The county council seems to have the age-old problem for politicians of all parties and of all times- contradicting themselves to appear to give the correct answer, often leaving it to civil servants to break the news.
I am talking of the forthcoming campaign to make use of posters instead of speed limits to 'make' traffic slow down. If drivers really need to be told to slow down in areas where people are vulnerable, ie near schools, it is debatable whether they ar
e of sound mind to be driving in the first place.
If speed limits and the accompanying penalties for breaking them are not enough to make people drive sensibly though, will leaflets and posters really make a difference?
Unless, of course, a method used near Leeds is adopted, where speeding motorists were stopped by police but spoken to by children about their speeding. The resulting guilty conscience did make drivers slow down.
Elsewhere, they say that the cost of reducing speed limits is often not worth it because people will still speed. If they really do not believe that people slow down just because a speed limit is reduced, why are they going to reduce the speed limits on so many local roads?
It has been said, and unfortunately I have to agree, that if people don't agree with a speed limit, they are less likely to abide by it.
Northumberland Road in Leamington has always suffered from this and I have written in the past about it, Myton Road has been seeing it for almost two years since it had its speed limit reduced and the Stratford Road in Warwick will start to see it now that it has had two speed limits reduced (and I bet that a lot of people using this road between St Laurence Avenue and the Tournament Fields roundabout haven't noticed yet!)
But at the risk of upsetting residents of Warwick Gates, Whitnash and Bishop's Tachbrook, I believe the council are right in not reducing the speed limit at the Harbury Lane crossroads.
The speed limit has already been reduced in recent years, along with changes to the junction (which admittedly do now make it look one vast expanse, almost like an airport runway).
If pedestrians cross at the correct place and time, ie at the traffic lights when the pedestrian light is green, it should not matter what the speed limit is as traffic will be stopped anyway.
