Monday November 29, 2004

Motorway advertising, children walking to school and 4X4's

Last weekend we drove up to see my father in law. Two hundred miles of motorway driving. Amazingly on both journeys we did it in about three hours, only breaking the national speed limit by ten miles per hour. But as we drove up we saw an ever increasing number of 'mobile' advertising in fields along the motorway.

If I remember rightly advertising is not strictly allowed by the sides of motorways. But there is nothing to stop people parking a lorry trailer in a field which then happens to carry advertising material. There also seems to be an ever increasing number of really mobile advertisments on trailers pulled along the road by vans. Our local Sainsburys store had an extension and a refit recently. The store kindly parked one of the mobile trailers and its towing van on the concrete apron of a busy roundabout in Camberley. This had the effect of blocking the view of drivers approaching the roundabout, in my opinion a safety hazard. If I had the presence of mind I should have reported it to the police.

The ultimate advertising by the side of the road for me must be the Fort Dunlop building. This building is being redeveloped and has an outer covering with really big adverts on it. This is seen by 7 million vehicles a month which trundle along the M6.

How does this relate the kids walking to school ? Well last Friday I came off the M3 early as there was clearly some kind of accident causing snails pace traffic flows. I went along the A30 which runs in parallel to the M3. This of course was not much better. I passed a place where kids were walking along clearly school had closed for the day. I was impressed by the number of kids walking along the road. I am sure many were also in cars but it was good to see so many doing what I did walking to/from school.

We are not parents so I do not know how hard it is to allow your kids to walk to school, fearing abduction and other scary things that you hear of nowadays. But I think the statistics show that if there is a risk to children walking to/from school it is the motorist who is the main culprit.

There are plans to make the effect of such accidents less harmful on pedestrians but these may be scuppered by a voluntary code instead of law. One of the issues is that many cars we have on our roads nowadays like 4X4's some sports cars would not be able to be made in their current guise. Having developed these markets so successfully the car manufacturers clearly do not want to loose their nest egg. I think in London one if four car sales are 4X4's or is at least higher than anywhere else in the UK.

Which is crazy of course given the lack of need for such vehicles in London unless you want to drive over Clapham common instead of around it as most people do..