20 August - Abbey Road claims another victim
I
was returning on foot from a bit of shopping this afternoon when I saw a young boy cross
Abbey Road using the refuge opposite Carrill Way;
the one that has remained unlit since the road was turned into an accident
black-spot last
year. He misjudged the speed of a passing car and was lucky to survive unscathed. Well not
entirely unscathed, he got a good telling off from his mother and since the lad couldn’t
have been any more than three I was inclined to think it wasn’t him who needed the talking to.
I’d not been home for more than 15 minutes (it was 5 p.m.) and I heard rather too
many emergency sirens for comfort and sure enough, this time there had been an accident.
It was obvious to anyone with more than half a brain that there were going to be
accidents on Abbey Road once the recovery space for drivers to take avoiding
action had been removed by the numbskulls who run Bexley council. I asked a
Transport Research Laboratory consultant to take a look and he confirmed it.
Today’s incident was a text book example of the accuracy of his prediction.
Quite recently I said it was inevitable after seeing near
misses during the Easter school holidays.
Fortunately the young girl who I believe came off her bike in front of a car
(a policeman’s initial verdict, not mine) will live to tell the
tale. Meanwhile Andrew Bashford and councillors John Davey and Peter Craske will
be basking in the praise heaped on them by
the cycling lobby on whom
they wasted half a million pounds of our money. The bloody scars on the road are
a small price to pay for political correctness.
As is always the case with accidents a small crowd gathered to watch events
unfold and there was just one topic of conversation. The speeding traffic and
the fact that Bexley council made things worse through their ineptitude.
For absolute accuracy I should add that councillor Davey thought narrowing the
road to benefit cyclists was a silly idea but despite being the vice-Chairman of
a Transport Sub-Committee he nodded it through to please fellow politicians and
thereby proved himself to be two-faced and in his own small way, corrupt.
Note. The cars shown in these photographs were not involved in the accident.