‘Safety’ screen to block drivers’ views makes roundabout more dangerous (From Bucks Free Press)

‘Safety’ screen to block drivers’ views makes roundabout more dangerous

11:44am Friday 20th July 2012 in Your Letters

RE: The installation of a screen by Buckinghamshire County Council at an accident blackspot in an effort to improve safety by slowing drivers down. The screen was introduced by a roundabout on the A4155 after there were 14 crashes at the site in Little Marlow Road between 2008 and 2011.

REGARDING the news item in the Marlow Free Press last week concerning the screen on the junction of the Little Marlow Road and the A404 roundabout: I use this roundabout every day and it has become more dangerous, not less, than before the screen was erected, because drivers cannot see what is on a collision course with them.

The council should have improved visibility, not reduced it – that would make it safer.

What kind of perverse logic says that road safety is served by not being able to see what is coming at you?

I suspect that this is more about feeding their obsession with low speeds than safety.

It is a fundamental principle of safety that no change should be made that increases risk, hoping that behavioural changes will compensate for it.

Those who do this are failing in their Duty of Care under the Health & Safety at Work Act, Section 3 (1) which says “It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health and safety.”

By reducing visibility of traffic on a collision course, Transport for Buckinghamshire have indeed breached this Act by exposing drivers to more danger than before the screen was erected.

Chris Burmajster, Andrews Way, Marlow Bottom