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Car accidents are a big problem in the UK. They cause hundreds of thousands of injuries each year, as well as around 3,000 deaths. According to road safety organisations such as Think!, excessive speed has a role to play in many of the crashes which occur on our roads. As a result, cutting the speed at which we drive is a priority for the various interested parties, such as local councils, the government and road safety bodies.
For the past decade, speed cameras have been treated as the answer to speeding. When the technology was brought in in the early 90s, local councils wasted no time in installing them at every road accident black spot on their roads. No motorist could have failed to notice the proliferation of the gaily-painted roadside boxes, which apparently now number in the region of 6,000.
They have become the bane of drivers' lives, with many people voicing strong objections to their widespread use. There have even been organisations set up to fight against speed cameras, such as Safe Speed. They are generally seen by such organisations as an unofficial money-making scheme (something strongly denied by the government) and are resented for being such.
However, speed cameras aren't the only tactic that has been used in cutting motorists' speeds. A growing number of speed bumps and chicanes have been introduced to our roads in the past few years in order to force drivers to go more slowly. Whilst marginally less unpopular than speed cameras, speed bumps in particular have been criticised for causing damage to vehicles and some have even suggested that they may cause spinal column injuries.
In the face of all this criticism, road safety groups have started to take a different approach to cutting speed and, hopefully, cutting the number of car accidents on UK roads. Officially known as psychological traffic calming, the general idea is to exploit motorists' natural instincts and utilise the power of optical illusions.
Various ideas contained within this approach have been trialled in a number of towns, both in the UK and abroad, with some success. Many of them seem counter-intuitive, but according to the experts, the results speak for themselves. Some of the common tactics include removing the majority of the roadside signs, removing the white line from the middle of the road, and using red bricks along the edge of the road.
There are two principles at work here. The first is to create a less cluttered road environment, where motorists are left to concentrate on the road itself rather than being bombarded with information from bright red warning and information signs. The second is to give road users the impression that there is a need to drive slowly where in fact there is no such specific need.
There are a number of ways that this second principle can be achieved, although it has been noted that it is most effective when road users are presented with a combination of risks. For example, a road that is edged with a bricked area and has had the white line down the centre of it removed looks thinner than one that has a centre line. And the thinner the road looks, the slower motorists will go as they perceive there to be more chance of needing to stop for a car coming the other way.
Research has revealed that psychological traffic calming features such as these are more acceptable to the motoring public, which may well mean that they are more likely to be effective; whether consciously or not. In addition to this, residents of towns and villages where these schemes are introduced often welcome the reduction of ugly signs and the addition of some other features, such as kerb build-outs planted with attractive foliage.
These psychological traffic calming measures are not without their downsides though. They have been criticised for being expensive to implement and it has been suggested that they will become less effective over time, as drivers become accustomed to them. Also, some of the features, such as coloured road markings, are less attractive.
Time will tell whether psychological traffic calming features will replace the speed camera as the approach of choice in cutting car accident and personal injury rates on the roads. However, what can be said for certain is that many motorists will welcome them as an alternative to getting a speeding ticket through the door and penalty points on their licence.
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