If you were driving along the main A425 Southam Road in either direction on the morning of Tuesday 28 September, you will surely have noticed the yellow “Community Speed Monitoring” signs and three of our volunteers (Julia, Jack and me) at the roadside in “Hi-Viz” jackets conducting the first Radford Semele Community Speedwatch under the watchful eye of PSCO Ed King who joined us on this occasion.
We met at 09.30 at the RS Community Centre to carry out the required calibration checks on the LASER speed measuring instrument and then transferred to the site whereby we set up the signage at the police approved locations and got underway. It was a bit of a slow start as it does take a bit of practice getting the hang of obtaining reliable readings on the LTI UltraLyte 100 instrument (after a while, it feels as if it should have been called the QuiteHeavy 100) but we all took turns with it and soon started getting consistent results. The purpose of the operation is to act as a deterrent to speeding which it clearly was. I live on the Southam Road and I don’t think I have ever seen the traffic drive past quite so sedately! Nevertheless, there are a few who are sufficiently inattentive that they do not notice (or do not care) that there are large clearly visible signs in both directions, a bunch of people in Hi-Viz jackets and a uniformed Policeman, waving around what is obviously a speed measuring device. Ed instructed that we should record anyone registering 35mph or above and we clearly recorded four such vehicles. We missed quite a few until we got the hang of operating the Laser so I would expect rather better success in future.
Our next step is to organise more sessions with the three of us who have received official training and certification from West Midlands Police acting as team leaders with more of our volunteers receiving training when places become available. Do please give the teams a friendly nod or wave as you pass us by (at 30 mph or less).
Councillor Roger Munn