A recent Riddoch Questions prompted a lot of you to get in touch and this emailer had a question for me. Has anyone got any ideas as to how to help this listener ?

I think I live in the fastest village in Scotland (60mph)?What ! you ask yourself ?

Well I live in a village called Cammachmore which is a village of over 50 houses and is directly off the A90 between Aberdeen and Stonehaven.

Cars come through the village having exited the brightly lit A90 into our very dark village (no street lights) at 60mph, legally I may add, as our speed limit is 60mph.

It sickens me everytime I listen or read about Road safety Campaigns as our children have to walk along our road to get to the School bus pick-up / drop off points.

A number of years ago there was a young school girl hit by a car traveling at 56mph, she was thrown up into the air and came back down through the sun roof, amazingly she did survive.

After the accident various residents approached the council and requested a speed limit through the village. The council always argued that because there were no streetlights then a speed limit could not be granted although I have driven through many villages in Scotland where they have no Streetlights but do have a speed limit even in Aberdeenshire. I personally ran a campaign to have streetlights installed thereby allowing us to get a speed limit.

All the way through the council put up hurdles in our way. They held ballots of the residents and demanded that we had to get over 66% of the residents in favour, not just 66% of the vote but 66% of the total number of residents. They then changed the catchment area of the village so that people who were not on the main road were included these people were either dis-interested or did not want or see the need for street lights down their single track lanes.

There were 3 ballots and we gained over 66% of the residents votes that lived on the main road but unfortunately we only gained 64% of the total 2% short and never got any streetlights and hence no speed limit. The last Ballot was around 5 years ago and I admit that I gave up totally disillusioned with politicians !

There have been a few changes in that time as there are now more houses in the village and a very busy restaurant creating more through traffic, also people / politicians have become more aware (hopefully) of increased safety measures, so I will be writing to the council this week requesting another ballot.

Comments

[Skea Ross]

A note to keep everyone informed of our progress.

We have had a reply from Aberdeenshire Council and following national guidelines that were issued in 2004 by the Department Of Transport and by the Scottish Executive in 2006 Aberdeenshire Council are now in the process of changing their rules on what is their definition of a Village (who would say Aberdeenshire are proactive ?).

In summary the new definition is that a Village is 600m long with a minimum of 20 houses and a density of at least 3 houses per 100m, importantly street lights are no longer required to make a village a village !

This has always been one of our major arguments in that surely it is safer for pedestrians when there are streetlights rather than when they have to walk along unlit roads, therefore Villages without streetlights actually require lower speed limits ! NOT NO SPEED LIMITS as per the current rules.

It has been through the Aberdeenshire Area Committees and now has to be ratified by the infrastructure committee, once this is done our Village will qualify for a reduced speed limit, hopefully 30mph going by the issued guidelines.

This has taken many years and politicians wonder why people are totally turned off with them. With a small degree of commonsense this should have been easily sorted but instead every trick in the book was used to thwart the residents wishes.

We will keep you all updated but if you also live in a Village with 60 mph vehicles here is your chance to get a safer environment as all defined Villages as above in Scotland should now have either a 30 or 40 mph speed limit irrespective of whether there are streetlights or not.

Skea Ross