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Correspondence with the Hampshire CC about Ken's Bends.
16 September 2010
To Mr Stuart Jarvis, Director of Environment, Hampshire County Council,
Dear Mr Jarvis,
Re- the pinch point being placed in front of my house,
“Lindfield”, on the Burley Road in Brockenhurst.
This property is close to a pinch point, and I most vehemently object to the creation of these obstacles.
Despite my location, I have never been consulted or even informed about this work, although I am told by your Mr Paul Garrod that it is now too late for it to be stopped.
In the twenty-six years I have lived here, I have never complained about, and have had little reason to complain about, the traffic passing my house on this road.
I now face the prospect of having, for several hours each day, queues of vehicles coming to a halt within sight of my front rooms, upstairs and down, while producing totally unnecessary carbon emissions.
They will then have to restart, no doubt sometimes hastening through while the gap in the traffic is there, producing increased noise as well as more pollution. The overall result will be a reduction of our privacy, and an increase in the noise and atmospheric pollution I and my family are subjected to.
I understand that your Authority has little statutory requirement to inform residents about work like this, particularly if the word temporary is used, whatever it means in reality. But such lack of proper consultation shows an appalling standard of local government. I will also be sending this letter to my representatives on the three levels of government involved, asking additional questions concerning how this came about.
Even more serious than the above, these are dangerous obstructions, particularly hazardous to inexperienced, pedal cycle, moped or motorcycle riders. For the latter two the risks will be very considerable at night, and in conditions of limited visibility or with poor road conditions.
For pedal cyclists the only way to make these obstacles safe would be provide separate cycle-ways behind each of them. I understand this is not being done.
There are two different groups of cyclists. There are the serious local cycle clubs, who I understand frequently plan itineraries using this road. Have they been informed?
Possibly at greater danger are the large numbers of often very inexperienced and young casual holiday cyclists, many of whom will have only hired a cycle for the day. When a seven-year-old does exactly what they’ve seen the person thirty-feet in front of them do, will they understand this could take them head-on into the path of an oncoming vehicle, where priority is resolved only by contention?
I had believed most government organisations were trying to spend wisely. This is money being wasted on actually making life worse for me and more dangerous for many others.
In his conversation with me, Mr Garrod told me the work has the approval of the Friends of Brockenhurst, but I now believe this is a misrepresentation of their position.
As a footnote I add that my son James Hendry, who is an inexperienced motorcycle rider, was last month thrown from his motorcycle by a two inch deep pothole, very dangerously and vertically off the side of a manhole cover, in the middle of the carriageway. He escaped with minor injuries, but with a written off motorcycle. Had a vehicle been coming the other way, this could have been a fatal incident. This was also on the Burley Road and will probably cost Hampshire County Council several thousand pounds. No attempt has been made to repair the pothole or even mark it, but you are incurring costs adding yet more dangers.
For this reason I promise you that if any incident occurs at these pinch points, a claimant will have my full financial support in any claim against persons who were warned of the dangers of putting these unlit obstructions in place.
In any reply, please do not use the words “temporary” or “eventually”, as if it will be less significant if someone is temporarily dead.
I request that you halt this work at once and restore what has already been done to its previous condition.
Yours faithfully, Allan Hendry.
cc,
Dr Julian Lewis.
Cllr Thornber
Cllr Mrs Maureen Holding.
31 October 2010
To Mr Stuart Jarvis,
Director of Environment,
Hampshire County Council,
Dear Mr Jarvis,
Re- the pinch point being placed in front of my house,
“Lindfield”, on the Burley Road in Brockenhurst.
Thank you for your letter of 27th September. Before responding, I waited until my meeting last week with your Marc Samways and Paul Garrod. We were joined by Chris Gregory of the NFNPA and by my next door neighbour Beresford Kennedy.
As I have noted on the web site “kensbends”, I found your letter disappointing. Saying that the Parish Council and Friends of Brockenhurst were "consulted" is misleading. And, "They will not be made permanent" is just ridiculous. I have seldom seen anything looking so permanent.
I do not believe that an appropriate response to the objective you state; "to reduce the number of accidents involving animals", is to create such traps for the inexperienced or unwary. These are massively-built unlit posts sitting out in the normal roadway.
I will put aside the mistake about having fixed the pothole which could have killed my son. I told Messrs Samways and Garrod exactly where it is, and trust that it will be rectified..
These gentlemen presented their views well, but I regret to say that they failed to convince either of us that the pinch points were not going to be a hazard to road users. We did not find them receptive to the various points we made. But I thank you for their calling of this meeting.
They told me that a Phase 3 Safety Assessment will now take place. I sought assurance that: I will be told when this is happening so I can get all comments onto the web site, that the report will be made available, and, most importantly, that the brief will allow specific recommendations about each set of points, such as changing or removing them individually, or simply reducing their number.
I believe that these points are dangerous, and whoever makes this assessment should realise the responsibility being placed on them. Some of the dangers that local people have seen are listed on the web site. Messrs Samways and Garrod informed me that this was the only traffic calming measure justified solely on the grounds of reduction of accidents involving animals. In this case, I believe the criterion for the assessment should be that absolutely no danger to human life or limb arises from these pinch points. Please can you confirm that it will be so.
Yours faithfully, Allan Hendry.
Copy to, Dr Julian Lewis, MP.
SAFETY AUDIT REPORT
PILOT TRAFFIC CALMING SCHEME
C11 BURLEY ROAD
BROCKENHURST
AS BUILT STAGE (3)
NOVEMBER 2010
File Ref: 07/182
1.
INTRODUCTION
1.1 This report describes an as built stage safety audit carried out on the pilot traffic calming scheme on the C11 Burley Rd in Brockenhurst. The audit has been carried out in accordance with the requirements specified in the County's Quality Assurance procedure for the Safety Audit of Highway Schemes.
1.2 This audit examines and reports on the road safety implications of the proposals as presented and does not assess or verify compliance of the proposals with any other design criteria or standard.
1.3 The recommendations in this safety audit report are made without prejudice to the wider views of the Highway Authority.
- All references to diagram numbers refer to the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002.
- The audit was carried out on 8th November 2010. The team consisted of the following personnel:
Ian Medd HCC Safety Audit
Peter Goodchild HCC Safety Audit
Dave Taylor Hampshire Constabulary
2. ITEMS RAISED AT STAGE THREE AUDIT
2.1 While the signing is clear to approaching drivers, at night the dark coloured temporary kerbs do not show up under headlamps. Consequently it is difficult to judge the extent of the kerbing, increasing the risk of drivers hitting the kerbs.
RECOMMENDED: reflective road studs are applied to the surface in order to highlight the extent of the build outs.
AUDIT TEAM STATEMENT
The examination has been carried out with the sole purpose of identifying any features of the design that could be removed or modified in order to improve the safety of the scheme. The problems identified have been noted in this report together with associated safety improvement suggestions which we recommend should be studied for implementation. No one on the Audit Team has been involved with the scheme design.
AUDIT TEAM LEADER
I Medd MCIHT FSoRSA Signed ..............………...........
Service Manager
Road User Audit Team
Environment Department Date ....................……..........
Hampshire County Council
22 November 2010
To Mr Stuart Jarvis,
Director of Environment,
Hampshire County Council,
Dear Mr Jarvis,
Re- the pinch point being placed in front of my house,“Lindfield”, on the Burley Road in Brockenhurst.
Thank you for your letter of 9th November. Before responding, I waited until the Phase 3 Safety Assessment had been completed. I now have this, thank you.
I have to say I am surprised that of the many potential hazards identified by the experienced road users who have written to me, the team perceived only one as such. This traffic calming measure is justified solely on the grounds of reduction of accidents involving animals. The criterion for the assessment should have been that absolutely no additional danger to human life or limb should have been created by the pinch points. I find it impossible to believe that this is so. These are massively-built unlit posts sitting out in the normal roadway.
I refer you to my summary of the hazards identified by various people in www.hal-a.com/kensbends.aspx and the full content of their letters at www.hal-a.com/comments.aspx Just Google ‘kensbends’.
I note that the recommendation is that reflectors be added to the kerbs. Please could you inform me of the total cost of this scheme, now including the installation of the reflectors.
You refer to data being collected. Please could you declare exactly what data you intend to collect, and exactly what historic data you will compare this with. I ask this because with infrequently occurring events where place, time and nature are all pseudo-random, almost anything can be proven by the appropriate selection of data. Such selection and reversion to norm are statistical tricks frequently used by traffic planners to prove that whatever they have done was justified..
Yours faithfully,
Allan Hendry, FRAeS.
Copy to, Dr Julian Lewis, MP.
24 December 2010
Mr Stuart Jarvis,
Director of Environment,
Hampshire County Council,
The Castle,
Winchester SO23 8UD
Dear Mr Jarvis,
Thank you for your letter of 1st December, and the information about the £35,000 cost of the pinch points.
With regard to safety, it is difficult to see how the audit team is independent of those who designed the scheme when they work for the same organization. Disagreeing with their opinion are more than thirty local people who have written to me. These include: two local doctors, a chartered civil engineer, a chartered marine engineer specialising in safety assessment, a solicitor, a pilot, people who have held senior positions in major businesses, and several running local businesses. There are also two members of local cycle clubs. I believe the nature and extent of these warnings might begin to suggest that it would be culpably irresponsible to ignore them.
With regard to data collection, with infrequently occurring events, where place, time and nature are all pseudo-random, almost anything can be proven by the appropriate selection of prior and post data. As the accompanying words from Dr Bedford say, you shouldn’t treat the public as very simple people.
For any conclusions to have integrity, all existing data which will be used, and exactly what data you intend to collect or access, need to be declared at the outset. Existing data is doubly important because it is presumably the justification of this expensive scheme.
Open declaration of all intended data collection is also needed, otherwise data can be selected to support a particular case, or even continue to be collected in different ways until data is found which does support such a case.
I also attach the text of letters from Dr Bernard Bedford and Douglas Patterson, professionals well experienced in the use of statistics in the pharmaceutical industry and in marine safety.
I hope you can do this without incurring the expense and adverse publicity involved in invoking the Freedom of Information Act to ask for road safety information.
Can you assure me that a budget will be set aside for removal of these posts in case the data shows that they are not beneficial.
Yours faithfully, Allan Hendry, BSc(Eng), FRAeS.
First attachment to 24/12 letter.
From Doug Patterson, MSc, CEng, FIMarEST.
Alan,
I've had a look at the correspondence on your Kensbends website. I live in Brockenhurst and occasionally use the Burley Road. The web site correspondence makes interesting reading.
As I understand it, good public policy making involves identifying issues negatively affecting the public, identifying causes, assessing solutions, selecting an appropriate solution, implementing the solution and then assessing the outcomes, intended and unintended, of the implementation. The problem solving may be iterative if the assessment of the changed issues and causes indicates that a significant issue remains. The iterative process should continue until the issue and unintended issues have been resolved. Just like problem solving in general really.
It appears to me that an issue of accidents involving cars and animals on the Burley road between Brockenhurst and Hincheslea has been identified and that the solution implemented introduces new hazards.
A number of questions cross my mind. Was there a full definition of the issue? Were causes identified? Was a range of solutions assessed? Did the selection of the pinch points as a solution to the problem take into account unintended outcomes such as the risk of accident between vehicles and between vehicles and the pinch points?
These are historical questions and of limited value in ensuring the most appropriate solution is put in place. More importantly for the future it should be asked whether given the hazards introduced by the pinch points, there are measures in hand to ensure that a revue of the outcomes reflects the affects of the pinch points and not those some unknown variable? And given such a revue will an assessment of the appropriateness of the pinch points or another solution then be made?
Second attachment to 24/12 letter
From Dr B Bedford.
Dear Councillor Kendal,
I was amazed to read in today's Lymington Times that "these discussions were not formally recorded." "A report of the trial will be produced" along with an evaluation of the response to the trial.
How can you conduct a trial if nothing was written down? Who will remember in 2 years time what the question was, what parameters were being measured, exactly what comparisons were being made, what degree of change was being required to show statistical significance and exclude randomness, and how side effects (e.g. accidents involving cyclists and motorists) are to be monitored and weighted?
When you look at the New Forest maps for 2008 and 2009 showing sites of animal accidents, the number of accidents in the "pinch point area" is quite small, especially compared with Picket Post, for example, and the Hythe to Lymington road. I do not deny that all animal accidents matter, but also change should not cause more serious unintended consequences. Where there is a significant number of accidents you can easily apply statistics to show a change of "critical difference." When there are few, a difference of 1 or 2 makes a huge percentage (but not necessarily statistically significant) change.
Could you tell me what figures are being used to measure change in this "trial?"
At the most basic are we talking about change compared with the long term mean number of animal accidents for this stretch of road, or change compared with the recent cluster, which would be farcical as randomness in numbers over time always regresses to the mean? (Which also
explains the apparent benefit of a proportion of, but certainly not all, speed cameras.)
Yours sincerely Dr B Bedford.
Also, in an e-mail to myself.
The "simple comparison" of before and after data suggests they may be treating the public as very simple people. If they have a reasonable amount of traffic speed and flow data and compare with the same time on the same days at the same time of the year when it's not snowed up or a Bank Holiday,that should be a fair comparison. However pony and donkey accidents on that stretch of the Burley Road are relatively few compared with, say, Picket Post. If they compare a year when there was a small increase or an unfortunate cluster of accidents with the following year it isn't a reasonable or valid comparison. If they start using percentages (eg. a 50% reduction for a change from 2 to 1) it would be completely misleading. The comparison needs to be made with the maximum, minimum and longer term average for accidents on that stretch of road and the result in basic numbers, not percentages. Published relative risk changes tend to be garbage, you need whole numbers and the context they come from.
I'm not sure if I told you. Over a couple of years in the 80's we had an unusual number of cases of pancreatic cancer on the Waterside with the Refinery and a large controversial incinerator nearby. After quiet discussions and data comparisons with what was then "Public Health" we decided it was likely to be a chance cluster, made no fuss and did nothing. Sure enough "doing nothing" cured the sudden rise in cases of pancreatic cancer and the rate dropped to around the long term mean again. It is not clear from the "simple comparison" they are making whether they are excluding random clustering of accidents from their analysis.
11 January 2011
Dear Mr Jarvis,
Re- the pinch points being placed in front of my house,“Lindfield”, on the Burley Road.
Thank you for your letter of 4th January. This letter refers to ‘before’ and ‘after’ data. The ‘before’ data must already exist.
Request Under the Freedom of Information Act, 2000. Please provide me with the existing data which will be used to assess and reach conclusions about the pinch point scheme.
Yours faithfully, Allan Hendry, BSc(Eng), FRAeS.
I received this response, which does establish a basis for any comparisons. The attachments make up several pages and can be provided if requested.
E-mail to Cllr Thornber, Mon 24th Oct 2011. Also sent to Stuart Jarvis, HCC Head of Environment, and published as a letter in the Lymington Times of Oct 29th.
Dear Councillor Thornber,
I understand that a review of these pinch points is to be held. It is appropriate that I formally draw your attention to the full content of the web site www.hal-a.com/kensbends and its associated pages. This site contains the written concerns of over thirty local people about the pinch points. (Google - Burley Road pinch points.)
Many people also had concerns about the previous situation on the Burley Road. Below are suggestions of an alternative and I believe safer response to these issues. I do this as someone who has lived, cycled, and walked children to school on, ridden horses across, and driven on, this road over the last twenty-eight years.
It seemed the main problem area was the straight stretch down to the entrance to South Weirs. On the long downhill straight some drivers were undoubtedly going too quickly, towards the hazard of an angled side track, being South Weirs, and several dwelling accesses.
Some traffic calming measures were justified here, and, if anything, something more successful than the present measures. The long straight stretch remains down the centre, and some drivers are still going very quickly in light traffic. So possible changes are:
The three points making up the calming on this straight should be by extensions from alternate sides of the road. Not only would this eliminate the straight line, but it would leave room for a cycle track behind the posts, so no cyclist would have to confront oncoming traffic or pull out in front of following vehicles at a pinch point. With this, there should be clearly marked traffic priorities, according to which side the extensions are on. This would avoid the conflicts and uncertainties of the present arrangement.
There is no need for the posts to be of such solid construction as to almost inevitably cause serious injury or death should a motorcyclist, perhaps not even though their own fault, strike one. They need to be visible; there is no reason why they should be dangerous.
I believe the point near the brow of the hill at the west end serves no purpose and simply introduces potential danger.
A 30mph limit should start shortly before South Weirs. It is clearly justified. There is photographic evidence of this on the above web site. Beyond this lies the South Weirs junction, a phone box and houses near the road, and further on, riding stables. Increased visual justification for a speed limit could be achieved by moving the Brockenhurst sign out to this point.
If this limit is appropriately enforced, there is nothing whatsoever special about the accident record or nature of the Burley Road beyond this point which justifies the potential extra danger of the other pinch points.
So far, two cars have been written off, a cyclist seriously injured and two animals killed, yet success is being claimed. Intransigence in the face of such incidents, and warnings from responsible and expert local people, until someone is very badly injured or killed, would be criminal.
Yours sincerely, Allan Hendry.
I received this response. Attachments available if requested.
My reply of 2nd December 2011.
Dear Mr Jarvis,
Pinch points in Burley Road, Brockenhurst. Your ref. PG/MS/2153709
Thank you for your letter of 9th November. I appreciate this considered reply and will post it on the web site www.hal-a.com/kensbends.aspx unless you instruct otherwise. I accept the facts as you state them, but would make the following observations.
Very few conclusions can be reached by comparing data on infrequently occurring events. With my letter to you of 24th December 2012, I attached the text of a letter Dr Bernard Bedford originally sent to Cllr Kendall, saying, “At the most basic are we talking about change compared with the long term mean number of accidents for this stretch of road, or change compared with the recent cluster, which would be farcical, as randomness in such numbers over time always regresses to the mean.”
Dr Bedford is well experienced in such matters, having grappled with medical statistics having the same characteristics, such as child leukemia clusters.
Your comments about speed limits do not seem to recognize the points I made on the web site, or the associated photographs. You will have great difficulty persuading me, or I suspect most motorists, that the average speed of vehicles at the point where there is now a 30mph sign on the A337 to the north of Brockenhurst was previously anywhere near 30mph.
The third and by far the most important point, is that all these charts, statistics, slight reductions in speeds, and our traded opinions will be as nothing if someone suffers fatal or life-changing injuries as a result of these unnecessarily solid obstacles.
Yours faithfully, Allan Hendry.
I have to add that during the course of writing this letter I heard a loud noise outside. It was yet another collision at the pinch points, the third and fourth vehicles to be written off. Photo herewith.
I feel that it is inevitable that one day I will go outside to find someone badly injured. If reluctance to recognise there is a problem is due to someone’s ego, then they are carrying a great responsibility.
cc: Cllr Thornber.
