23 September - The accident last Wednesday
After the accident last week I emailed the chap at the Transport Research
Laboratory who predicted traffic accidents on Abbey Road to say that events had
proved him right. But they are cautious people at TRL and he reminded me that it
could be caused by a heart attack at the wheel or similar. However now that I
have listened to eye-witness reports I know that was not the case. I emailed
back to tell him.
In reply he said “Don’t let them (the
council) fob you off with blaming it on mobile phone use. Accidents are
very seldom the result of a single cause and usually occur when a few factors
combine and usually it’s the case that remove any one of the factors and it
doesn’t happen. On that basis even if distraction as a result of mobile phone
use is one contributory factor the changed road design could be another and
and it may well be that if all else stayed the same and the road design was
changed back the accident would not have happened.”
This is all a bit academic of course because our useless councillor and Mr. Bashford
who admitted that accident statistics didn’t figure in his plans have both
failed to acknowledge my request for information when it becomes available.