner of Woodstock Road and Forest Road which used to support a solar powered 30 mph flashing speed sign. A question which should be addressed to the council is: why was this sign removed a long time ago and not put back, despite the problem with speeding at this site? The other question, which should be addressed to Commander Mark Benbow, the local area police commander, is: how many speeding tickets has your force handed out on Forest Road over the past 12 months?





































(Below). The sand - probably used to mop up spilled oil rather than blood - may indicate the site of the collision. One car either careered through the gap between the railings and the traffic light column or was catapulted over the railings.





















(Below) The control box operating the traffic lights was destroyed by being hit by one of the cars. Two days later the lights are still out, creating a fresh hazard for traffic entering or leaving Hale End Road, and pedestrians faced with the task of crossing four lanes of fast moving traffic. This crash will probably enter the statistics as a minor injury crash. Its true social impact and costs in terms of traffic disruption, added danger for cyclists and pedestrians, the costs of the involvement of three emergency services, and the repair bill for reinstating the damage to the traffic lights and the wall, will probably never be measured.

The news

The father of a 17-year-old girl who was fatally injured in a collision with a cyclist has said it is "laughable" the man has only been fined. Mick Bennett said Jason Howard should have faced manslaughter charges and been jailed for several years over Rhiannon Bennett's death in April 2007.

Howard was an "arrogant and vile little man", Mr Bennett said outside court. Howard, 36, of Buckingham, was fined £2,200 on Tuesday after being convicted of dangerous cycling in the town. During Howard's trial, Aylesbury magistrates heard Howard had shouted at Rhiannon to "move because I'm not stopping" before crashing into her.

Sgt Dominic Mahon, of Thames Valley Police, told the BBC Howard could have been travelling at about 17mph when he struck Rhiannon, "imparting a great deal of force" on her.

(And since a cyclist can impart a great deal of force and kill a pedestrian at 17 mph it does sort of make you wonder why no senior police officer has ever had a bad word to say about bull bars.)

Howard was riding a £4,750 custom-built bicycle. He had a previous conviction (but what it was for was not identified).

The penalty for killing a pedestrian as a result of reckless and dangerous cycling does seem extraordinarily lenient when compared to the sentence handed out to the cyclist who snapped after being abused and cut up by drivers and who maliciously damaged vehicles but hurt no one, for which he was sentenced to 16 months in prison for eight offences of criminal damage.

The case of Jason Howard generated a lot of commentary, much of it on traditional lines.

As greater numbers of cyclists take to the roads, are they becoming more irresponsible? plaintively asks the car supremacist BBC (Top Gear but not a single programme about urban walking or urban cycling).

Hugh Bladen, from the Association of British Drivers, certainly thinks so. "They are a rule unto themselves, to put it bluntly," he said.

(But then the laughably unrepresentative ABD is a tiny collection of petrolhead nutters and climate change deniers.)

Road safety officer Martin Cook, from West Sussex County Council, said growing numbers of bikes on the roads had sparked "very strong feelings" among people. "There are groups who feel there should be a lot more engineering to facilitate for cyclists and others who feel cyclists shouldn't be on the road," he said. "It's about trying to find the common ground with the two."

(No, it isn’t. Those are false alternatives.)

Richard Morrison:

Few motorists seem to understand, let alone sympathise with, the chief reason why cyclists appear to swerve erratically: the potentially life-threatening ruts and potholes on many roads. Why should they understand? In the cushioned safety pod that is the modern automobile, the driver doesn't even feel the bumps. In a country that gives such priority to motorists, is it desirable, even possible, to cycle “responsibly”? If I added ten miles to my journey each day, I could probably do the whole trip along quieter, meandering backstreets. But I haven't got all day. So I commute along the quickest route: the A-roads. Here, if I cycle “responsibly”, I will share the road with thundering juggernauts and white-van maniacs.

More crap walking:

The partial pedestrianisation of Parliament Square, designed to make London a glorious city for Olympic visitors has been axed.

The reason? Sources close to the £18 million project, originally given the go-ahead by Ken Livingstone, claimed it had been abandoned to avoid angering motorists.

Apparently other schemes are also due to be dumped, to ensure that London remains Europe’s most walking and cycling unfriendly city.

The decision has been greeted with enthusiasm by the Evening Standard:

The balance of power in our public spaces needs to shift more towards pedestrians. But it should not do so if the result is to create disproportionate disruption to traffic and chaos to the streets where it is displaced.

More Olympic news:

A MEMBER of the British bobsleigh team has been fined for speeding.

Crap cycling in London:

Lord Turner launched a stinging attack on the failure to make London more cycle-friendly and called for a dramatic increase in special bike ways "physically segregated" from cars. In what may be seen as criticism of former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, he said: "We still do not have cycle ways like Amsterdam and Berlin. "We have bits of paint on the ground with buses and taxis occupying it." The peer, who regularly cycles from his home in Kensington to his City or Westminster offices, added: "Given how little distance we have made in terms of cycle ways, the increase in cycling has been extraordinary and that suggests that it could go much, much further if we simply invest behind that."

A PLAN to allow bikers to use bus lanes is being fiercely opposed by Hackney cyclists.
Hundreds of people have signed a petition against London mayor Boris Johnson's proposal.

This week’s mobile phone killer:

A lap-dancer who was driving at 95mph while over the limit and using her mobile phone when she crashed into and killed a woman has been jailed for 6 years.

And now Scotland.

The Scotsman newspaper is proud of its campaign to save the planet:

THOUSANDS of Scots have stepped up to the challenge of fighting climate change and are helping our country set a shining example to the rest of the world. Environment secretary Richard Lochhead ate just Scottish food for one week in May.

And now why not watch The Scotsman’s promotional video of the gas guzzling Landrover defender. And there are also some great Scotsman cheap flight offers here.

Meanwhile

ROBOT buses could be on the way to the streets of Stornoway at a cost of £700,000. Councillors on Lewis are looking at the futuristic scheme, which would be the first of its kind in Britain.

The driverless 10-seater buses would only travel at 7mph - about twice walking pace. But supporters of the plan insist it would provide "convenient and reasonably fast" public transport. They also claim the robots would improve the environment by taking buses and cars off the streets. The battery-powered robot buses are controlled by a central computer and use satellite navigation.

Hysteria and hypocrisy

Two days of bloody mayhem screams The Mirror.

Six people were killed with knives in a 24 hour period in what the Mail calls an appalling day of bloodshed.

Seven killed in a brutal 24 hours shrieks The Independent.

These deaths are “shocking and tragic”, and “We will continue to make absolutely clear that carrying a knife is unacceptable in our society,” thunders Gordon Brown, who promises to announce urgent new measures on Monday. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police issued a rare appeal for calm in the capital. "The dreadful loss of life in just 24 hours graphically illustrates the need for everybody to pull together to put an end to this unacceptable violence," solemnly intones Sir Ian Blair.

Oh really? Well in the space of around 24 hours we had at least twelve violent deaths in Britain, none of which produced a whisper of comment from newspapers, politicians or senior policemen.

Dental nurse Dana-Leigh Trigger, 22, died following a one-car accident on the Inchmarlo to Glassel road near Banchory in Aberdeenshire. And businessman and philanthropist Lynn Wilson, 68, of Northamptonshire, died after his car was in a three-vehicle crash on the A96 at Forres in Moray. A Grampian Police spokesman told the BBC Scotland news website there had now been 16 deaths from 12 accidents on the region's roads this year.

This was followed by a spectacular collision in which

Six young people died in a crash between a car and a lorry in the early hours of the morning in Leicestershire. which was followed by Two drivers were killed and two teenage passengers seriously injured in a crash in East Sussex and Two men died, and another was taken to hospital, after a three vehicle collision on the N2 in County Monaghan. The crash, which involved a lorry and two vans near Castleblayney and Carrickmacross, happened at about 1300 BST on Thursday.















In the case of the spectacular crash which killed six young people

Figures from Leicestershire County Council show there have been four other serious injury accidents and two fatal collisions on a 3km (1.9 mile) stretch of the A607 through Kirby Bellars since 2003.

The speed limit on the road, which dips and curves, is 50mph but locals said drivers regularly top speeds of 65mph. Villagers in nearby Asfordby claimed the road was sometimes needlessly "treated like a race-track" by drivers unfamiliar with its bends.

Violence on the roads ought to be as unacceptable as knife crime. And in the wider context:

According to the British Crime Survey (BCS), overall violent crime has across England and Wales decreased by 41% since a peak in 1995. Knives are used in about 8% of violent incidents, according to the BCS, a level that has largely remained the same during the past decade.

Yet the newspapers which foam at the mouth about knife crime conventionally marginalize road violence. They employ motoring correspondents who swoon about fast cars and illegal speeds. They carry adverts for devices to alert drivers to the presence of speed cameras. Politicians simply don’t talk about road violence. And senior policemen belong to a culture which does not regard driver crime as real crime, and where traffic policing has been significantly reduced over the past decade.

The case of television presenter Anne Robinson, banned from driving for six months after her latest speeding offence, is revelatory.

The 63-year-old admitted by post that she drove at 43mph (69km/h) in a 30mph (48km/h) zone in Anglesey Road, Portsmouth, on 8 August last year. She was fined £100 with £50 costs. She received four penalty points, which were added to the 9 on her licence. She was disqualified under totting up as she already had nine points for three previous speeding convictions.

And when were these?

They were in September 2005, March 2006 and June 2007.

A perfect illustration of the farce of the current system, where drivers have to be repeatedly caught breaking the law, before they receive the mildest of punishments.

Another case this week is equally illuminating:

A 17-year-old student who died after driving into trees had been texting her mother and her friend about university offers minutes before.

Her friend Holly, from Ferndown, said she never felt safe as a passenger. Joanne would hit kerbs and then drive "increasingly badly" in a state of panic, she drove too fast around roundabouts and would tailgate the car in front, she said. "I felt extremely scared of Joanne's driving. I remember saying to my mother I did not think she should have passed her test," said Holly. "She would eat while driving and often drive with one hand on the steering wheel."

The roads are full of reckless, narcissistic life-threatening idiots like that driver and no daily newspaper, no politician and almost no senior police officer, gives a toss. And it is cyclists, pedestrians and safe drivers who are at the sharp end of this culture of reckless driving. Which is, you could say, at epidemic levels, with every day of the week an appalling day of bloodshed.

And while Gordon Brown says “We will continue to make absolutely clear that carrying a knife is unacceptable in our society,” there are some violent accessories which can be very visibly carried, which will attract no attention from the police, and which all national newspapers are happy to advertise. These lethal and fatuous devices, for example, which kill child pedestrians and child cyclists:

The Council proudly displays its record of environmental achievement

Crash bang wallop

Drivers just can't help crashing into stationary objects.

(Above) Church Hill E17
(Below) Grove Road E17






















Footnote: It’s everywhere. And let’s not forget the annual cost of all this damage.

Road rage death in Leyton

A man has been stabbed to death in Downsell Road, Leyton, apparently as the result of road rage.

Corporate neglect

The Corporation of London is responsible for managing Epping Forest, which appears in the first two photos. When it comes to cutting back vegetation which impinges on the public highway the Corporation’s interest only extends to roads. Every year the shared use footway/cycle track on Woodford New Road is obstructed by vegetation which the Corporation should cut back but doesn’t. The London Borough of Waltham Forest has an equal responsibility in this matter, but as maintaining the walking and cycling infrastructure is not important to either the crap Corporation or this crap council, the same situation occurs summer after summer after summer.




















(Above) 'Shared use' on Woodford New Road. The markings have almost completely faded and three quarters of the space for pedestrians and cyclists has vanished into the undergrowth. If you look carefully on the left of the photo you can just see a scrap of the wooden fencing which marks the edge of this 'shared use' facility.

Once past the jungle, you are free to enter another top class cycling facility, the waterworks roundabout underpass system (below). Have your mobile phone and personal alarm ready, and watch out for the family of rats who live here. This labyrinth of desolate, circuitous underpasses was built so that cyclists wouldn't get in the way of drivers at the roundabout, and because pedestrian crossings would only slow down the traffic. So let the bipeds and the two-wheelers go underground - motorized transport is the top priority.