Not long after I moved us into our new home, while hubby was still in NZ, I was rudely awoken one night by the dreadful sound of metal scraping along the road. As it happened, I had picked up a bug from somewhere and had a temperature and fever that particular night, so was more than a little delirious and had no idea what this dreadful noise was. Over the next few hours and into the next day, I pieced it together.
Outside our house is a 90 degree corner, the intersection of two roads. This corner is signposted 40 kmph, for very good reason. It seems, that night, that someone had attempted to take the corner far too fast, rolled their car, and the noise I heard must have been the car skidding across the road on its’ roof. I do remember, sometime after the nose stopped, waking to see flashing lights outside. This must have been the tow truck. Apart from the scraping metal sound, and some very annoying car door slamming (6 slams??), the rest of it happened within a very surreal silence – no sirens, no voices, no noise of ambulance, traffic police or anything else.
If it wasn’t for the physical evidence the next day, I could be forgiven for thinking I had dreamed it in my feverish state.
On his walk the other morning, hubby stopped to chat to a neighbor and found out a bit more about the location we have moved into. We knew this was a TMR project area, but weren’t sure how or when TMR would commence any projects that might affect us. Seems there may be more than one on the books. The corner which caused the speeding driver so much grief during my night of fever is to be cut back.
Now, we are on the outside of the angle. This little feat of traffic engineering involves demolishing two perfectly good houses on the inside of the angle. One is an immaculately kept property, obviously the pride and joy of the occupiers. The other looks fairly shabby, but that is probably not a reflection on the occupiers but may simply be a case of ‘why bother if it’s going to be knocked down?’. I understand.
To my simple mind it seems absolutely criminal to knock over two perfectly good houses simply to straighten a corner that was obviously not a problem when it was designed and built. Nowadays, though, the trend is to identify “black spots”, “killer roads”, those parts of a road where there is a high incidence of accidents, and remedy “the road”.
No question about remedying the driving behavior of the people who have the accidents.
If the person who had the accident outside my bedroom window had not been speeding, that accident would not have happened. Fact.
I did some net surfing and happened across the Tasmanian “Design Standards for Urban Infrastructure, Road Design” which is, no doubt, similar to road design here in Queensland. According to that document, “Physics of vehicular movement and the vehicle speed dictate selection of appropriate elements of horizontal alignment. These elements should also be aesthetically pleasing and result in cost effective solutions.”
Okay, so it’s not intended for lay people such as me, but it still sounds like overly worded gobblydegook. If I drive around many of the new estates which have sprung up over South East Queensland, such as at Springfield Lakes, I must navigate roundabouts, speed traps and speed humps, all designed to reduce the speed of traffic flow through a built up urban area.
So what’s to stop TMR installing a speed hump and speed trap on the offending corner outside our place? Surely that would be a much more “cost effective” solution rather than knocking down two perfectly good houses simply to cater for hoons who will only go faster if the road is straighter.
That, to my simple mind, is elementary. Maybe it’s just too elementary for the roading engineers at TMR.
I guess we shall have to wait and see.
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