Done in Our Name

Safety, and particularly highway safety, is highly emotive so beware anyone who steps up to rock that cradle. The core issues are clear beyond dispute. The closing speeds of vehicles on opposite direction carriageways are at their most extreme. Accidents can occur where vehicles end up crossing into the opposite carriageway, so these carriageways must to be separated. When these cross-overs happen the resulting carnage is horrific with inevitable loss of life. I do not underestimate the mental and physical distress on all those involved in cutting people out as a result of such an accident, trying to save lives and then having to break the news of a life lost so suddenly. There were three well established carriageway separators, tension cable or moulded sheet steel on posts, dense bush planting and now a new mass concrete continuous section about 900mm high.

We as a society do not choose to protect lives at all costs from the risk of death. The car manufacturer makes commercial judgements as to how much of life safety features are introduced into a car as standard. Not what is possible. Simply what is thought might seen as affordable by the customer, you and I, compared to a competitor. Or at best what we might choose as an extra over option and at what price level. Not a lot on the evidence and well, well short of the possible. How much to spend in saving lives is a pragmatic choice made by you and me. When we condone, as in stand by and watch, our youth going out to get plastered beyond their ability to control their life's consequences we have no right to take a high moral stand point. When we condone, as in standby and allow our politicians, to cut back spending on the frail elderly needy, so there are insufficient resources to ensure the basics of life are provided routinely hour in hour out. The essentials of shelter, food, basic daily care and minimal social contact, just the bare essentials, ignoring higher aspirations of improving their quality of life and giving them a meaningful environment to respond to. Then we have given up any right to claim life matters, claim it is our high priority.

So lets keep highway safety in perspective. Emotive yes, but actually lower down the pecking order I suggest than care for the elderly, care for our new born and care for our youth. Keep it real. Highway safety is yet another pragmatic cost choice. We are very aware of the scenes of road carnage as we pass by. The number of incidents are actually quiet small. 400 hundred cross-over events in a year resulting in 40 deaths. Keep it real. How many teenagers die as a result of excess alcohol? We probably dont know any more than we know how many elderly die of neglect or babies from inadequate natal care. These are not huge numbers considering the number of daily road journeys made. It is called risk management, something we are not used to thinking about but really do need to get a grip on. The level of risk is low and therefore tolerable compared to costs and consequence of trying to significantly improve on these figures when our journey qualities would have to take a huge nose-dive.  Look around and see how much more relaxed our European neighbours can be about their road safety without incurring horrendous road causality figures.

So what has got me all fired up. CSB', concrete safety barrier's. I cannot recall a single political parties manifesto that referred to the need to replace motorway barriers. In these times of extreme austerity when services we hold dear are being cut off, not slashed and reduced, but simply turned off, who was it that got to decide in our name to spend hundreds of millions of pounds replacing these central barriers? Who in our name decided without reference to us, without inviting our opinion, that a replacement scheme was essential and should go ahead without consultation, without advertisement to us the public. Just de-facto. The decision was made and it happened. Who got to weigh up the rival merits of the different options and who made the decision, vetted by what watchdog committees, that concrete was the out and out winner? Such that ripping out the old barriers and replacing them with concrete was a right choice for our nation at this time? The interim advice IAN 60/05 that can be seen here, issued by the Highways Agency gives some insight. It appears to be a classic one-sided rival lobbying argument that has swept the board. All the contra arguments are brushed airily aside as if of little consequence. Only the supporting arguments, in favour of concrete, are given any credence. Note how concrete, one of the worst environmental materials, is given an unquestioning thumbs up, because it is home produced! This is indicative of the level of debate. Very partial and very one sided. So who cares. We all should.

The visual intrusion of these concrete barriers is horrendous. They are scale-less, featureless, will weather appallingly and reduces the drive experience to one of unrelieved visual boredom. Motorway designers had learnt their lesson and put gentle curves back into more economic straight roads just to relieve this visual boredom. At millions of pounds we are now relentlessly undoing that past insight. They cannot be easily replaced, we are now stuck with them for the future. But we should rise up and protest and stop more being laid down. This is not the driving experience any of us will relish, blinkered by the unrelenting featureless barrier that strips away any sense of distance and scale. That destroys any sense of the passing countryside. UKplc will become known as the bad driving experience of Europe. Design and environmental issues do matter and do have to be balanced against other priorities, even that of saving lives.

Right of passage

It would seem in this unwritten democracy of ours, our historic rights are being whittled away by those seeking to have greater control over us. Once it was a matter of pride and the object of considerable efforts to keep the Queen's highway open to movement, at all times. The unwritten right of passage at all times was acknowledged as a binding obligation. Unfortunately nowadays we have no champions of our freedoms left as we succumb unquestioningly to the tottering towers of control, constraint, restriction and retribution.

To 'protect the public' the police now routinely close off the motorways at slipways either side of an serious incident. If a life is at risk or a helicopter has to be brought in, fine, no-one would raise an eyebrow knowing passageway will be opened as soon as the situation is resolved, but no, it is a 'crime scene' that has to be investigated and the risk of rubber-necking accidents on the opposite carriageway means it is expedient to close the motorway until the police investigations are complete and wreckage removed, in two hours, five hours even twelve hours as it suits them.

At vast expense this country has invested in a motorway system to take the increase in traffic, spare our congested towns and villages from the heavy lorries and ensure the essential life of this country can continue to move quickly and efficiently from one place to another. Not every trip is essential but amongst all those trips of convenience are life changing trips for some, a last chance interview, completion on a once in ten year contract, a birth, an organ exchange, all the varied minutia of every day life that is dependant on quick reliable transport between our towns. Without which our country would grind to a halt, suffocate and stagnate. It is an absolute need for modern life. Yet a policeman on some spurious justification can just close this life line, leave people stranded without any clue as to whether for one hour or twelve hours, re-route traffic which is not trapped through routes which seize up as they cannot cope with the flow and be indifferent to all the personal tragedies and traumas that ensue, left alone the huge costs that have to be suffered by the motoring public. But that is alright because they are motorists and its all their fault, if they drove properly there wouldn't be accidents, seems to be the mentality. Wrong, we have a right of passage and a right to be spared the costs and inconveniences of extremes delays.

Its a balance, inconvenience to a great many to save a life or avert a national crisis. A crime scene report! When has any report been issued that illuminates the sequence of events upto an accidents or leads to all those numerous arrests of criminal drivers? Public rights and goodwill has been usurped by bureaucracy abusing what should be essential last resorts, because they can get away with it unchallenged.

It gets worse. Now roads are being closed for a day, a week, five weeks so it can be repaired. There must be the odd stretch of road where the only option is closure, exceptional. Most do not have to be but it is a money thing. Cash strapped council can save really large sums out of very hard pressed budgets by giving themselves and their contractors a closed road to work with. All those additional costs such as converting a stretch of road to two-way flow, traffic controls or night time working, all magically saved. Except of course the real cost is hidden, off anyones budget and can therefore be disregarded, it is huge and is borne by all those motorists and companies reliant on good transport and whose journey has now becomes a nightmare, trying to squeeze the diverted traffic through tight restricted congested towns with huge delays. By an administrative stroke denied their right of passage along the Queens highway with not a whimper in protest.