Lgw CarPark X Speedbumps

[Masai]

The BAA have gone a bit OTT with the new speed bumps down to Car Park X. If you take them at the placarded speed of 30 you will certainly break your suspension and probably your neck aswell !

[LTNman]

Luton use extra large potholes to control traffic speed :mad:

[hapzim]

Potholes :- so do Manchester Airport, especially on the taxiways.:\

[pilotwolf]

Placarded speeds are LIMITS not targets!

Try slowing down? :)

[eurostar builder]

I like the sign that says...

"when congested please use car parks"

Yeah right and are BAA going to pay for the car park fee to drop your passengers off...

Think not

[tech...again]

....quite literally a pain in the ar$e.....

:mad:

[jmccrew]

Bit OTT ...... counted them 24 in total ........ when 12 would have been ok seems that everyone drives down the white line anyway to avoid them ...

[kooyheier]

Yeah i found it's a real bastard, cos when your a bit late to get in, you will have to drive over the "centerline" to avaid those nasty humps, so than it's a case of hoping you won't "bump" into anyone if you do!!!!!!
Another brilliant idea of the marvelous BAA!!!

cheerio

[expedite_climb]

Who do I send the claim to for my new suspension ?

It took me exactly 4 minutes today to drive the 1.2 miles from the X exit to the last bump. Thats 18 mph, and was acheived by driving down the centreline on a few of them ! No way near the 30 mph limit, which, IMHO, is a daft, low limit anyway, the perimeter road is much busier and is a 40 !

[pilotwolf]

I d be worried if driving over them at a sensible speed damgaged the suspension of any properly maintained car ;)

Would be interesting to know who is actually responsible for the setting of the speed limit as the road are subject to normal road traffic act rules and regulations. So BAA or local council?

Also with regards to the Perimeter Road having a 40 mph limit I have attended several serious accidents along it in th epast couple of years and all but one involved a vehicle waiting to turn - maybe thats the logic behind it?

And that little stretch of road with the humps has had 2 FATAL accidents in a similar time span - both air/cabin crew I believe :(

PW

[expedite_climb]

PW - although I dont know the details of those fatal accidents, I'd wager they had something to do with the horrendous unlit bollards that used to be there.

As for suspension - I'm not talking about short time damage to suspension, but surely driving over 48 nasty bumps EVERY day I go to work cant do it any good ?

As for who sets the rules - BAA I think. The speed limits are not government ones but black boards.

[pilotwolf]

E_C.. obviously here isn't the appropiate place to discuss details of the accidents - they and their causes were reported on excessive, (correctly and incorrectly as is the press way), in the local papers at the time. The last one which involved a cabin crew member was, I believe, was what prompted the installation of the islands and 'bollards'.

I may be wrong but I thought the signs were as per the statutory design for speed limits?

As for the humps - I understood they were going to be the table type humps rather than what 'we' got... but how many people have to traverse these things in and out of their 'estates' every day?

Not saying they are the right solution or the wrong one but they are better than speed cameras or another death surely?

Alternatively buy a 4x4 - ours has a wheel base that just fits over them :)

PW

[BOAC]

I understand there are 27 in each direction (a touch of 'overkill'?). The Airlinks busses are now running about 5 minutes late on all journeys and their drivers reckon they cross about 1500 of them in a day! I suspect there will be a few 'industrial injury claims' forthcoming. Apparently their busses miss the humps with the front wheels but the double set at the back catches them, not to mention the cars in the middle of the road.

Speed there does most definitely need to be controlled but both attempts by BAA seem to be misguided? Why not speedcams? Should make a fortune. :D

[Captain Airclues]

If there were to be an accident at the far end of the road, the delay to the ambulance caused by these humps could be critical. On the return journey it would be difficult to treat the patient while passing over 27 humps

Airclues

[pilotwolf]

Actually they are narrow enough for both ambulances and the buses to pass over without touching them....

So maybe the bus delays due to having to slow to avoid those cars driving down the middle of the road?! ;)

[expedite_climb]

Pilotwolf,

Sorry, but in the case of the airlinks coaches, you are wrong. And they look like fairly standard busses to me !

It seems when sizing up the speedbumps someone forgot that there are 4 wheels at the back as opposed to the 2 at the front.

I've made 6 bus journeys over the bumps this week, and on every one, the front of the bus goes over the bump without touching it, but the back bumps over it. As already BOAC stated above.

[pilotwolf]

E_C etc

..strange as I thought some research would have gone into the design for the width for this very reason. Or are the buses catching the one on the other side?

Don't use the buses so was basing comments on watching the one in front last week. And our 4x4's tyre just brush the bottom of the slopping part.

Will go and watch the buses next week when I back at work... make a change from plane spotting :)

PW

[mcdhu]

Expedite_climb is right - the bus's front wheels just straddle the speedbumps, but the rear inboard wheels catch them. Sit in the centre of the bus to avoid being thrown up and down.

Another example of ill thought out 'traffic calming' measures. It's bad enough being consigned to Camp X-Ray without the insult of these wretched devices which seem either to slow the traffic to 15mph or, when it's fairly quiet, to throw all the traffic into the middle of the road.

How long until the next RTA? Think again BAA - I assume our Airlines are paying for all this!!

Cheers
mcdhu

[buffy747]

Whose BRIGHT idea was it to put ALL those speed bumps on that road !
Are they ALL necessary ?
Its actually more dangerous now as everybody is playing 'chicken' to get through the middle of them , and as for my poor suspension and exhaust, whose going to foot the bill !!?


:mad: :* :mad:

[Gauntlet]

To answer your questions Buffers,

Whose BRIGHT idea was it to put ALL those speed bumps on that road !
BAA


Are they ALL necessary ?
Well we all know what the BAA do must be right and adhered to so they must be necessary.

Speed restrictions are necessary on that stretch of road but I agree with you that the speed bumps are a menace, the traffic islands I thougth were fine. Anyway it is another way of BAA wasting money, no doubt they will have another bright idea for the road in a years time. Oh well, carry on gatwick!

[Captain Airclues]

pilotwolf

Actually they are narrow enough for both ambulances and buses to pass over without touching them

So is the assumption that buses don't have accidents so they don't need slowing down but cars do?
In my local town a pedestrian was killed by a heavy lorry. The council's reaction was to install square speed bumps. Now cars have to negociate these humps at slow speed both day and night. However the heavy lorries, which can straddle the humps, speed along with oblivion. Whenever they come up behind a slow moving car they tailgate with flashing headlights. Does this make the road safer?

Airclues

[pilotwolf]

Captain Airclues..

As I said in my ealier post I m not saying they are the right or wrong way to slow traffic. I actually think the islands were a better idea for slowing the traffic - despite peoples opinions of them - if you were driving within the speed limit and concentrating they were perfectly visible both during the day and night, but read the letters in Skyport concerning these!

I 'assume' the council or whoever designs these things thinks that 'professional' drivers should know better than to speed? But we all know thats not the case, in the same way that professional pilots also break the rules sometimes...

I live in a village with an A road through the middle, shops, houses and pubs with doors all opening on to a narrow pavement next to it. It has a 40 mph limit - as a conservative estimate the average speed throught the village is around 60mph, when the bikers and boy racers are passing through I would think their average speed is around 90 mph - but we aren't allowed humps or cameras and the police are apparently disinterested... I ve lived here for a little over 2 years now and there have been 4 fatal and numerous injury accidents within a mile of each end of the limit in that time. And can count on one hand the number of times there has been a speed trap here.

I m not defending BAA but imagine the outcry had they installed yet more speed cameras.....

PW

[buffy747]

At least with speed cameras you would be able to do a constant speed of 30mph , instead of stop/start over car damaging speed bumps.

:hmm: :(

[pilotwolf]

Trouble is buffy747 people seem unable to manage that and that's the reason speed calming measures have been installed!!! :)

PW