Traffic wind-up schemes

Usually when I put these posts together they are to comment on small features we tend to overlook in our day-to-day lives and they are primarily rant-free zones.  No blog can be fully rant-free forever, however, their very existence is for individual expression.  Today it is a bit of a rant, but I don’t believe that it is a lonely rant....

There is no visibility to oncoming cars and streams of
vehicles head off regardless of priority

We in the UK have an expanding population alongside increased vehicle ownership.  More people mean more houses and this means roads that had developed for lower levels of traffic now bear the strain.  While attempts to force people to adopt laughably inappropriate and inadequate public transport options fail in rural areas, parallel attempts at slowing the traffic down have varying levels of success.

In our Sussex village, inside the new South Downs National Park, we have what has to be one of the most ridiculous and irritating sets of traffic calming measures ever implemented.

There is a clue in the phrase 'Traffic Calming' that ought to imply that the idea is to calm the traffic down.  It is hard to remember this through most measures experienced.  Traffic Wind-up is by far the more appropriate phrase.  There has been considerable research done on this subject in both the Netherlands and in Germany.  It is of no great surprise to learn that traffic behaviour is at its very best when drivers are calm, unstressed and not confused.