Flat Out

...which is something you can't be when there are sleeping policemen around.

And when I say "sleeping policemen" - I mean speed humps and speed bumps.

This is the type I encounter the most:

 

Having a decent sized car, I can generally straddle the bump with minimal disturbance.

So I don't tend to slow down so I don't cause extra pollution.

Aren't I a good citizen?

The BBC are carrying this story today about how Councils are being urged to redesign their humps and bumps to reduce the extra pollution they are causing.

Nobody is actually saying how though.  Surely the pollution problem is due to people driving slower then quicker then slower again?

But isn't the whole point of the speed bumps to get people driving slower?

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said "smooth" driving would cut air pollution, linked to 25,000 deaths a year in England. 507 pedestrians or cyclists were killed in the whole of Britain's roads in 2013 so the removal of speed bumps must be a no-brainer!  Amazing what you can prove with statistics.

I'd rather that the Councils spent their speed bump budgets on fixing pot-holes - that way, money would be going on preventing further damage to car suspension rather than causing it.

Meanwhile, I don't believe that this is an undoctored picture:

Holey Unacceptable

I was on the Mail Motoring site yesterday and found this picture which I though would be worth a mention in my Blog:

It is from this story about an Octogenarian woman in Bel Air who flipped her Honda then posed with her husband for some selfies.  The picture is even more amusing thanks to the gentleman's belt height and a woman in the background dressed as a flame.  Nobody was hurt and they are obviously a game couple.

 

So I went back to the Mail today with a bit more time on my hands to do something on that story when I found an even funnier one.

 

This is it.

 

It is about this man, Robert Goodwill MP, seen here posing with a pot-hole app. 

And potholes are relevant to the story.

 

For he has come out and said on LBC Radio (and he's even got it on his own Website) that:

 

More potholes are appearing on Britain’s roads because the recovering economy means more people have jobs and are driving to work

 

and

 

Roads are also suffering more “wear and tear” because people were also buying more things and so more “goods are travelling around the country"

 

He also suggested that more potholes would appear as the economy recovers and more vehicles take to the road.

 

Ludicrous.  He wants us to believe that the poor state of the roads is down to the Government's economic successes.

 

We are getting more pot-holes as a result of the wettest Winter in years combined with poor maintenance and cheaper options used when building the roads in the first place.  Government cutbacks to local council funding has just exacerbated the situation.

 

Even the right-wing Mail readers attack the Government in the comments section of that story.

 

Mr Goodwill is, incidentally not "The Roads Minister" as The Mail call him, he is a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Transport.

 

The Oldham Evening Chronicle in the old pot-hole story that I nicked that picture from also call him "The Roads Minister" - maybe that is what he tells journalists that he is.

 

One thing he definitely did tell the Oldham journalist is “Historically, we have underfunded road maintenance.”

 

Indeed.