Day 169 - Community “speed” date

Sometimes, if you see a problem, you have to just stop playing the blame game and take action to resolve it yourself…keeping to the law, of course. Today we witnessed just such action while returning from a morning walk (and coffee) to the Fosseway Garden Centre. On the road heading into Moreton’s town centre, we spotted three people in bright yellow vests standing behind a sign indicating they were undertaking a speed test of vehicles entering the town.

One held a radar gun aimed at incoming vehicles (many of which seemed to slow down on spotting the yellow vests). Phil had a brief chat with them asking if it was working, and they said it seemed to be! He wished them good luck, telling them he thought it was a great idea.

The county in which we are living, Gloucestershire, coordinates this volunteer community speed-monitoring program in cooperation with the local police. While the police (known here as the Gloucestershire Constabulary) would like to monitor speed in every community in the county that has a complaint, as we all know, those kinds of police resources just don’t exist anymore, if they ever did. But many people seem ever-more inclined to drive at highway speeds, even within towns, near schools, over pedestrian crossings, and the like. So, the answer was to find a way to allow communities themselves to take action.

I’ve often said I’d work for free to hand out tickets for speeding and dangerous driving, and love the story of the senior here in England who stands at the end of her front garden pointing a hairblower at oncoming cars in a successful bid to get them to slow down on her street filled with children. So, short of pulling out my own hairblower and setting up a lawn chair, this scheme here really intrigues me. So, I had to look into it more.

Here’s how the it works. Locals can volunteer to participate, advising their local area Council office and the Road Policing Unit of the Gloucestershire Constabulary that they want to do so. At least six volunteers are needed, with smaller villages encouraged to team up with other villages if numbers are an issue. These volunteers get training in how to use the radar gun and administer the program, with the cost of training, risk assessing potential monitoring sites and ongoing administration being borne by Gloucestershire Constabulary.

With three volunteers working one monitoring site, one volunteer uses the radar gun, while two confirm and record the licence plate number of any speeding vehicles (restricted to those travelling at 37 mph or more in a 30 limit (about 60 km/h in a 50 zone), or 48 mph or more in a 40 limit (about 77 in a 65 zone), and recording the time, date and location of the speeder. The information is then passed to the police, who arrange to have letters sent to the drivers (if available, another member of the volunteer community team sends the letters). A driver can receive letters for up to three speeding incidents after which time the police with intervene with a view to prosecuting the speeder.

The county has even created a brochure describing how the scheme works. It includes a humorous line about the safety of participating in the program: “It is true that some drivers wave or gesture in a less than supportive manner, but actual confrontation has been very rare and our training covers how to deal with such situations.”

Hmmmm…if I were to volunteer for such a scheme then I'd definitely have to undergo intensive training to learn to stop myself from the “waving” back that I tend to do now when I see a speeder. Perhaps best left to the more civilized members of the community.