Due warning, little rant coming up!!!!
About 18 moths ago council put speed cushions down my MIL's road, and every road around her for a good mile radius, eleven in a quarter of a mile in a one way street with no way of avoiding or straddling them to help the suspension. Going round to put her heating on ready for her return from the frozen North got to first hump and encountered what sounded like an explosion from the front offside as my coil spring snapped. Now, if I'd hit it at speed I could understand sustaining some damage but I couldn't have been doing 10mph.
Took car into my local garage only to be told that I'm the fifth person this week to have come into him with a broken coil spring from the same road! According to him he's now had ten cars in the last three weeks from the same area since the council resurfaced them a month ago.
Considering the council are crying about not having funds available for repairing potholes to say that I'm livid about them having funds to create damage to people's vehicles in this way is an understatement.
I'm off on Wednesday so I feel a measuring session with set squares, levels, straight edges, etc. coming on and if any of these new humps are out of spec I can feel a little battle coming on.......
Strangely enough the councillor who had the portfolio for transport and pushed through all these humps and whose husband is a director of the company that got the contract to provide them just happens to be up for re-election in my ward this May; could be an interesting conversation when she comes knocking on my door for my vote..............
Last edited by: Webmaster on Sun 9 Jan 11 at 22:57
|
>> the councillor who had the portfolio for transport and pushed through all these humps and whose husband is a director of the company that got the contract
Sounds like a story for Private Eye's 'Rotten Boroughs' column.
Last edited by: Webmaster on Sun 9 Jan 11 at 22:57
|
|
Many years ago my grandfather used to refer to our council as 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' as, according to him, we had 42 councillors and, on the law of averages, one of them must have been straight...........
|
|
Where abouts is that Cockle? If I recall correctly you're from the Leigh on Sea area (hence the name?). I don't live that way anymore but my mother does still.
Last edited by: Webmaster on Sun 9 Jan 11 at 22:57
|
I have cousin who lives in Old Broadway in Leigh but I've not been down since my last Aunt died in '96
Something I've often wondered which you may know. What happened to the ship, I think called the Lady Savile, which belonged to the yacht club ? Mini ocean liner.
In 96, another ship was in it's place and I can't find any mention or history of the Savile on the web. She feature strongly in my childhood walks along the sea front with me old mum !
Sorry for the drift !
Ted
|
>> Sorry for the drift !
>>
Should have moored it properly!
|
The Lady Savile was replaced by the Bembridge around about 1975-6 which in turn has now been replaced (2004) by HMS Wilton, the first plastic mine-sweeper which was nicknamed HMS Tupperware.
I know the Bembridge is now in Poland as the Head Office of a shipping company but I don't know what happened to the Lady Savile. I would presume she probably was broken up as she was in quite a state when she was replaced.....
|
I was (and my mum still is) a member of the yacht club in question - the Essex YC. There are pictures of the Lady Savile in the club premises still. A book about the club's premises was published to coincide with the club's centenary in 1990. I think my mum's got a copy. If I remember I'll have a look when I'm next there to see if it mentions anything about the fate of the ships after their stint as a yacht club.
When the current ship was put in place there was quite a debate among members as to whether the gun on the front should be removed. It's still in place.
|
|
Close enough, soupytwist, sunny Southend.
|
There is nothing positive to be said about speed bumps, humps or cushions. They damage cars, or at best cause accelerated wear to all suspension components; they cause extra noise, pollution and fuel use; they are dangerous to two-wheelers. There seems little evidence that they save lives.
In London they seem to be present in areas where the local authority has deemed it fit to assert a 20mph speed limit. A 20mph speed limit is no safer than a 30mph speed limit. It's just moronic anti-vehicle wonkery, beneficial only to road contractors working hand in hand with these rubbish councils. For them, a nice little earner. For everyone else, gratuitous damage to the roads, the environment, the economy and the quality of life.
HJ thought that the spread of speed bumps was leading well-heeled urban residents to buy big SUVs so that they could ignore the things. I don't know how true that is on any scale but it could easily be true in quite a lot of cases.
Unfortunately the only politicians and leading hacks willing to campaign against these ghastly things are reactionary wonks every bit as wonkish as the progressive twits who have embraced them. Our country has been turned into a modern nursery school full of half-witted PC jobsworths and smelly, sinister child molesters. We've had it.
A Happy New Year to all our readers.
|
>> There is nothing positive to be said about speed bumps, humps or cushions.
They do slow cars down which is surely the point of them... On our road the average was nearer 40 than 30 (typical 60s estate road with the school at one end and pub/shops the other), now its lower than 30 and its definitely feels safer...
That's not to say I agree with the things, I don't, but whilst people still feel that its acceptable to drive at unsafe speeds then they haven't a lot of choice... Fixed cameras work in the vicinity of the camera and mobile cameras work for a short time after they've moved on, but humps are the only thing that seems to work all the time...
The alternative would be some sort of black box restriction on every car to limit speed... Or some common sense from drivers?
|
The same happened to me in 2006, I got over £1400 worth of compensation in court for new front steering and suspension. I had a similar problem in June in a different borough, when a pothole after a speed-hump caused the sump and plastic under-tray to become damaged. At the 11th hour, I got £417 on friday as an out of court settlement.
If everybody did this, it would soon seem cheaper to maintain the roads and not bother installing sump-busters and suspension smashers.
|
|
They'll still install them... or come up with something even more draconian, until people slow down... I doubt a few claims will change things... after all the larger of your claims was for a pothole, not a hump...
|
...That's not to say I agree with the things, I don't...
Nor do I, but as hobby says there are a large number of residents who are grateful they have been put in their road.
|
I don't like speed hump but when drivers do 40 mph past our house and the neighbouring school - and it's a 30 mph limit
or pass pedestrians on a zebra crossing doing 40 mph - when the pedestrian is on the crossing...
you can understand why they are installed.
Lots of moronic drivers consistently breaking the law and a danger to others.
Last edited by: madf on Tue 11 Jan 11 at 08:32
|
Spring and car manufacturers carry out approval tests on springs consisting of millions of cycles with deflections (spring compressions) equal to or greater than that given by driving over a speed hump. If anyone has a spring break when driving over a speed hump then it's just the straw which broke the camel's back. It's likely that the real cause of the failure is that there was already the start of a crack at a surface defect resulting from corrosion. Cracks propagate across the spring wire diameter from surface defects, and are not instantaneous failures. Given time the spring would eventually have failed anyway during normal driving, without the car going over a speed hump.
At the last MOT on my car it was discovered that both rear springs were fractured at the same distance from the bottom (about a coil and a third), and I rarely go over speed humps. Those that I do go over, because I know where they are sited, I go over carefully at a moderate 10 to 15 mph. I'm blaming the failure of my springs on corrosion, resulting from age, not speed humps. I paid for the replacement of the springs and then forgot all about it. I viewed it as an inevitable cost of my motoring.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Tue 11 Jan 11 at 15:07
|
|
Being sad, I waxoyl my coils...:-)
|
>> Being sad, I waxoyl my coils...:-)
>>
Not sad, a good idea.
|
springs dont like cold weather
they never did
and speed bumps and cold weather make springs of any sort go ping if you are unlucky
or cornering stresses and undulations
its not so simples im afraid
|
I accept that it wasn't a simple mechanical failure caused by the one hump but a failure resulting from some form of metal fatigue brought on by continual flexing of the spring over time. However, the number of humps now on our roads, I believe, exert major forces on the suspension systems on a far more regular basis than previously and are therefore a major contributory factor to increased failures. This particular vehicle is the second youngest I have owned in 35 years of driving and amongst the lowest mileage; in the past I have suffered failed wishbones and ball joints, et al, but never a failed spring although, perhaps, it was my time for one.
Discussions with the guy that repaired my car seems to bear out that spring failures are now becoming far more regular. He reckons that incidents of broken springs have been increasing rapidly over the last five years or so to the stage where he is now averaging between four and five cases a week, a number which, he says, he saw in probably a year ten years ago. He puts it down to the poor state of repair of our roads and.... humps.
He now views spring failures as a nice steady work stream...........
Anyway, I'm off tomorrow and, in my bloody-minded mode, I'm still going to have a little measure just for the hell of it.
Last edited by: VxFan on Tue 11 Jan 11 at 19:01
|
>> I accept that it wasn't a simple mechanical failure caused by the one hump but
>> a failure resulting from some form of metal fatigue brought on by continual flexing of
>> the spring over time.
I doubt very much if it was metal fatigue brought on by continual flexing over time. As I said, both spring and car manufacturers carry out flexing durability tests for far more cycles than would be experienced in the normal lifetime on a car. Propagation of a crack starting from a defect on the surface resulting from corrosion is far more likely.
|
Speed humps - Manatee
