Hundreds of people have signed a petition calling for road safety improvements on a stretch of road where a motorcyclist was badly hurt in a crash.
North Portslade councillor Peter Atkinson was joined by a Labour Party colleague, Peter Kyle, the MP for Hove, as they went door-knocking in Mile Oak.
They were drumming up support for a petition to tackle the dangerous stretch of Mile Oak Road where a Suzuki motorbike crashed into a Land Rover in December.
The 27-year-old motorcyclist was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, suffering from head injuries and a broken leg, with multiple fractures.
As well as the paper petition being taken round by Mr Kyle, Councillor Atkinson and local volunteers, an online petition on the 38 Degrees website has attracted more than 350 signatures.
To sign it, click here.
Councillor Atkinson said: “This stretch of road has been of concern to residents for many years now.
“There is a slight hill and a bend which obscures the line of sight for drivers both from the southern part and the northern part of this section of the road.
“Cars and vans are parked on the eastern side of the road which effectively only allows for one lane of traffic or one vehicle to progress at a time through the road.
“This means that cars, vans, buses or motorcyclists will often speed up the road, whether from the northern direction or from the south, in the hope of avoiding traffic coming from the opposite direction.
“This is done without the benefit of actually seeing if anything is heading their way from the opposite direction due to the hill and the bend in the road.
“If a vehicle is heading in their direction then you often have a situation where a driver has to back up for some distance as there are often no passing points until after vehicles have left their parking spaces on the east side of the road.
“You will also often get a near-collision as two drivers only spot each other at the last second.
“It’s only pure luck that there has been no fatal accident on this incredibly dangerous stretch of road and this issue is one that I’m contacted about on a very frequent basis.”
20 mph makes such sense. Those who drive faster think only of themselves, not of the impact upon those whom they hit (until, of course, they are hit).
Boggling to recall the uproar at the introduction of 20 mph.
Life is so very short, one would have thought people would welcome a way of not making it even shorter.
Christopher – except of course that Ian Davey’ scheme was badly implemented, without the required traffic calming measures and no enforcement. Because of this, no one seems to take any notice of the 20 mph and the implementation was, typically for clueless Green Party policies, an expensive failure.
How many people have actually been fined for travelling at over 20 mph on a 20 mph zone?
If you recall, the speed limits (don’t laugh!) were decided by each street having a vote to decide what the speed limit would be so that as you travel around the city you never really know what the speed limit it at any location.
And do you happen to know if this accident was caused by vehicles travelling at more than 20 mph?
It does not sound as as if you had eggs over easy for breakfast but have again left in raging.
I do not know why you deem this sensible a Green Party measure. It had already been introduced in other parts of the country, and was agreed by a majority at the Transport Committee (Gill Mitchell made a fool of herself by claiming that buses use Preston Drove, when in fact that is for only a very short part of it in which there is not time to reach 30 mph). The simple fact is that if somebody hits flesh and bone at 30 mph, it is likely to be more work for the undertaker; at 20 mph, the chances of survival are much greater, and that also brings more time in which previously to slow down.
Anybody who kills somebody when going above the speed limit is surely left with a lifetime of waking in the middle of the night with a wail of “if only…”.
The report above says that traffic was speeding.
Each road does not have a separate speed limit. These are clearly marked.
Over a million people are killed on the roads each year. I do not understand why you do not welcome efforts to reduce this.
Errrrr…..its obvious that the parking is the biggest issue here as the drivers are acting in a very predictable fashion and increasing speed to get through a tight spot created by on road parking before something comes in the opposite direction….this is typical driving behaviour that can be observed in many areas ie Vale Road/Victoria Road/Boundary Road (when the barriers are down and lots also drive the wrong way along the road). Put double yellows and/or laybys in. Also bear in mind that the council has made a big mistake in putting the childrens center up a private road there (The Rise/Monarchs View) and the center has no real parking rights up there and when my child went to that nursery, we were told to park ‘elsewhere’ and walk up.