A young pedestrian was injured following a crash on Viaduct Road this morning.
Police and ambulance were called to the crash, which is believed to have involved three cars, and which reportedly happened after the pedestrian walked into the road.
The accident happened where plantpot chicanes were installed this week in a bid to calm speeding traffic. They have been branded dangerous by motorists, who said they were an accident waiting to happen.
Speeds are down by about 20mph since the trial started – but cars are still breaking the 20mph limit, with one clocked doing 56mph.
However, police have told the council the car which struck the pedestrian was travelling at a normal speed and the casualty was not badly injured.
Councillor Ian Davey said: “I understand from the police that the incident occurred when a young man ran out in front of a car that was travelling at normal speed.
“There is no suggestion that the planters caused the accident in fact quite the contrary, their role in reducing vehicle speed may well have meant that the accident was much less serious than it would have been otherwise.”
A spokeswoman for South East Coast Ambulance Service said: “We were called at 11.03am, with reports of a collision between a pedestrian and a car.
“We sent an ambulance and a response car – the ambulance was on scene at 11.07am
“There was a single patient, an adult male, who had suffered minor injuries. He was taken by ambulance to the Royal Sussex County Hospital.”
Police said they were called to a crash in Viaduct Road at 11.05am. Officers attended and the incident was resolved by midday.
*Piece updated on Sunday, February 15 to remove any suggestion the car struck the pedestrian while on the pavement.
So it seems this farce is the brainchild of the “London Road Local Action Team”, which is a sort of unelected-meta-quango. It is chiefly staffed by people whose *actual* job it is to run the city (police, council staff, elected councillors). They seem to acknowledge that they’re ineffectual at doing their actual salaried jobs, to they run this “L.A.T.” as a hobby to try and achieve what they can’t achieve when they’re at work.
Here’s the minutes of the meeting where this genius plantpot-chicane scheme was dreampt up. https://londonroadlat.wordpress.com/lat-minutes-draft-13th-january-2015/
I like the way the minutes said they had no money to do a proper ‘traffic calming job’ so this was a ‘cheap solution’ and Martin Heath (Road Safety ‘expert’) felt they didn’t need to make a ‘risk assessment’ before making the changes for this ‘pilot’.
It sounds just like the normal reason for management disasters – “We must do something! This is something! Let’s do it!”.
Who will rid us of these incompetent, councillors and council staff?
Clarification of this morning’s collision (14/11) – drunk male pedestrian ran into the path of an eastbound car. Minor injuries and declined to attend hospital.
@Martin Heath – very interesting – but how many of the other accidents in the city have been due to drunks crossing the road without looking?
Could it be that you just want to ignore accidents that are occurring as a result of this ill-conceived and amateurly implemented traffic calming scheme?
Tell me – as well as putting these plant pots on the road (now apparently with red sticky tape on the sides) did you think to put additional signage in place to advise motorists of what you have done, or was it like the 20mph zones in general where you put up little 20 mph signs and then expected people to take notice?
And are you one of the council’s traffic management ‘experts’ that we hear so much about?
Yes Gerald, I gather he is B&HCC’s “Road Safety Team Manager” and if I’m not wrong also runs a private consultancy business advising all manner of other public and private sector clients on similar projects http://mha.eu.com/
@feline1 – thanks for the link – if he is the same person then I wonder firstly, how much the council are paying for his services as he seems to be based in Scotland, and secondly why the council doesn’t seem to have their own, suitably qualified, transport management experts or ‘managers’ who can discuss road safety.
It would, though, explain where yet more of our council tax goes supporting the green government of Brighton & Hove and they then complain that they need a 6% increase in council tax (compounded every year?) to maintain services.
7th May can’t come soon enough!
Well I am just guessing, but I this Linked In profile suggests that’s the right site. http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/martin-heath/19/1a6/91a
That doesn’t tally with the eye-witness reports I received, Martin. Just saying.
If the cars would haven’t been driving g so fast and obeying the limit there would be no accident . 56mph along that rd is disgusting behaviour. It’s not like you can continue that speed any where past the lights at the bottom .
I feel really sorry for the pedestrian I hope he gets a lot of money from the responsible drivers insurances
But similarly, if pedestrians followed the ‘green cross code’ before crossing the street rather than just expecting traffic to stop for them; or cyclists followed the ‘rules of the road’ and observed red traffic lights; used hand signals before turning; or looked before making a manoeuvre rather than just going wherever they want; then there would be significantly less accidents.
Martin Heath ,how is it that you have details before anyone else ?Do you still think it is safe and is it legal?
do we know if the cars were obeying the speed limit? sorry i have slise of roast beef in my hand will write back to you soon love graham x x
Marton Heath – Do you really think it is appropriate to come on here and make the comments that you have?
I would prefer to hear the ‘official version’ from someone without a vested interest in defending his crackpot idea and his job.
For the record, you and your council are DESPISED by the majority of people in this City.
Given the speed reduction previously reported, I think this experiment should come to an end. I for one am not convinced the temporary situation is sufficiently safe unless very visible barriers are erected.
We should move to implimentation. As this will take time, how about a speed camera? Thanks to the idiot drivers along this section of road, this would raise sufficient revenue to pay for a sensible traffic calming scheme quite quickly. The camera could then be moved elsewhere. The 20mph zone should now be enforced!
@HJarrs – but didn’t your green councillors decide that speed cameras capable of working at 20 mph were not required?
Green councillors continue to prattle the mantra that the 20mph are “working” and are “self-enforcing” and “are enforced by Sussex Police”, all of which are clearly utter bullshit, as they are widely flouted and on this single road alone over 7000 cars PER DAY were exceeding the speed limit and continue to do so even with large plant tubs obstructing the highway.
There’s little you can do with such delusional types except do Joey Deacon impersonations at them.
To install a speed camera, there has to be a history of accidents where speed is a causative factor. Since there is no history of speed related accidents here, there is no justification for either a speed camera or traffic calming. In fact there is no justification for the 20 mph limits too, since none of the technical criteria are met for it’s imposition in this location – in particular it is clearly not self enforcing by the nature of the road.
Martin Heath claimed 9 accidents over the past decade?
Martin Heath has been quite disingenuous with the information he presented at the LAT meeting. The history of accidents with reported casualties is publicly available on http://www.crashmap.co.uk where you can see that in fact all but one of those accidents was at the junctions, not on the straight where the speeds are highest.
Funny, Martin’s consultancy website doesn’t list “disingenuity” as one of his key strengths, instead it claims:
“Set apart from other consultancy organisations by the quality of our thinking, our cost-effective and focussed professional inputs and by our reputation as one of the UK’s foremost technical training providers, MHA provides the highest quality of consultancy and training services to professional design practices, major consultancy companies and key public sector organisations at national, regional and local levels as well as legal representatives, NGO’s and local resident groups. MHA operates regionally throughout the UK, as well as overseas.”
looooool