Crash barriers taken out on Fleetsbridge Flyover - just where the Dorset Road "Safe" van visited regularly

Pics taken yesterday. The dangerous placement of Dorset Road "Safe" vans was exposed in articles last year,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2573828/Police-speed-traps-like-death-traps-according-campaign-group-say-officers-parking-busy-roadsides-verges-putting-drivers-lives-risk.html

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/11052737.Police_speed_camera_van_on_Dorset_Way____put_drivers_at_risk____say_campaigners/

When the Speed limit was lowered on the Dorset Way, far below even average speeds, and even lower than Poole Council thought it should be based on those average speeds, (because they thought a 60 limit would be confusing!!) it obviously became a favourite location for Dorset Road “Safe” to visit. There were no safe locations for the vans, but of course the potential financial income was too much of a temptation. They were regularly seen parked in safety areas and even, incredibly, in sliproads!

Now we can see the true danger of what they were exposing drivers and their own staff to. A vehicle has obviously left the road at speed, destroyed the barrier, continued and destroyed the barrier in a  second location, with even enough speed to knock the concrete block for a sign out of the ground and several yards along.

And this almost precisely where the camera van used to be frequently seen, on the flyover near Tesco. If there had been a large van to crash into, with someone sitting in the back, it seems very likely there would have been at least 2 deaths.

Dorset Road “Safe” are not learning. With only a tiny proportion of casualties resulting from excess speed alone, and the risks of this kind of enforcement demonstrated only too well by this incident and the death of a motorcyclist a couple of years back, the overall safety benefit of cameras as they are being used, mobile or fixed is non-existent, and possibly negative and yet the money means this is primarily what they target. And Dorset police, now with Martyn Underhill’s protection, and even Dorset Council’s protection of Martyn Underhill, are continuing to refuse transparency about operations and finances (www.dorsetspeed.org.uk)

And as has been reported recently, road deaths and serious injuries are increasing in Poole and Dorset, despite massive levels of driver “training”, reducing speed limits, and engineering “improvements” for vulnerable road users.

Dorset Road “Safe” is not a safety effort. It is a dangerous and corrupt money making effort, fiercely protected by senior members of Dorset Police, Martyn Underhill, the IPCC, Dorset Council and many others.