Tim Backhouse, a builder from the village of Bow, in Devon, has responded to speeding motorists by painting a massive 30mph sign on the side of his house. He said speeding traffic on the A3072 made it difficult to cross the road to get to the village shop. “There is no speed camera in the village so no incentive for people to abide by the law. If drivers just stuck to the speed limit Bow would be a much nicer place to live,” he told the Metro.

Devon County Council carried out a traffic survey and found the average speed was only 31mph in the village. A spokesman said: “We’re aware of concerns about the speed of traffic through the village, and local police have worked with the community on enforcement issues.” Mr Backhouse said he painted the sign as part of Road Safety Week UK and would paint over it on 5 December.

An impressive way to get around in the floods.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Oxford City Council has announced plans to install CCTV with sound recording capabilities in all licensed cabs by April 2015. The council has said that the cameras will record everything from once the engine is running until 30 minutes after it is switched off, but footage will only be kept for 28 days and will only be reviewed if it relates to a police enquiry. 

Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles said: ‘This is a staggering invasion of privacy, being done with no evidence, no consultation and a total disregard for civil liberties. Big Brother now has big ears and they are eavesdropping on your conversations with absolutely no justification.’ But cabbies’ representative Alan Woodward said: ‘Cab drivers have been beaten unconscious, we had cabs smashed up, we have had complaints against drivers.’

Washington State has launched trials of a new system to test for drowsiness among road users. Fatigue is a bigger contributor to road accidents than drink driving. There is no real test that can determine if a driver is too tired to drive, but the system developed by Washington State Patrol considers a number of factors that may help to identify fatigue sufferers. Patrol officers will electronically scan commercial vehicles for their weight, size, registration and safety record, which allows them to see how long the vehicle has been on the road that day. When drivers are found to have been on the road too long they are placed out of service for 10 hours.

In August, the new system helped officers identify 98 drivers who had been driving for 11 hours after taking just a 10-hour break. A number of crashes caused by fatigue involved  drivers who had falsified their logbooks so they could keep driving. The new scanners will eliminate this threat as there is no way to lie to them. If the trial is successful then it could be implemented across America and possibly in the UK and Europe. It could even be implemented for non commercial vehicles, helping to further improve road safety.

According to recent reports more than one in four UK haulage firms are still unprepared for the expected disruption set to be caused by the 2012 London Olympics. The head of policy for London at the Freight Transport Association (FTA) Natalie Chapman said that the figures were worrying. “Although for some forward-thinking companies the race to prepare for this enormous global event has already begun, many businesses haven’t even started warming up yet,” she warned.

With demand for deliveries set to rise sharply during the build up to the London Olympics, the FTA has urged haulage companies to treat this as a three month Christmas period. As well as increased demand there will also be increased restrictions imposed such as tougher lower emissions standards in London and £200 parking charges for motorists who park in areas outside of the Olympic Route Network.

This would be useful in a traffic jam.

Have a great weekend everyone!

The German transport minister, Peter Ramsauer, has recorded a CD of himself playing Mozart on the piano, hoping that it will calm drivers suffering from road rage. The CD entitled ‘Adagio in the Car’ features the minister playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto Nr. 21 accompanied by the orchestra of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper. Ramsauer is hoping to reduce the number of road accidents caused by aggressive drivers. In 2010 more than 2.4 million road accidents were reported on German roads.

At the launch of the CD in Berlin he told reporters “There are more secrets in one slow movement by Mozart than in the entirety of federal transportation policy.” Ramsauer originally wanted to be a concert pianist, but instead chose to enter politics. He hopes that the music will have a calming effect on people and reduce road rage accidents.