Consuming Interest
Blind Spot ADRIAN By LESLIE The Road Research Laboratory at Langley have done quite a bit of research on accidents at cross-roads. They found that where traffic lights had been installed at cross-roads or T- junctions.in the London area, where previously there had been only 'Halt' or `Slow' signs or nothing, there were 40 per cent. fewer accidents. Then they went on and did some more research on traffic-light timings and accident statistics. The results of this were published in the June issue of Traffic. Engineering and Control, and are fascinating, if not unexpected.
Traffic-light settings vary from those wh:ch go from red to red-and-amber in one direction at the same moment as they go from green to amber in the other, to those that change in a more leisurely fashion, pausing at red in both directions for' a second or two in the process. The first give turning traffic and pedestrians little time to hop it, and give rise, particularly at night or when the road is wet, to collisions between cars still crossing on the amber—or even the just-red—and those starting on the red- and-amber, too impatient to wait for the green. From official records the Laboratory selected a dozen junctions in London where an all-red period had recently been added. Over these twelve sites injury accidents in the two years after the change were 41 per cent. down on the two years before. Crashes of the type where two moving vehicles on different roads collide —the 'amber gamblers'—were reduced by 88 per cent.
Responsibility for Britain's roads is divided, not very clearly, between the Ministry of Trans- port and local authorities. The MoT, I gather, are entirely in charge of the important ones, like motorways, and local authorities of the very minor ones. There seems to be a kind of limbo between the two—for instance, a local authority wanting to put up a 'Halt' sign must first apply to the Ministry for approval.
This lack of clear responsibility is presumably responsible for the astonishing variation in the marking of cross-roads (or lack of it) and settings of traffic lights up and down the coun- try. An excellent example of this is Eaton Square in Belgravia: straight up the centre runs the King's Road, with four traffic-light-controlled cross-roads, almost identical except in MoT classification—one with an all-red phase in both directions, one with an all-red in one direction but not the other and two altogether without. Can you guess which are the scene of crashes?
Most local authorities, I was told, have road safety committees, on which sit representatives of road safety organisations and the police. The latter are the obvious source of suggestions for improvements at black spots, for they have the accident statistics. Maybe they are vigorous and vociferous in suggesting such improvements; if so, I can't help wishing they would tell us about their efforts occasionally. I do know that there is a police station within 200 yards of those lights in Eaton Square, and I can't help remem- bering a policeman in another London district complaining that he frequently had to go out at night to deal with accidents at two unmarked cross-roads outside his police station. My sug- gestion, that all that was necessary to ensure a good night's sleep for both himself and the casualty officer at the local hospital was for somebody to mark those cross-roads clearly with priority in one direction or the other, was re- ceived with blank apathy.
I was surprised to see that the 'House of Young Ideas' built into the Oxford Street fur- niture store, Waring and Gillow, to show, as its blurb says rather defensively, that the store is 'just as capable as it ever was of looking into the future,' is without central heating. The lavender, green and pink prettiness of the bed- rooms was marred by some very ugly old ideas indeed: electric heaters.
But everyone to his idea of comfort. The de- signers, House and Garden, have thought it wiser to keep their small modern family free of dust, rather than warm. Built into the house is a new vacuum cleaner called Tacuumation,' whereby the grit and dust, instead of being sucked into that revolting pouch hung on to the machine that most of us know, flows through plastic pipes under the floorboards and into a large dustbin in the area, or garage, or cellar —wherever you choose to store it. If the installa- tion fee weren't £100, I'd buy it. Right now, however, I'd rather keep warm: nothing makes me feel younger.
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