Transport -
Speed Humps
In
October 1995 Harringay Council installed 35 road
humps in what appeared to be randomly selected
roads in the Miltons area of Highgate, North
London. There had been no history of accidents,
speeding or excessive traffic flow through most
of these streets, but a handful of anti-car
residents had lobbied the Council to install
humps. Also, traffic-calming funding was
available from central government - which if not
used immediately would be lost.
The streets were not in fact random but chosen on
the basis of a questionnaire asking residents if
they wanted humps in their street. The Council
subsequently admitted that the survey had been
misleading and the results were unreliable. Once
the flat-topped tarmac humps were in place it was
immediately clear that they were unusually
vicious, many indeed illegally so, which the
council initially denied. Worse, for some weeks
they lacked the legally required markings. Sadly,
if predictably, the humps, practically invisible
at night, soon claimed their first victim - a
woman cyclist whose facial injury required seven
stitches.
Harringay remained unmoved by this or by the
numerous phone calls, letters and faxes pleading
with them to have the humps removed, or at the
very least marked. Only several weeks after the
humps had been installed did they at last do so.
But they continued to deny that the humps were
illegal. It was not until 24 April 1996, under
questioning from the Ombudsman, that the Borough
Engineer at last admitted that 27 of the 35 humps
were of illegal dimensions. With cars being
regularly damaged and compensation claims rolling
in, Harringay went into a state of inertia. And
so did the Ombudsman. Eventually the council
decided to carry out a second consultation. The
forms, sent out in December 1996, were even more
confusing and misleading than the original ones,
but still it seemed that a clear majority of
residents wanted their humps removed.
Then political in-fighting broke out. On 13
February 1997, the leader of Harringay Council's
Highways & Safety Group, recommended the
digging up of eight of the humps but this was
rejected by Councillor Lucinda Arnold who claimed
that the results of the consultation were
"ambiguous" and insisted that further
consultation be carried out. This confirmed that
the majority of residents did indeed want their
humps removed, but the Council was in no mood to
listen. Eventually the Council complied with its
minimum obligation, modifying all the humps to
make them legal.
Hundreds
of speed humps are to be lowered by a city
council because hearses and funeral cars get
stuck on them. Funeral directors in Liverpool
have to ask grieving families to walk to the end
of certain roads because the limos cannot clear
the humps. Hearses and funeral cars, which have
low axles and a wide wheel base, have also been
stranded with one set of wheels on either side of
the hump.
Richard Jenkins, president of the Liverpool
Society of Allied and Independent Funeral
Directors, says the humps cause distress to
mourners. He said, "Funerals are obviously a
very sensitive time and it can be distressing for
people to be asked to walk to the end of their
road before getting in the limousine. We plan our
routes very carefully to reduce the number of
humps but they are often unavoidable. We have had
incidents, particularly involving families with a
few overweight members, where the limo has
scraped every hump on the way to church."
Mr Jenkins lobbied for the height of the humps to
be reduced from four inches to three. Liverpool
City Council has pledged to address the problem,
which is believed to affect about 100 roads.
"We will replace them but it will be a
rolling programme over 10 to 15 years. We have an
annual budget of £75,000 for speed humps and we
have to strike a balance between building new
ones where residents have asked for them and
replacing the older, higher ones."
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