After returning from holiday I drove along one of my regular roads and found that a whole series of wooden posts have been set about 2 meters back from the road edge in the grass verge, this set of posts stretches for some distance going down a hill (both sides) with grass common on each side.
I can only imagine that this has been done to try and stop drivers parking on the grass which as far as I know has never been an issue before (maybe when the airshow used to be on).
My main concern is that they are b***** dangerous! They are about knee high, and to me, would cause catastrophic damage to motorbike or cycle riders if they slid off or were knocked off along the road (40 limit).
I thought the idea was to try and remove these types of potential lethal roadside 'jewellery'?
They look as if they have been professionally installed but I can't believe the council have agreed to them, does a parish council have that power?
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Councils can be idiots when it comes to road planning.
There is a triangle of grass near me which has been used as an escape route when coming off a narrow bridge. The council did the same and it is now cordoned off with small wooden posts, ostensibly to stop parking, but a biker hitting them at speed will be severely injured by them.
Worse though it a local dual carriageway that has been re-converted to single lane because it was dangerous. To do this, the council installed metal posts on a pivot bearing designed so that they collapse if hit.
The posts are in the middle of lane 2 and are painted black! The road is not lit and the pivots no longer work because they have rusted in place.
A car driver, not knowing the area and seeing the second lane late at night passed a lorry and the car was seriously damaged by the posts.
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Seems as though they've been erected to prevent vehicular access to the common land on sides. Similar posts prevent access from our Community Centre's car park onto playing fields. Issue there wasn't parking but yoofs in cars performing donuts etc on the grass.
Do you know who owns or manages the land?
If it's managed by Parish Council then quite likely they have power to install the posts on 'their' land. You need to find out who erected them starting with the Parish Council's clerk. Even if they were done by District or County it's likely PC will have been consulted. Once the responsible party has been identified then you can quiz them about risk assessment.
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They will probably solve the problem by installing Armco just in front of them. Will look pretty good on a rural village green.
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Our Borough council has quite a good online reporting system for road queries (potholes, broken signs etc.), I might try there first and let them do the work, the two areas of common are either side of the main road which is prioritised by the council to maintain as it's a bus route.
If they come back saying it's the PC then I'll go there..
On a side note the posts will be a pig to cut around when the grass grows, will give someone a nice long job with strimmer!
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Two metres is a fair way back from the carriageway. In that zone on some roads you will find lamp posts, street signs, traffic lights trees, garden walls and fences and houses.
A wooden fence doesn't seem to add much more in the way of hazard.
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>> A wooden fence doesn't seem to add much more in the way of hazard.
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Try hitting a length of wood end on.
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Try hitting a brick wall. The point I was making that a large number of roads have have objects you would not which to collide with within two meters of the carriageway. A wooden fence installed at a similar distance doesn't seem any more of a hazard than any of them.
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For me the point is that these have only just been added to a previously open 'runoff' onto a common, these are thick wooden posts driven into the ground (closely spaced), in the modern age of road safety I'm just surprised that they were given the go-ahead.
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Our council use huge boulders to keep caravans off grass areas and substantial steel height restrictors on certain vunerable car parks.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 30 Jul 17 at 08:39
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>> Our council use huge boulders to keep caravans off grass areas
Risk of invasion by travellers is another possible rationale for the posts. If it's happened in other similar places locally it could be seen as dereliction of duty for the council in RD's locale to do nothing.
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It depends whether the land is "highway" or not.
If highway, such as a verge alongside the hard carriageway, then the highway authority has a duty to manage it in a way that is best conducive to the passage of traffic. If it is private land then the owner can do anything he likes, subject to planning regulations and possibly traffic splay visibility.
It is the driver's responsibility to use adequate illumination and to drive at a speed appropriate to his visibility.
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I remember a chap a few years ago buying several large boulders, painting them white and placing them on the grass verge outside his house. They were there for no more than a week or so before they mysteriously disappeared.
I see a number of folk around my own area are using white painted wooden battens in the same way, and I wonder how they would stand legally if a passer-by was to injure themselves
by falling face first on one of them.
I would rather put up with the grass verge in front of my house being chewed up occasionally.
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Grass verges between pavement and road are usually the council's land. Ours are cut by the council with big ride on mowers and I doubt if they would be too pleased about obstructions. The verges near the hospital which were damaged by parking had signs installed threatening recovery action for damage against vehicle owners, that and double yellow lines alongside the verge stopped people putting two wheels on the verge.
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>>Ours are cut by the council
The grass verges that I mentioned above are also the responsibility of the council. However, most of my neighbours mow the one directly in front of their own property, leaving the council
to do the rest.
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As much have people have said that a spike in the middle of a steering wheel would help concentration when driving, the perhaps roadside obstacles will have a similar effect on motorcyclists.
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If drystone walls don't work I doubt if anything else will.
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S'fair point, but Darwinism and all that....
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>> As much have people have said that a spike in the middle of a steering
>> wheel would help concentration when driving, the perhaps roadside obstacles will have a similar effect
>> on motorcyclists.
>>
From a perspective of forty years of experience (which includes a Thames Valley Police training course) it ain't the motorcyclists who lack concentration.
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Grass is useless as a run off area. You just hit what ever is beyond the grass.
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Lethal roadside obstructions - zippy
