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Our speaker at the September meeting was Alan Dunkerton, a retired traffic policeman and Newbury Group President. Alan now works for West Berkshire Road Safety Team as the Speed Management Coordinator. The attendance at the meeting was disappointingly low, but those members who did turn up were rewarded with a fascinating talk.
Alan’s main task is to manage the Speed Indicator Device (SID) and the Speed Data Recorders (SDR). SID is a highly-visible electronic sign that displays an approaching vehicle’s speed and then flashes a smiley or frowning face according to whether that speed is below or above the set speed, which is usually the prevailing speed limit. It is set up and manned at various locations for a few hours at a time, to reinforce the speed limit signs. Some West Berkshire parish councillors have been trained to use SID, to augment the Road Safety personnel.
SDR equipment is more stealthy and consists of a black box attached to a lamppost or traffic sign pole; it downloads and analyses speed data over a set period, say a week. SDR is used in dealing with complaints from the public about speeding vehicles; the data will show whether the complaint is justified. Sometimes the data is used as evidence by the Speed Limit Review Group, which meets twice a year to review speed limits in the local area – the group has occasionally been known to recommend increases in the speed limit as well as decreases!
Alan described several recent PRIDE speed-control initiatives that he had organised in conjunction with the Thames Valley police: these included Pangbourne Speed Awareness Day, Know Your Speed posters, speed camera enforcement and educating the motorist at the roadside.
Moving onto the subject of hazard perception, Alan then showed us a series of photographs of local road hazards. Most included sharp bends or humped-back bridges (vertical bends!) and on some of them he was able to point out clues about the likely road direction beyond the hazard. The photos illustrated the basic road safety rule, that is the need to drive at such a speed that you can stop in the distance you can see to be clear. The consequences of failing to follow that rule were illustrated by photos of crashed vehicles, some of which were horrendous. Alan had attended some of these crashes as a road traffic policeman, and he described the circumstances and the results of each one.
Finally he reiterated the 2-second rule when following other vehicles, and advised us all to drop back and give it another two – after all, he said, it’s your life you are trying to save.