Schadenfreude or They Had It Coming

I would add that when the man was injured in the hit and run everyone was pleased that the perpetrator would be caught on CCTV as the estate was bristling with it. It turned out that it hadn't been working for a long time. We'd been paying a fair whack for it in our service charge but the landlords had failed to mention it. The upshot of that was a reduction in rent.

I sympathise. I live in a small village, the speed limit through the village is 20 mph - no-one sticks to it. I have been overtaken, at speed, over the speed bumps and also by someone driving to the right of a keep left bollard!

The estate is mainly pedestrian but there are no pavements for walkers ? So does everyone have to walk on the road ? Very poor planning I'd say. You should write to the council and ask for pavements to be put in.

sunseeker I sympathise right back. My mum lived in a village and a house on a bend coming out of the village got hit more than once and once a car landed in their garden. Thankfully the family's children were at school at the time or it could have been far worse.

It's 20 mph here - but you'd never know it as it's just not enforced in any way. People just ignore it so what was/is the point? I really wish we had sleeping policemen here.

It's nothing to do with the council, they don't own it. There's car parking for residents at the edge but most of the centre is pedestrian. Obviously there has to be access for emergency services though.

Stella1949
The primary school has access on an ordinary road but at the back by the playground there's a gate that most people use to get in from that side. It's more that cars drive on the pedestrian area, not that we walk on the road. It's all paviors (pavers?) in the central bit. The sleeping policemen were put in after the man was knocked over in the hit and run.

There used to be big problems with non-resident commuters using it as a free car park (so handy for the tube!) so the landlords installed rising bollards and issued a fob for residents on production of their car insurance documents etc. This led to foreseeable problems (we did warn them!). Cabs & hospital transport etc couldn't get in and out and neither could the emergency services. Obviously the latter was a major problem and people's lives were put at risk.

Anyway, in the end it was abandoned as dangerous and unworkable and particularly discriminatory towards elderly and disabled people (we warned them about that too).

....and it's just happened again...the manifold & exhaust didn't come off completely, it's just about hanging on & going scrapey-scrapey-clang-clang-clunkety-clunk but there are kids out playing now the rain has stopped. The driver is getting a very well-deserved scary sweary tirade from a shouting mum as he attempts to drive away.
I won't type what she's shouting but I daresay you can imagine.

How very satisfying, LondonGranny!

A village near here was plagued with people driving through too fast, and so they had a campaign of taking turns to wear high-vis vests and point a hairdryer at the cars. Nothing illegal, and the police were quite happy about it, and it certainly slowed the idiots down.

I suspect that petrol-head forums have identified it is a handy cut-through to shave three minutes off their journeys, especially as it's not on google street view. We are literally a grey area on street view. I hope that the news gets through that unless the 5mph speed limit is kept to, it could be an extremely expensive short-cut.

The news certainly got through that it was no longer handy free parking. Nearly £500 to get unclamped. Residents parking permits are linked to the individual car registration number and the address so they can't be rented out for profit either. I think they're £60 a year but I've never owned a car so I don't know.

I try hard to stick to speed limits to respect the local residents, their children, older people etc. I’m fed up of other drivers sitting on my tail and I feel very intimidated. I wish more low speed limit areas had sleeping policemen. It certainly helps to slow things down.

I’d have laughed my socks off.

ayse

I know cyclists with fore & aft head-cams can report drivers for that (and get successful convictions). Obviously tail-gating puts cyclists at a far greater risk of serious injury or worse but if I drove a car I'd be tempted to get a dash cam and rear-shelf cam.

Traffic legislation can vary from area to area though eg a car parked or partially parked on a pavement gets a summons in London but few other places, so I can't say for sure.

Just to say that sleeping policemen vary considerably. Some shallow ones can be driven over fairly fast. What you need are those high steep ones where you have to be very careful. I have driven over some which scrape the car no matter how slowly you're going. They are lethal.

They're not the sausage of tarmac type, it's a ramp, quite a wide flat bit and a ramp the other side. I know vehicles like fire engines don't like the sausage sort because they're more likely to damage the axles I think. It's only if they're taken at speed that the scraping happens.

They're made out of some sort of dark glazed brick-type thing with contrasting stripey ramps . The rest of the pedestrian area is like cotswold stone coloured herringbone pavers. You can really see the contrast and there are 5mph signs all over the place so it's not like they're not really obvious. The ramps were sort of fixed on top I think...I don't remember the pavers being lifted to lay the sleeping policemen on top although I wasn't really paying close attention at the time.

Also I know the sausage sort are often a pain for pushchairs and wheelchairs so the design may also be taking that into account as well as fire engines.

Dash cams sound like a good idea. I agree that some sleeping policemen are not well designed and are unsafe even for careful car drivers.

We have a road just outside that is very wide and used as a race track by some speeding drivers. I wish we could have some traffic calming to prevent this dangerous practice in a residential area.

I've just had look online and can't see anything quite the same although all the photos were of roads, not pedestrian areas. This is the closest except it's not brick and seems lower.

My street has a 20mph limit, as do most of the residential ones around me. It is rarely observed, but some people do stick to it, so it is difficult to cross the road safely, as you can't assume the speed of the drivers. There are large, nearly flat 'bumps', but they are next to useless.

Oh that must have been so satisfying to witness LondonGranny - and twice!

We really could do with some effective speed control in our road - it's a 30mph limit, but we regularly see cars flying through at 50 or 60. It's a busy main road with children walking to and from senior school.

I for one would definitely be out there pointing and chortling if someone came a cropper on a speed bump

Is it a private estate where a residents company is in charge of the roads? My parents lived on an estate like that and the estate company installed a couple of zapper controlled gates that made rat-running impossible. I think of 6 roads going in and out of the state, only 2 gates were installed, residents had zappers, rat-runners had to turn round and go back the way they came.

LondonGranny very satisfying to watch, I wonder which HA your landlord is. Well done for raising the issues with the rising bollards.
Some Housing Associations in London are building “ car free” blocks, where shared ownership buyers have to agree not to have a car.

It’s a condition of planning permission. Same issues, what if a resident has an operation or becomes disabled? Or has an ill or disabled relative come to live with them? Or marries a disabled person?

In France they are very good at traffic calming and do it in a way that is visually attractive.

On quite narrow straight roads they put a high kerb in the middle of the road between the lanes, on both sides with a narrow flower bed in between. The road is wide enough to take all cars and emergency vehicles, but it gives the impression that the lane is narrower than it actually is. They also put in parking bays orflower beds on alternate sides of the road so that cars vehicles have to wind round them.

We were in Peterborough this weekend, near the showground and we noticed that the perimeter road between the show ground and a new estate, had a succession of gentle curves with a big painted and slightly raise roundabout at every junction with an estate road, again it slowed traffic.

I hate all speed humps. DH has damage to the spinal vertibrae in his neck and any speed hump, no matter how slowly it is taken causes him pain and I am sure there are many others with skeletal problems who are similarly affected.