Thirty years ago there use to be a device by the north bound road leading past Ascot race course. It warned drivers if they were tail-gating and flashed DRIVING TOO CLOSE. After it disappeared from that location I briefly re-discovered it again a few years later near Watford. Has anyone seen it recently? Such devices if modified with cameras and set up around accident black spots on fast roads would surely be useful safety measures.

Why are the local primary schools being closed down yet a large number of houses are about to be erected in the locality? Parents will have to drive their children further to school adding to congestion. The local government discourage road use by installing traffic calming obstructions, phasing some traffic lights to go red as vehicles approach them and in some places, putting yellow lines down to make vehicles park on both sides of the road so that park vehicles act as traffic obstructions. The traffic delays increases the number of vehicles on the road and adds to pollution. Holding up traffic hobbles public transport!

Yet another traffic obstruction has appeared in Great Hollands – a traffic ‘calming’ chicane. This, I understand is to prevent the recent near misses when vehicles emerging from a side street cannot be seen because of an overgrown Pyrocanthus bush. Would cutting back the bush be cheaper and more effective? I note the recent skid marks that have appeared on both sides of the obstruction!
So, following the same logic, if you put a rubber duck beside the site of a recent accident and there was not another accident there for a while, one could claim that the rubber duck was responsible for the improved safety!

It was reported by the BBC Tuesday, 15 June, 2004, 16:13 GMT that UK Cameras ‘save 100 lives a year’. These are government figures so we know that they can be trusted. These lives have been saved by erecting 5,000 fixed speed camera sites at a cost of