Signs don't help safety (From Gazette Series)

Signs don't help safety

SIR - The Comment (Gazette, December 5) draws attention to the distraction for drivers brought about by the proliferation of road signs.

On the M4 towards London, from around Newbury onwards, new tall illuminated message boards project towards the motorway from the nearside.

Approaching London on November 30 conditions were appalling. In the gathering dusk my attention was distracted for an inappropriate length of time as I struggled to read, through heavy rain and road spray, the vital message. Incongruously, it was about mobile phones!

In the same issue of The Gazette the Road Report mentions that the road from the M4 at Falfield to the top of Charfield Hill is to receive the "treatment".

Apparently, South Gloucestershire Council's executive councillor for planning, transportation and the strategic environment, Pat Hockey, favoured, in the face of contrary recommendations by the police and by the council, just the sort of hotchpotch of signs and limits referred to in the Comment.

She was overruled, preventing a further excess of the type that has brought the law, the council and councillors into widespread disrepute. Statistics supporting the changes on this stretch of road include accidents at the T-junction at the top of Charfield Hill, the scene of many incidents.

If safety really is the issue then, logically, remodelling the road layout at this blackspot should take precedence over all other considerations.

John Barker, Wistaria Avenue, Chipping Sodbury.