A pedestrian died in a car crash in Portslade last night (Friday 11 March).
He was named locally as 44-year-old Ronnie Herriot.
The crash happened in Old Shoreham Road between the A293 Link Road and the Southern Cross traffic lights, at the Trafalgar Road and Locks Hill crossroad.
Sussex Police said: “Police are appealing for witnesses after a pedestrian tragically died in a collision with a Vauxhall Corsa.
“The incident occurred on the A270 Old Shoreham Road, Portslade, around 8.17pm on Friday 11 March.
“The pedestrian – a 44-year-old local man – was sadly pronounced deceased at the scene.
“The driver was uninjured.
“A section of the road was closed in both directions for several hours following the collision and we thank the public for their patience and understanding.
“If you saw what happened, or captured it on dash cam or CCTV, please email collision.appeal@sussex.police.uk quoting Operation Auburn.”
Thank you for using the word ‘crash’ instead of ‘accident’, Frank, it’s really important that we talk honestly about road deaths. If I’m not misremembering, this is the second pedestrian death on the Old Shoreham Road in less than 12 months. How many more people have to die before we make this road safe??
Without knowing the details of what happened it is difficult to know what can be done. There are clear traffic and pedestrian signals at this junction so for a collision to occur it seems likely someone is at fault.
If people are persistently dying on a road, then that road needs to be changed to prevent more deaths. Expecting people to behave perfectly all the time in order to prevent the worst possible outcome is neither humane nor realistic; a huge amount can be done with road design and traffic management to make the environment safer and mean that even when someone makes a mistake or does something silly the outcome isn’t fatal.
With regards to the Old Shoreham Road in particular, the volume of houses, businesses and people walking nearby is pretty incompatible with both the volume and speed of traffic, and the road design- wide and largely straight- encourages speeding (this is called the ‘design speed’ of a road, where drivers feel as if they’re going too slowly for the conditions and can end up speeding without realising it; a mismatch between design speed and posted speed limits is a huge problem in Hove and Portslade generally).
Just narrowing the road would help mitigate its issues in multiple ways:
– Less physical distance where pedestrians are at risk from motor traffic when crossing
– Making it feel more natural to drive at a lower speed and thus reducing the amount of people who break the speed limit
– Making it feel more worthwhile for people going longer distances to take a bit of extra initial time to go out to the A27, meaning less overall traffic on the OSR
Fundamentally even when specific crashes are down to individual fault, that individual fault did not arise outside of the context of a road which can and should be designed to mitigate it. I don’t want to have to gamble my life and the lives of my loved ones on the perfect behaviour of every single driver in the city.
Idgie
People are NOT persistently dying on this road!!!
I understand this is the second or third death in about a year, still 2 or 3 too many. We must not forget of course, Old Shoreham Road stretches from Shoreham all the way to Brighton.
What needs to be done from the many comments that have been published in local newspapers is more pedestrian crossings.
There is nothing wrong with the road, it’s a straight road… It’s perfect, you can see clearly for crossing the road in both directions.
We don’t live in a perfect world and people do make mistakes and do silly things, but people do have to take responsibility for their own safety and their own actions. When they don’t, that’s when things go wrong. In most crashes, a failure to look is the number cause of incidents, followed by failure to judge/anticipate. People always wrongly say speeding is the cause when in fact it is not the case, speeding is way down the list of causes.
You state: With regards to the Old Shoreham Road in particular, the volume of houses, businesses and people walking nearby is pretty incompatible with both the volume and speed of traffic and the road design- wide and largely straight.
Yes it is, yet very few incidents have been recorded on the crash map, so doesn’t indicate a poorly designed road, now compare the results for the A259 and that tells you it is one of the worst for incidents.
You say the design at OSR encourages speeding (this is called the ‘design speed’ of a road, where drivers feel as if they’re going too slowly for the conditions and can end up speeding without realising it; a mismatch between design speed and posted speed limits is a huge problem in Hove and Portslade generally).
I don’t agree, the amount of incidents indicate the road isn’t a blackspot, but I’m relating my comment solely to the OSR not Hove or Portslade.
As we discovered with the Cycle lane instalment narrowing the road would not help the environment in many ways.
More places to cross the road is a fundamental problem as there are few places to cross, that is part of the issue with the OSR.
Reduce speed limits is a possibility worth considering.
‘Making it feel more worthwhile for people going longer distances to take a bit of extra initial time to go out to the A27, meaning less overall traffic on the OSR’.
So you expect drivers to go a longer distance to get where they need to go. Not Environmentally a good idea is it, more fuel being burned and more fumes great idea that.
You say : Fundamentally even when specific crashes are down to individual fault. Almost every single incident is caused by someone making a fault. So a bit of a silly comment to make.
As I said earlier in my post, the most common cause of incidents is a failure to look. Lets get straight to the point here, OSR is a straight road, if somebody hasn’t looked before stepping out who’s at fault, you can get knocked down by a car doing 10mph or 40mph, that will never change and nothing to do with the road itself. Yes of course, at 10mph you will probably walk away but I think you get the point…
As for your last statement : I don’t want to have to gamble my life and the lives of my loved ones on the perfect behaviour of every single driver in the city.
Nobody except you is forcing you to gamble your life and those of loved ones by relying on others, if you do you are foolish, as I indicated earlier, the only person responsible for their own safety is you. Take on board the responsibility and keep yourself safe, I have done quite well for the last 50 odd years looking out for myself and taught my loved ones to keep themselves safe, works for us.
“yet very few incidents have been recorded on the crash map” – I count 15 serious casualties on that road in 5 years and the 2 pedestrians killed in the last 7 months.
Is that an acceptable amount of suffering for you?
David Haskell
Thank you for the reply, careful reading of my post stated quite clearly that within the last twelve months there had been 2 or 3 fatalities, I then added if you actually bothered to read it was 2/3 too many.
So I highly recommend winding ya neck in.
Yes 15 in five years equals 3 per year!!! still far too many.
In the incident’s recorded, the problem appeared to be a lack of light controlled crossings. If I recall, none of the drivers were reported for any driving errors.
People jump straight in and make false claims when the facts tell a different story, it is always the motorists fault, they were speeding or driving dangerously.
Lack of crossings on this road is a problem, and pedestrians walking straight out without looking is another. It’s a fact of life, it’s not always motorists at fault. I’m not victim blaming at all just highlighting there’s two sides of a coin.
A lot jumping to conclusions here without knowing the full facts. Claiming pedestrians are dying persistently on the OSR is also a untruth, two deaths in 10 years, this one and the elderly lady killed by a drunk/ drugged driver near the tip. It is an awful tragedy but lets establish the facts before anyone tries to jump to conclusions. Thoughts are with the individuals family.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s easy to blame the road, but it’s usually people who are at fault.
Horrible news and we don’t know the facts. In general terms though when the road was restricted in Hove to one lane by the cycle path traffic could only move at the speed of the slowest vehicle and there was less “road width” for pedestrians to cross. It would seem sensible to bring back and extend this arrangement. And / or what about a “green wave” as used in other countries successfully? This is where traffic lights turn green at a timing meaning anyone proceeding at the legal limit catches them all so there is no point in speeding? Strikes me people are ready to shout about a perceived slight delay re a cycle path but take as normal crashes like this one which are truly tragic – whatever the cause. Should we not be aiming for zero casualties? If not what do folk deem acceptable? We should not need a dual carriageway in the centre of a town?
You can’t have zero. Only a reduction. There will be incidents on any road.
In my experience people think they’re invincible and risk crossing anywhere instead of using crossings, the lady killed at the dressings several months ago was crossing while the lights were green for traffic