11:10am Thursday 9th July 2009
I have recently moved back to the Weymouth area, and have been amazed by the number of injuries (and worse) on our roads in such a short time.
Reading the reports and the letters pages, we see concerns raised about the poor standards of driving, care not being taken and the foolish among us that think it is clever to speed and overtake past cars turning right etc.
However, also since being back in Weymouth, I have been equally amazed at the lack of visible police patrols enforcing violations of the most basic traffic law.
On the daily commute to Dorchester, our progress is regularly hampered by cars parked illegally, lorries parked on pavements causing damage and obstruction, driving while on the mobile phone - the list goes on and on.
It occurred to me that this is because we know we can get away with breaking the law with little chance of being taken to task by a traffic policeman.
Whether it is lack of funding, over-reliance on enforcement cameras or poorly assigned resources, the effects on our standards of driving is in evidence on every journey.
I do not know if the lack of traffic management is the result of poor policing in the county or poor policy-making by the Government and Council but something does need to change because we drivers seem to need that threat of prosecution.
How many of us are tempted to answer the phone when we shouldn’t, speed an extra 10 miles an hour or ‘forget’ our seat-belt?
When I left Weymouth 20 years ago, my last talk with a traffic policewoman was a warning that parking on the pavement broke laws of parking on a double yellow line, driving on the pavement, parking on the pavement and causing an obstruction.
Now we are regularly faced with a juggernaut flouting those laws with impunity, blocking rush hour traffic, causing miles of tail-back.
If such a low-level transgression is being ignored, how much is the lack of visible law enforcement on the county’s roads contributing to the spate of deaths we are seeing?
I suggest a large part and until racers, phone-users, laptop readers and sat-nav fiddlers start seeing the police on the roads again and the laws enforced to a much greater degree, we will continue to see the number of injuries rise and rise.
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