Waltham Forest Council have been bribed by Transport For London to induce vehicular atherosclerosis in the transport system in East London and they are now targetting my area. My suspicions are that by sealing off side streets, adding 20 MPH zones and putting speedbumps everywhere they force traffic onto the main roads and congest them. All this is done in the name of stopping speeding and making the place safer. It’s a regular speedtrack.

On my road we get the odd loony who does 60 or 70 at 2.00 am in the morning – this where the road is barely wide enough for two cars to pass without exchanging fluids. One bloke lost control and clipped 4 cars before crunching to a halt. That was about 4 years ago. The main speeding that happens round here is on the main road at 5.00 am in the morning. I see cars doing 50-60 MPH. It won’t stop that happening.

Then of course TFL will claim (this is my belief- no proof) that because traffic is slow on the main road the area (East London) needs a Congestion Charge – you can see this was decided a few years ago.

So what good do speedbumps do? None except force cars to slow down. They are however very bad for the environment with increased noise and air pollution and vibration shock. See for yourself. Barnet reduced accidents in the year after it removed their speedbumps.

The fact is that speedbumps appear to cost lives- up to 500 in London. I quote this from Paul Smith, a retired engineer who campaigns to improve road safety on his website SafeSpeed. It’s a Word Doc.

“In London in 1981, 274 pedestrians died in road accidents. By 2002 the annual toll had dropped to 107. This covers the main period of hump introduction in the London area. Even if we assume that the entire benefit of 167 lives was due to road humps (and clearly there are other factors) the 500 lives lost annually in ambulances claimed by the London Ambulance Service is three times greater. “

So speedbumps do not save lives- they cost them by slowing down emergency services by approximately 10 seconds per bump. Those seconds make all the difference.

So from now on, as far as I am concerned TFL are to be called “Congest for London”.