Regular readers will be aware that I have expressed my opinion quite forcefully at times that on certain roads we have far too many road signs to be read in safety. Of course, as a mere retired consultant with the Public Transport Authority I am either ignored or have harsh comments levelled in my direction.
My opinion is that Transport Malta has within the echelons of power, people who actually have very little practical knowledge on the subject of traffic management, especially in its basic forms, where signs and lines play a most important part when it comes to giving the 200,000-plus people with driving licences a clear idea of what road conditions are in the immediate- to short-term distance.
In fact, legislation is being pushed through in the UK to ensure that only necessary road signs are approved. This is because the proliferation of redundant or unnecessary signage is causing accidents as drivers try and fathom out the whys and wherefores of some very odd signs.
In 2006 I had a proposal approved to have continuous lines on our roads. The proposal called for an exercise being carried out at something over our maximum speed to establish where, with a closing speed of nigh on 200 km/h, the continuous lines should be extended around corners for an accurately safe distance to be established. We could then safely break the centre lines on the straights or non-blind corners.
This would also give a much needed boost to the confidence that drivers have that anyone at Transport Malta will do a bit of a study before embarking on exercises that only induce road rage in thousands of motorists.
It has to be understood by the bright young ones who control the happy motoring destiny of the vast number of local motorists, that even when the centre line has been broken it is the total responsibility of each and every driver to only cross the dividing line when it has been established that it is safe to do so. If an incident should occur, the driver that straddled or crossed the centre divider would ultimately, even if it goes to arbitration, be found guilty.
I find it an amusing fact that, depending on the speed allowed, the broken centre lines are longer or shorter with more or less gap between them. This only works in countries with a highly educated driving community who through experience and usage know the speed of the road by the scientific painting of the broken lines.
Over here in Malta it’s much easier to simply paint a continuous line. In Gozo, however, many newly surfaced roads have been provided with sensible broken centre dividers. Could this be an acknowledgement that Gozo has more slow-moving rural vehicles and tractors steaming along at their maximum of 25 km/h?
On my rare visits to our sister isle I have sussed out that it is usually quicker to use the narrow, recently surfaced country road that goes past Paradise Bay than it is using the vastly expensive but dolt-infested main road down to Marfa, which has one lane and an incredible number of very slow-moving vehicles, and these vehicles are by no means only lorries of uncertain vintage with doubtful brakes and steering.
There has, over the past 15 years, been an incredible increase in drivers who take pleasure in creeping along all of our single lane arterial and distributor roads at speeds in the region of 50 km/h to the amazed excitement and fury of normal drivers who prefer using their cars in a proper manner and at a speed approaching 80 km/h.
The Sunday Times (December 16) featured an interesting interview with Arriva Malta managing director Richard Hall. Much of the interview was informative and interesting. But I take Mr Hall to task with his praise of bendy buses.
The mayor of London managed to ban these contraptions from London streets. I have seen damage done by these buses in Bath and Cheltenham. I was under the impression they would only be used on express routes in Malta, bypassing towns with narrow streets. How wrong I was! Apparently, according to Mr Hall, “Malta is ideally suited to articulated buses because it has the issue with peak flows. They are more manoeuvrable than a rigid 12-metre bus. They have a better turning circle because they have a shorter axle length in the main bus. The trailing axle just follows the main bus. They are entirely suitable for Maltese roads, but there is a different way of driving them.”
In my opinion, we need narrower buses with a lot of new nine-metre models.