Danger to people and animals. No deterrent at all to slow traffic down to the legal limit of 30 miles per hour. Ive lived there over 30 years, and Ive never ever seen a traffic speed enforcement vehicle there. Its needs a permanent calming solution in place before it results in a fatality, other than pets which there have been many.
Started by: keith silkstone
This ePetition ran from 18/12/2024 to 30/01/2025 and has now finished.
One person signed this ePetition.
This petition reached 1 signature and was referred to the
Highways Hub - Place who responded with an
email to Mr Silkstone on 5 February 2025:
Dear Mr Silkstone
I refer to the e-petition regarding, safety concerns on Over
Lane, Belper.
For information the County Council has adopted a speed management
protocol (SMP). The purpose of the SMP is to provide a consistent,
approach to the management of speed and concerns about speeding
vehicles on the roads of Derbyshire. Please see the attached link
for information:
https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/site-elements/documents/pdf/transport-roads/highways-infrastructure-asset-management/speed-management-protocol-technical-annex.pdf
In more general terms in relation to road safety, it is of
course acknowledged that we, as all highway authorities, have a
statutory duty of care to keep our roads as safe as practicable
within the context of available finances.
Whilst we strive to achieve this aim, deciding where to intervene
with traffic management measures is essentially a balancing act in
achieving the best for the tax paying public and fulfilling our
statutory safety duties and responsibilities.
The general methodology used by all highway authorities for safety interventions is to treat those sites with the greatest safety problems (i.e. evidenced injury accidents) first. This is because finances are not enough to always take a more proactive approach. As such, we address this dilemma by focusing our limited resources to where they have the greatest impact.
We wholly understand that our residents have safety concerns, but the reality is that it would be remiss of us not to firstly treat the problems where we have the most collisions and casualties in the first instance. Our residents will always be passionate about where they live, but the role of the council is to ensure these limited funds are spent wisely to give the best returns in order to maintain an overall safer road network.
In terms of evidenced road safety, we review locations by looking at the police database of recorded injury accidents, and commonly review the previous three-year period as a benchmark. I can confirm 3 slight injury collisions have been recorded over the last 3 years (01/09/2021 – 31/08/2024) on Over Lane, Belper. 2 collisions involved a vehicle colliding with a parked car and the remaining collision involved a dog running out into the road. This last type of collision isn’t treatable with Traffic Management measures.
Unfortunately, this location does not meet the criteria detailed in the Speed Management protocol for the introduction of Traffic management measures, such as, a vehicle activated sign or traffic calming measures. Using speed data from the Agilysis Speed compliance tool, the speed of vehicles is in the region of the posted 30mph Speed Limit, with the average speeds all day (Everyday) of 24.6mph, and the 85th speeds all day (everyday) of 33.3mph.
It is recommended that speeding concerns are directed to the Police as they are responsible for the enforcement of speed limits. You may find the following link of use: https://www.crestderbyshire.org/speedingconcerns.html
Whilst I appreciate that you may be disappointed with this response, I trust that the above information will enable you to provide a suitable explanation regarding the Council’s position about this enquiry.
Yours sincerely
Mr L Wright
Project Engineer, Traffic and Safety