The Northampton-Kettering A43 is a very deceptive road. To the uninitiated it looks like a broad fast road with plenty of opportunity for overtaking. But when you know it well all sorts of concealed bends, obstructed vision, optical illusions, dips, crests and blind spots are revealed that in fact make overtaking quite dangerous. You see some crazy behaviour where people try to overtake lines of standing traffic where someone is trying to turn into a farm.
Yet curiously there is no attempt to reduce overtaking through the use of simple double white centre lines. Given that over 12 miles overtaking is not a high priority (increasing speed from say 50 mph to (an illegal) 70 would save less than four minutes over the entire length there is little sacrifice for drivers.
This could be one of the cheapest, quickest and most effective ways to improve safety - selective use of double white lines. Why hasn't the Council tried it ?
Comments