40mph speed limit plea after death of teen Mikey Maguire (From Bournemouth Echo)

even 30 years ago my father wouldn't drive this road after dark

One day people will realise that a speed limit is exactly that - it's not a target to be achieved by the motorist, just a theoretical maximum safe speed in ideal conditions.

If the conditions call for a slower speed (bad weather, lack of visibility, etc) then it's down to the motorist to drive at that safe speed - or does the councillor actually believe that all motorists travel at the national speed limit on our many winding, mud-covered, single track, country roads because the law allows it?

Help l am totally confused.This starts out as a problem in Lytchett Matravers and ends up as a comment from a Branksome West councillor banging on about Winston Avenue Branksome which is about 8 miles from the scene of the tragedy. Also before we start screaming for a reduction in the speed limit we need to know at what speed the accident happened

Oh dear, here we go again. Someone got killed so the speed limit has to go down. Of all the things we could use to set roads policy, data, road characteristics, measured speeds, visibility, accident data and analysis, cost / safety benefit of large numbers of different types of interventions, not to mention common sense, Fred Drane chooses to use the location of where someone got killed without even any reference whatsoever to the circumstances. How on earth would a limit of 40 be enforced at this location? Would it have made any difference? Would it have been ignored?

Yes, it’s a narrow, dark stretch of road and not often safe to go much above 40, but those who manage to drive it safely without killing someone outnumber those who can’t by a massive proportion. The problem is not the limit, it is driver skill and attitude. Fred Drane is trying to fix the car engine by emptying the ashtrays.

Is he aware that the roads directly around the back of the Lytchett Minster School are also 60 limit, including places where it’s difficult for 2 vehicles to pass in opposite directions, where the safe speed at times is no more than 10? Does he know anything about the characteristics of accidents, for example, that the death did not occur at this location because it is more dangerous than any other, but due to a freak coincidence of a number of unrelated factors? Is he aware that if he does reduce the limit to 40 at this location, he does not reduce the probability of another death in Dorset by any meaningful amount whatsoever, and that by using valuable and limited resources that could otherwise have been used for something with a calculated safety benefit, for something not properly considered, he could actually be increasing danger?

Is he aware that during the few recent years of the very high profile, zero tolerance “no excuse” scheme, including a large proportion of Dorset Drivers being sent on driver courses, and large numbers of totally absurd speed limit reductions, the road casualty count which was in steep decline has turned around and started to increase?

We must stop allowing unqualified and incompetent councillors from interfering with the complex and critical task of deciding what should be done for road safety.

Just get rid of the speed limits, it's about time drivers had some sense to drive to the road conditions not because some nonce in Govt thinks that's the way everything is supposed to be to protect ourselves.....preopl
e drive, people crash, people die...

Along the lines of country roads...perhaps mr drane could get the centre line reinstated at the junction of Poole road/Factory road in Upton before someone has a head on with a foreign driver because they don't know which side of the road to be on!