A43 - road safety campaign

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This site was set up out of desperation to publicise the problems on the dangerous A43 between Northampton and Kettering.  One of the authors travels daily on the A43.  To contact please email the address at this link or comment directly in one of the entries above.

Red cats eyes would improve night safety

The near side edge of the A43 between Northampton and Kettering is not easily visible at night.  As the road dips and weaves it can be really hard to see where it is going next.  Some red cat's eyes along the edge would make a huge difference.  This section of the A43 is also not lit from end to end - this has a pronounced effect for long distance drivers who may well have come from well illuminated roads and motorways and suddenly find themselves in pitch darkness on the A43. 

Red cats eyes would be a fairly simple thing that would improve night safety no end.

Dualling - some realism

There is more talk about having the road dualled from Northampton to Kettering (click here for story).  The campaign as reported makes safety a major feature with some tragic stories of people who have been bereaved. It is heart-rending to hear people's stories.  But the sad reality is that dualling would only make a difference for a generation of drivers who have not yet been born.  Dualling would not help at all people using and suffering on the road now - in fact it would bring investment blight to the road for 15 years, locking in today's dreadful situation.

The Government abandoned dualling in 1997.  It would take over 15 years to dual the road from the first plans being drawn up.  The road would also fill up very quickly, as the dualled A14 has done.  While waiting for dualling, at present rates there would be over 150 people killed or seriously injured on the A43 between Northampton and Kettering.  More urgent action is needed. 

Dualling is not always the answer either - the dualled section of the A43 at Lumbertubs Way was a very dangerous road that needed to have averaging speed cameras fitted despite being a dual carriageway.  Aside from this the countryside through which the A43 runs is very pleasant with several woods, a couple of major water reservoirs and much private property that will cause all sorts of planning problems slowing the dualling process.

A more effective solution is urgently to fit some averaging speed cameras and a reduced speed limit to cover this length of road - this gives police direct control of traffic and can be delivered in months not decades.

Controlling overtaking - a cheap solution to save lives

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 ?

50 mph on the A43 - saves lives, increases capacity, reduces pollution

The Northampton-Kettering A43 is busy and dangerous - why can't the speed limit be reduced from 60 mph to 50 mph.  They do this on the M25 between Heathrow/M4 and the M3 - 50 mph is supposed to be the speed that is most efficient use of road capacity - ie at 50mph you get more vehicles on the road as they don't have to be spaced as far apar as at 70mph.  Speed is a major contributor to road accidents and subsequent injury.  This would have to be camera enforced of course.

Cars and lorries burn a lot less fuel at 50 than at 70 - a reduction in speed on this busy road would make a significant impact on air pollution and carbon emissions.

Lowering the speed limit from 60 (effectively 70) to 50 enforced by averaging cameras would cost a driver less than four minutes from Northampton to Kettering  - surely saving lives and a higher capacity road and better environment is worth four minutes - who can't spare that?

Average speed camera control to restore sanity

Averaging speed cameras covering the A43 between Northampton and Kettering are vital - such cameras have made a huge safety improvement on the A43 Lumbertubs Way in Northampton itself and on the A428 Bedford Road in South Northamptonshire. 

The evidence is quite clear: Lumbertubs Way was a dangerous dual carriageway with 63 people killed or injured in three years - (see the police view here) - the number of people killed and seriously injured fell by 85% in the three years after installation of averaging cameras  compared with  the three years before (see here for data).

This early 2001 experiment with averaging speed cameras was so successful that the police have repeated it on the A428 Bedford Road, South of Northampton - click here for police statement.
Police have made this investment even though there were less than half the number of people killed and seriously injured on that stretch of road compared to the A43 Northampton to Kettering - 13 versus 32.

The time has come to do this on the A43 - a major speed averaging camera investment  along  10 miles of dangerous road.

Speeding endemic and dangerous

The traffic on the A43 between Northampton and Kettering is fast and very heavy.  Since the opening of the A14 linking the East Coast ports with the M1 there has been a big increase in traffic using the A43 to move North to South and vice versa between the A14, the A1, the M1 and the M40 (which the A43 eventually joins). 

The A43 the 'Kettering Road' or 'Northampton Road' depending in which town you start, is predominantly rural, moving through rolling open countryside.  A single-carriageway in each direction is broad and open - technically the speed limit is 60 mph. If you try driving slower than 70 mph you find cars and lorries right on your bumper 'encouraging' you to speed up. 

Making a turn into a joining road or a farm or home entrance is a perilous affair with rear-end collisions common as following drivers don't believe you are turning.  Almost all the major intersections have had fatalities or serious injuries.

Urgent action is needed to control speeds on this dangerous road.

A43 - more dangerous than the M1 - offical

The A43 between Northampton and Kettering is officially the most dangerous road in Northamptonshire - 32 people killed or seriously injured between end 2002 and end 2005.  For the official police data from April 2006 click here.  In absolute terms, this is nearly twice as many people killed and seriously injured than the next most dangerous stretches of road - the individual segments of the M1 with 17 KSI each ! 

So in proportion to the traffic flows, presumably far larger on the M1, this bit of the A43 could be ten or even a hundred times more dangerous than the M1.

The Kettering-Northampton A43 is one of Northamptonshire's designated 'red routes' to be targeted for road safety improvements.  You can read more about these red routes by clicking here.  The police, council, courts, highways agency and health authority work together in a 'casualty reduction partnership' (click here) to try to make roads safer.

But we have seen little benefit from this partnership here - just lots of confusing signs so far.  The partnership doesn't seem to be very transparent.

A43 road safety - basics

This website is about making this dangerous road safer for drivers and people who live near it.  The stretch A43 trunk road between Kettering and Northampton in Northamptonshire, England   is incredibly dangerous.  The road is single-carriageway with heavy fast traffic as cars and lorries race between the MI near Northampton and the A14 that links the ports in the East to the Midlands via the M1 and M6

• According to Police figures, (click here for police data) this is the most dangerous stretch of road in Northamptonshire - more dangerous than the M1 !
• speeding is endemic, averaging cameras are needed to control it - there isn't one speed camera.  An average speed reduction will reduce accidents and increase road capacity.
• overtaking should be banned - the fast but twisting road is full of optical illusions making overtaking dangerous. A cheap double white line down the centre would solve the problem
• people living on the road take their lives in the hands when turning off and on to it from their homes, farms and villages - my postman hates coming here
• calls to turn the road into a dual carriageway are simplistic and have been around since 1991 - meanwhile people have died and been injured.  Even if approved now dualling will do nothing for 15 years (click here - see end of article).  The A43 Lumbertubs Way (click here) was deadly dangerous even though it is already a dual carriageway.
• attempts to make the road safer through signage have often made it worse with dozens of bewildering signs
• the edge of the road is very hard to see at night (there are few street lights and long stretches of white line missing) red-reflecting cats eyes would solve this