On a zoom call in support of a business threatened by proposed new traffic lights near Hereford recently, I was told by a traffic officer that my proposal to make the adjacent collision-prone junctions all-way give-ways would be illegal!
Why? Because the sociable, civilised solution to most of our problems on the road is not in the rulebook. It’s deemed illegal, dismissed out of hand. No discussion.
It’s OK for them to install traffic lights or build roundabouts at vast cost, or subject minor road drivers to mortal danger and indefinite delay, but not OK to create cheap-as-chips all-way give-ways that would eliminate the conflicting speeds that plague priority junctions.
So the system sidesteps challenge and continues to lord it over us. The scandal of traffic management, which presides over an annual peacetime casualty toll of 30,000 human beings, makes the Post Office scandal seem tame by comparison.
The 2004 Traffic Management Act requires traffic authorities to explore all options for improving road safety and congestion. It’s a statutory duty they flout, so ingrained is their ideology; and they get away with it, so deferential or unthinking are our MPs.
