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Speeding and general dangerous driving in and around Brixton

Last year I was witness to an accident in LJ. Car crashed turning into a junction crashed straight into one waiting to turn out. Fairly obviously going too fast and not paying attention. The driver legged it from the scene.

It went to court, I could have been called as a witness but (thankfully) wasn't.

Just the other day I got a letter confirming the charges. So for running away from an accident scene, having no insurance, and 'driving without due care and attention', he gets a fine of £245 and just 12 months' disqualification. Seems pretty feeble to me.
 
teuchter said:
Last year I was witness to an accident in LJ. Car crashed turning into a junction crashed straight into one waiting to turn out. Fairly obviously going too fast and not paying attention. The driver legged it from the scene.

It went to court, I could have been called as a witness but (thankfully) wasn't.

Just the other day I got a letter confirming the charges. So for running away from an accident scene, having no insurance, and 'driving without due care and attention', he gets a fine of £245 and just 12 months' disqualification. Seems pretty feeble to me.
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Cheaper than car insurance
 
Saw a bus stop in Stockwell completely destroyed this morning by a driver who'd somehow managed to drive off the road and onto the pavement. How the fuck do these idiots manage this shit?
 
teuchter said:
Last year I was witness to an accident in LJ. Car crashed turning into a junction crashed straight into one waiting to turn out. Fairly obviously going too fast and not paying attention. The driver legged it from the scene.

It went to court, I could have been called as a witness but (thankfully) wasn't.

Just the other day I got a letter confirming the charges. So for running away from an accident scene, having no insurance, and 'driving without due care and attention', he gets a fine of £245 and just 12 months' disqualification. Seems pretty feeble to me.
Click to expand...

Is that a normal penalty? Seems like they missed a few zeros off the fine and/or disqualification. I wonder how much was spent in police time and court costs etc
 
I'm guessing nobody was hurt, first offence, pled guilty, very sorry your honour don't know what i was thinking, won't happen again, type thing.
Fine needs to be larger than the cost of insurance, 12 month ban seems not unreasonable if there was a guilty plea. Given some of the sentences/charges/not guilty verdict we've seen, this one is just another light sentence for the list. Due care and attention is 3 points and £60 fine as standard iirc, i'd think leaving the scene of a collision would be treated more harshly than in this case.
 
[QUOTE="BigTom, post: 15953604,]Due care and attention is 3 points and £60 fine as standard iirc, i'd think leaving the scene of a collision would be treated more harshly than in this case.[/QUOTE]


And if you leg it you're either drunk, off your head or driving without insurance/paperwork etc. The penalty for running off should be much harsher.
 
Really what's needed is just a strictly enforced 20mph limit. Do people for speeding, before they cause an accident and/or kill someone, instead of waiting for these things to happen and having to throw a load of police/court resources at it at that point. If people on the whole just didn't feel at liberty to speed around the place, then we'd have many fewer cars on pavements smashed into lampposts and bus stops and fewer crashes where we have to decide what the punishment should be for fleeing the scene or driving without insurance.

Write to your councillors about this. Make it a political issue.
 
alex_ said:
Kids play area - it’s a swing
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Not an MRT chair lift then.
:oops::D

Not sure about the playground in the St Matthews Peace garden. Such a horrible place to hang out as it is right next to the 4 lane A23. The swings currently on the other side are more sheltered from the main road and still largely only used by drunk adults.

I do wish they had closed Effra Road down the eastern side of the church as originally proposed when Windrush Square was refurbished, except perhaps to buses. That would transform the church gardens into a really fantastic asset for central Brixton.
 
IIRC, the CHL junction layout is designed so that closing Effra Road for temporary events is easy, with traffic diverted round the back of the Church. A permanent closure wouldn't be all that complicated. It was residents on Saltoun, Kellet and Mervan Roads who wanted car access.

I don't see why you couldn't just close the bit immediately between Windrush Square and the garden. You could still get onto the roads in question from the North by going round the church first.
 
thebackrow said:
I’d hazard a guess that they show the housing estates. Notably, nearly all of them are already configured so that you can’t rat run through them
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But they're not all the estates in Lambeth, and in some areas (Southwyck etc.) are bigger than the estate itself?
 
snowy_again said:
But they're not all the estates in Lambeth, and in some areas (Southwyck etc.) are bigger than the estate itself?
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I thought Southwyck House was built to shelter the low rise estate behind it (which looks like it was built at the same time) from the elevated motorway that would have run down Coldharbour Lane if the Ringways Motorway project had gone ahead. It looks to me as if they’ve just included all of it.

Which do you see are missing (that are inside the red boundary line for the scheme)? They’ve definitely missed the Bonham estate in Brixton HIll ward and the one to the north of the Academy.
 
I'm not clear whether the shading means they'll be doing additional stuff in those estates? But then I've not bothered asking Will Norman or Lambeth Cyclists.
 
Someone's just got knocked off their bike on herne hill road at the padfield rd junction. They apparently aren't seriously hurt but there's an ambulance there. Can see from the position of the car that it was pulling out from padfield rd. That's one of the rat runs that was cut off in the road closures but then reopened when lambeth chickened out. People have been asking for it to be reinstated. I regularly watch cars turning in and out of there too fast and take especial care when I cross there. I wouldn't be surprised if that rat run wasn't something to do with the crash outside coop last week too. That junction is the other end of it.
 
Crispy said:
IIRC, the CHL junction layout is designed so that closing Effra Road for temporary events is easy, with traffic diverted round the back of the Church. A permanent closure wouldn't be all that complicated. It was residents on Saltoun, Kellet and Mervan Roads who wanted car access.

I don't see why you couldn't just close the bit immediately between Windrush Square and the garden. You could still get onto the roads in question from the North by going round the church first.
Click to expand...

To be honest that is what I thought was eventually proposed (Brixton road to Saltoun closure) but the counter argument was that pedestrians using the square were safer with constant streaming traffic.
 
Saw some terrible aggressive driving today, guy came out of a side road onto Brixton Rd at high speed without giving way and headed towards Brixton tailgating, bibbing like a mad bastard, trying to pass the car in front by any means necessary before swinging a right down crewdson road which must be all of 100 yards from where he first joined the A23. I see similar most days but what made this different was the fact it was zip car, considering these are primarily for short urban journeys why aren't they fitted with speed limiters, 30mph should be adequate for a built up environment.
 
Last edited:
sleaterkinney said:
Great news, Atlantic road and Railton road are horrendous to cycle down.

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Looked at the Twitter replies to the twitter account you posted. The twitter account you posted was from the Will Norman
@willnorman Mayor of London's Walking & Cycling Commissioner. So of course he's going to be excited about it.

This reply is to the point. When the last TFL / Council scheme was done- the Windrush square- there ended up being a lot of opposition to it. Due to it being top down with little account taken of residents views. The original plan was to close Effra road. Linking Windrush square and and St Matthews. Due to ham fisted "consultation" by Town Centre Supreme leader Council officer No Negrini, now big fish in Croydon, well organised residents got that ditched.

I'm concerned no one locally has been asked about this. I've seen what happens in LJ when things are attempted to be imposed from above.

 
cuppa tee said:
Saw some terrible aggressive driving today, guy came out of a side road onto Brixton Rd at high speed without giving way and headed towards Brixton tailgating, bibbing like a mad bastard, trying to pass the car in front by any means necessary before swinging a right down crewdson road which must be all of 100 yards from where he first joined the A23. I see similar most days but what made this different was the fact it was zip car, considering these are primarily for short urban journeys why aren't they fitted with speed limiters, 30mph should be adequate for a built up environment.
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Zipcars are also used, and frequently so, for 2-3 hour trips that include journeys on A-roads and motorways around London. A 30 mph speed limiter is not a viable option. Certainly not a 'blanket' one that doesn't change when the car is travelling on faster roads.

A smart speed limiter that adjusts automatically to the local speed limits would however work a treat. I am sure the techonology already exists to implement such devices, but I think we're at least a decade or two away before we see it being introduced.
 
Last week near my house a guy overtook somebody on a curve in a 20mph limit area outside a school.

I think the penalty if caught should be draconian. Thing is the chance of being caught is near to zero.
 
T & P said:
A smart speed limiter that adjusts automatically to the local speed limits would however work a treat. I am sure the techonology already exists to implement such devices, but I think we're at least a decade or two away before we see it being introduced.
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The problem as ever is not technological it is political. There is little political inclination to introduce anything that smacks of being a 'war on the motorist'. For example, a system that could be implemented easily would be average speed cameras in every 20mph zone with fines which paid for the cameras. But it won't happen, at least not till the culture changes or we have politicians with balls.
 
cuppa tee said:
considering these are primarily for short urban journeys why aren't they fitted with speed limiters, 30mph should be adequate for a built up environment.
Click to expand...

Anyone with half a brain can see that this would be a sensible easy solution, except our noble leaders.
 
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