Councillor suggests road sign reduction trial (From Bucks Free Press)

Councillor suggests road sign reduction trial

10:38pm Tuesday 16th September 2008 in Politics By James Nadal

AN experiment to remove or reduce the number of road signs should be explored to make driving in Marlow safer, a councillor said tonight.

At a Marlow Town Council meeting, Cllr Roger Wilson discussed an idea, trialled in other towns in England and Germany, which aims to make drivers think about their decisions more closely -by taking away some traffic signs.

He highlighted research in a book by author Tom Vanderbilt - 'Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do' - which said, where experiments had taken place to remove certain road signs and traffic lights, there had been fewer accidents.

Cllr Wilson said: “The accident rate was reduced substantially as a result because people are no longer on automatic pilot.

"If they are at a t-junction they have to look and are more careful and cautious. In fact, in Kensington where they did away with the signs there was a substantial reduction in the no of injuries and accidents.

“In Germany, they completely did away with the signs and people who were driving had to think rather than being on auto-pilot - which is what we do when we have signs there.

“My thought was basically that to see county council officers and see if we could use Marlow as a way of doing away with some of the signs that aren’t necessary.”

Mayor Neil Marshall said: “I would certainly say we have a excess amount of signs.”

The council agreed to discuss the idea further with Buckinghamshire County Council highways officers.