31 December - 2016 goes out with a bang
Abbey
Road claimed another victim last night, another head on collision to which Bexley Council’s decision to
halve its width back in 2009 must have contributed.
Andrew Bashford, Bexley Council’s Traffic Engineering Manager, was extremely unlucky when he told me his road design was fully supported by a
Transport Research Laboratory report not knowing that my son had a hand in writing it while he was Senior Consultant at TRL.
I don’t think it is necessary to be an expert on road safety to conclude that a narrow road
must increase the chance of a head on collision because there is less room to take avoiding action. Why
Bexley Council fails to see the point I have no idea but it is nice to be able to call on an expert for an opinion.
A former co-chair of a European Union safety committee and this year’s UK delegate to the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conference on the same subject
should know what he is talking about, far more than Andrew Bashford, that’s for sure.
“Incompetent or malicious but probably both” is my favourite quote.