OT - Traffic Lights

[Nightjar]

There was never a requirement for them to be placed at specific minimum spacings. There were spacings recommended in the guidance documents, but the regulations only required them to be placed 'at regular intervals' and that was later amended to remove the word 'regular'. The latest regulations removes any compulsion to provide a repeater sign, leaving it up to the local authority to decide, again subject to guidance, how many are appropriate and where.

The point is that is no longer a requirement. A single sign is now sufficient in either direction and they could be back to back on a single post. However, I wonder whether this is really to avoid a speeding prosecution for speeding failing if one of two signs is missing or obscured.

[DJC]

A STOP sign, you might know that nothing is coming, that nothing ever comes that way? but the idea of a stop sign is that you stop and check anyway. The same principle for those lights. Discourages the sort of maniac who sees a green light at the end of the road and just has to race up in case it changes.

[Robin]

It's also going to be a bit sad for anyone who receives points or worse for failing to see a single sign because it was obscured by another vehicle when they were overtaking or being overtaken. (I don't subscribe to "hard cases make bad law".)

[Nightjar]

I doubt that many authorities will choose only to put up one sign. In all the cases I know where speed limit signs have been changed since the new regulations came into force, they have put up two signs. However, under the new regulations, either one of those an be missing or obscured without making the limit improperly signed, hence negating any prosecution for speeding.

[Jethro_uk]

And as long as nonsense like this can happen, you can take it as read my scepticism about *anthropogenic* climate change is unshakeable.

Also the admission that pedestrian lights are deliberately phased with traffic lights to slow (not speed) cars through junctions. As private motoring cannot be encouraged as a matter of policy ...

[Jethro_uk]

Was like that in the 80s. Could go from Hounslow to Chiswick at 38 mph without stopping. Needed some nerve though to head towards a red light like that - but they always changed.

I could get from Hounslow to South Kensington in 25 minutes, leaving at

6pm on a weekday.

I believe current thinking is against measures which might encourage private motoring. Hence the proliferation of junctions where the light phasing deliberatly slows journeys. Exhibit A and B are the "bypasses" on the A38 in Selly Oak and NOrthfield which take lomger than the parallel "old" route.