Forum topic: Traffic count data reveals high incidence of speeding on a Lakes Estate street

I don't see how the building of additional traffic obstructions is going to help. The new junctions with Aldermans Hill, for example, make turning in and out of the junction a nightmare. You have to turn across both lanes of Aldermans Hill to complete the turn even when turning left. This increases the danger of an accident. The more you frustrate drivers the more likely they are to break the speed limits. The one and only way to stop the speedsters is speed cameras and draconian fines, say £1000 for the first offence, £2000 for the second offence and so on. Even law abiding traffic generates more pollution when forced to slow down and extend journey times and I fear we are getting the balance wrong. Pollution is killing far more people than traffic accidents

We should remember what our roads are actually for. They are not playgrounds. If you want to make your children safer then buy a copy of the highway code and make them learn it. When my twin brother and I were eleven when my parents bought us our first bicycles for our birthday but would not allow us to use them until we learnt the highway code and they tested us thoroughly to ensure we knew all of it. We only ever rode our bikes on the road and never on the pavement and never had an accident throughout our lives wherever we were. This may have been the 1960s but children still need a sense of responsibility.

A new traffic monitor device has recently been fitted opposite our house and, would you believe it, someone cut the cable within the first 48 hours. the engineer said it had been cut with a knife. Bonkers!

I think Simon Broughton has written the piece for this website I disagree with most.

Perhaps with the exception of Fox Lane - though I think not - these Lakes Estate streets were/are for living, and up until somewhere in the 1950s streets of this kind would have been most notable for kids playing on them unsupervised. Where I grew up that was often after dark when day-length was short. Then the growth in car use sprang into life putting cars in the dominant position, and restricting kids freedoms enormously.

The era of confined childhood had begun.........there is a famous academic paper on the subject written at the time (unfortunately I forget the writer's name and at my age, 81,I'm unlikely to call it to mind).

By chance a present day academic was interviewed on BBC television around midday yesterday, making the point that the recent/current recommended diet arrangements for over-weight kids diets are appropriate, but the Government's aims will not work unless residential streets again become children's playgrounds. Children must exercise more than they do now. Changes must come about on the streets.

Unfortunately it's late in the day now; this is a rushed contribution, and I will be preoccupied elsewhere for a week or more. However, I will return to this topic because it matters a great deal.

The 60s was a very different time , Simon. I have tracked cars speeding down Old Park Road at over 60 mph - sadly if a child (or any person for that matter) is hit by that car it won't matter if they know every word of the Highway Code off by heart. A low traffic neighbourhood in the Lakes Estate would stop the 80% of vehicle journeys that are rat runners and make the streets a place for people not cars.

I don't own a car, normally using buses and trains as I work in central London, but have had the use of one for the last couple of weeks. I find turning left from Fox Lane into Lakeside Road quite alarming - the heavy wooden planter is quite close to the junction, and if a car is coming out onto Fox Lane such that you have to wait, there is barely room for a car to get out of the stream of traffic on Fox Lane. A delivery van would quite likely be stuck out into the road, at risk of being hit from behind.

Turning in from the Alderman's Hill end is also somewhat hazardous, with the raised street level causing an adverse camber as you round the corner. Any ice or grease on the road could cause a driver to lose sufficient control to avoid hitting a car coming out.

So I think it will be an interesting experiment to see whether these make roads safer or not.

Andrew - the aim of these measures is indeed to make it less easy for vehicles to use our residential streets as a rat run . Figures show hundreds cut through my street, Old Park Road, every day, bringing noise, pollution and danger. The fact that vehicles may have to queue in Fox Lane shouldn't in itself be a danger - people should drive at speeds that allow them to stop if a road is blocked. The real danger is to pedestrians and cyclists who don't have a ton of metal around to protect them - rat-runners have been clocked travelling at over 60mph in Old Park Road using an MPS speed gun.

I came back from a holiday to find speed humps on Fox Lane. Hurrah I thought. Quieter and safer.

But this morning I cycled down and later up the Lane, and was rewarded both times by very hard acceleration between humps. I guess that when there's a lot of traffic the humps may achieve their intention, but in low traffic conditions things won't be so good.

As a child of the 50's I remember quite clearly our leisure regime. We had our tea then rushed on our bikes straight down to the park or rec . Where we played cricket or football. There was always a game on, controlled by the bigger boys of course. We might cycle on the road, but usually the pavement. So what point am I making? It seems very puzzling to me that correspondence and discussion is not focusing on better use of the park. for play. And safe transit from home to the park. Broomfield Park is wonderful. It is enormous. So the issue is making it safe to get to the park - involving crossing Aldermans Hill. In my humble opinion the challenge is to slow traffic on this road, and so into the park. As children we were never supervised. We played perfectly contentedly in the park. And of course if you live a little further from Bloomfield then the playground of choice should be Grovelands. This might lead to a conversation on safety. Parks are way safer than streets . And the more people in them the safer they are. For everybody.