Traffic calming nonsense

Sir, – A few years ago I used a speech I gave at the annual Farnham Venison Dinner to attack what I called the new fashion of "designer road schemes". I sensed from some of the faces in my audience that the speech was probably delivered a year or two before its time!

I was attacking a sacred cow, when it was only just starting to be permissible to criticise those other former sacred cows: the National Health Service and our education

system. But now I feel able to raise my head above the

parapets once more, because the good citizens of Tilford have realised that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes – at least, not in their village.

The recent piece of well meaning, but utterly illogical nonsense to be visited upon Tilford – one of our prettiest villages – is the latest in a series of expensive and ugly traffic management schemes to have blighted our area. The Tilford scheme has caused more damage around the magnificent central green, than was ever caused by the Big Storm.

I shudder to think how many millions of pounds have been spent over the years by Surrey and Hampshire alone (let's not frighten ourselves by projecting this figure nationwide) on ugly, impractical, non-standard and sometimes dangerous

traffic management and traffic calming schemes.

Like so many other things in this country, we have got traffic management and traffic calming entirely the wrong way round. Instead of dealing with the problems of bad driving at source, we spend millions clearing up the mess when it's all too late. We would rather spend a fortune on painting rural roads shades from a technicolour palette, instead of setting up a self-financing scheme of more demanding initial roadcraft training, re-testing of all drivers every five to ten years and positive incentives to take more advanced driving tests during a driver's lifetime.

We would rather force cars closer together by narrowing roads, lay spine-crunching, poorly designed speed bumps and build brick wall chicanes around blind bends, than tackle the biggest sacred cow of all: It isn't always the other driver that causes all the problems, sometimes the problem driver is us. You and me.

The boy racers who endanger life by driving too fast in built-up areas are reprehensible and deserve to be caught more often than they are. Some of the nonsense that is allowed on Friday and Saturday nights even in so-called quiet towns like Guildford, is beyond belief. But older drivers, too, must take a share of the blame for accident statistics.

Repeating parrot fashion the mantra "speed kills" is not the answer. Speed is a contributory factor in virtually every road accident – if the car was not moving at all, presumably there could not have been an accident?

Just when we thought the idea was to straighten and widen some of our twisty roads, instead, now we narrow them again and put in a challenging series of tank traps, chicanes and obstacles for good measure. And you know who are the people that love these road schemes the most? Yes, you've guessed it. The boy racers! Tilford used to be avoided at all costs – now it's a great challenge for anyone with go-faster stripes and a GT badge on the boot.

What makes it worse is that all the different traffic schemes vary wildly from county to county – so much so, that to include them all in the Highway Code would require an edition the size of War & Peace.

Before we submerge any more of our rural roads in

confusing gaudy paintwork; before we construct any more ghastly schemes like Tilford; before we waste any more taxpayers' money that could be far better used building more hospital beds or putting more police officers on the streets, let us please instruct our councillors and our MPs to halt this madness.

Let us admit that none of us are the drivers we would like to think we are. Let us tackle the problem of bad driving from the front end, not the back: Stricter initial testing, re-testing during a motorist's life (don't worry – a first fail would not need to mean immediate forfeit of your licence) and incentives to take part in more advanced driver training throughout our years behind the wheel. Who knows, UK plc might even be able to make a profit on the fees!

Mike Powell

Old Lane

Dockenfield, Farnham