In a week when we have seen two more significant accidents on Thamesdown Drive, remarkably, yet thankfully, without life-changing injuries, it might be worth considering again the safety position on this urban highway.

The first accident involved a mini, which appeared to cross the central reservation and slam into a bridge barrier, demolishing a car on the opposite carriageway. The second accident a little way down towards West Swindon involved a car actually turning over onto its roof!

For the last 12 years, since I moved to North Swindon, I have been unsuccessfully campaigning for safety measures on this road. The road is unique in the borough, having 11 complex light-controlled junctions over its 4km length. We are consistently told that based on the vehicle headcount, this is a very safe road. In other words because so many cars use it, statistically two or three damage accidents every month, however serious, is well within expectations.

In my opinion this is a short-sighted and potentially dangerous approach. I say this because those who know the road will be aware there are pedestrian refuges all the way down, adjacent to the traffic lights, and very often families with children will be occupying this central reservation.

So far, in its history, we have had three or four fatalities and none of them yet featured one of these vehicles, carelessly driven, spinning out of control and ploughing into a family that may be waiting to cross.

The fact this has not happened is purely luck as any one of the regular impact accidents could end up across a central reservation crowded with young children crossing from the schools either side.

Six years ago I proposed a scheme, modest in cost, to install modern Truvelo speed and red light cameras in changing positions over the eleven sets of lights. The scheme I proposed used three live cameras only which rotated over different light sets, supported by 11 dummy boxes, one on each lighting set.

Instead of trying to beat the lights, which is routine behaviour today, (red means put your foot down up here not stop) the whole pace of driving would calm down and the whole experience of driving on Thamesdown Drive, as well as safety, would be vastly improved.

I won’t dwell here unduly on the weaving boy racers and the motorbikes, who would each become less aggressive but those regular users will also appreciate this side benefit.

I held meetings with the then police commissioner Angus MacPherson who agreed with me that the road needed proper policing, David Renard, within whose Haydon Wick constituency large parts of the highway sits, and who frankly wasn't interested and Justin Tomlinson who did express an initial interest which he soon lost.

The borough council at the time (in the guise of Dale Heenan) allotted £140,000 for cameras to improve safety, but sadly this ended up as three rather pathetic CCTV cameras, which I understand this week are to be switched off or certainly no longer monitored, as a cost cutting exercise (entirely passive, they were of course quite useless)

The police response is to place an officer with a radar gun close to the Oakhurst junction for a couple of hours every three to four months?

The argument against the cameras consistently put forward, is that the police and the borough council would undertake maintenance and enforcement but the fine income would go to the Ministry of Justice.

I asked Justin Tomlinson to raise this issue, around five years ago, I have the minute somewhere, on the basis that just as supplements to general criminality fines are classed as a victim surcharge, so those guilty of moving traffic offences in camera partnerships could have a road safety surcharges levied in exactly the same way.

This would be ring-fenced by the MOJ and be returned to the authority operating the camera partnerships, a fair and simple compromise.

The Justice Secretary at the time was the appalling Chris Grayling so nothing was ever done and Justin seemed to quickly lose interest.

Will anything ever change until a really serious accident happens? I imagine not but that's not a reason for keeping quiet!

John Stooke

Haydon End

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