Road Safety

Information received from SCC via Sarah North - Parish Council Chairman

The following Personal Injury Accidents have been reported in the period 1st January 1989 to 14th November 2007.

Within a radius of 20m of the min-roundabout, within the above timescale there has been 1 slight accident on 18 March 2004.

Within the village of Hinstock there has been 14 Accidents, involving 21 vehicles and 18 casualties.

Accidents: 4-Serious: 10-Slight.  

Casualties: 5-Serious: 13-Slight.

As you can see the long term average for the village is 0.74 accidents per annum which we would not consider as a significantly high accident rate.
Unfortunately our records are not easily accessible to go back beyond this to look at accidents prior to the introduction of the by-pass which was early to mid 80's.

The priority junction near the war memorial was originally changed to a mini roundabout in 1997. The safety record before and after was/is good.
The mini roundabout was then upgraded again as a part of a School Safety Zone  in Sept 2002 when the pedestrian crossing was put in, all signs and markings were upgraded and an advisory 20mph limit  was incorporated.
As mentioned at the meeting  we have undertaken traffic surveys. The most recent was 22/6/07, when 85 percentile speeds were found to be 35.8mph and 34.2mph and mean speeds were 30.0mph and 28.8mph These speeds are in line with national averages for a 30mph limit although I accept that they are not complying with the advisory  20mph limit.

Whilst physical traffic calming measures could be used to reduce speeds further in the Village, in view of the above accident record and speeds, further expenditure on such additional traffic calming measures or alterations to the existing highway layout could not be justified, as they would not provide value for money when compared to other schemes which have been requested. As I mentioned at the meeting we currently get around 600 requests per quarter for traffic management schemes and with limited resources we obviously have to prioritise our funding.

However, I will arrange for additional speed monitoring to be carried out on the A529 at the entry to the Village. At the meeting I outlined that we are looking at developing a Rural Road Speed Limit Policy by April and the unrestricted section of the A529 will be covered by this. The speed monitoring will help to inform whether or not a 40mph buffer limit could be implemented prior to the 30 limit and our Village Speed limit policy suggests that these are appropriate where approach speeds to villages are high. I will obviously let you have these when they are available. I have also asked for some more analysis of the existing speed count to identify mean speeds at school times and again I will let you have this once the analysis is complete.

We are also working on a policy for Vehicle Activated Speed warning signs to complement our Village Speed Limit Policy, this is likely to say that for areas where the mean speeds are at or below the speed limit we would allow Parish Councils or groups of Parish Councils to fund the implementation and operation of such schemes. We are also currently looking at a way to minimise these costs by bulk buying the signs and reviewing the procedure for operating them. I anticipate that this work will be complete by the end of the financial year and again I will ensure you are kept informed of this initiative.

I am grateful to Sarah for sending me the above report. It shows that our Parish Council is keeping an eye on what is needed in the village - and taking action as and when necessary. It's up to us all to use the roads carefully and safely !