Council’s controversial ‘safety measure’

Wiltshire County Council has decided to remove the signage from roads in a safety experiment. Rather than a centreline, roads in the scheme will remain unpainted.

The idea comes from a similar scheme in Holland. Authorities there found that motorists paid greater attention to the road since the degree of ‘uncertainty’ was increased and therefore made them more cautious.

Adam Butcher, as spokesman for the Council told MCN: ” We’re always looking to see how we can reduce traffic speeds and increase safety.

In some circumstances conventional traffic calming measures aren’t appropriate and the circumstantial evidence from the Dutch experiment suggests this scheme has merit.

” The four out of the five roads in this experiment are all 30mph roads into residential areas. All of them are well lit. It’s just that the centreline hasn’t been re-laid after resurfacing.

” We’re monitoring the scheme closely and if there’s found to be a problem we’ll withdraw it. We’re talking about less than 3 miles of Tarmac in total. ”

But not everyone is convinced. Terry Chivers, a Liberal Democrat councillor, has derided the plan as ” total madness. ”

The roads concerned are: Hungerdown Lane, Chippenham; London Road, Devizes; Wilton Road, Salisbury; Semington Road, Melksham and Shrewton Road in Salisbury.

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