Newslink April marketing special

Area News
The NHS desperately needs your help...
with its bay parking
John Lomas
MSA GB
West Coast
& Wales
Following a bit of a health scare I recently
spent another overnight in our local
hospital.
The window by my third floor ward bed
gave me a lovely view of one of the staff
car parks during the early morning shift
influx, and if I had had a decent video
camera with me I could have made a
terrific hour-long training video showing
bad bay parking, both forwards and
backwards. It would have included a
range of angles, from 90 degrees to
straight access, and a selection of shunt
numbers ranging from NONE (straight in,
well done) to around five or six goes,
regardless of the direction of parking.
I even watched two to four shunts
when there were no other vehicles within
three bays either side.
The red lines show aproximately the
scope of my view.
(Just in case you’re thinking ‘shunt’ in
this case means a crash, I’m referring to
parking by moving forwards then back
again).
Motor vehicle versus wild animal
To illustrate this point, I’ve used two
photographs (both right).
The photo (see top right) I have used
for this happens to be on the A4 in
Savernake Forest, Wiltshire; but it could
be any national speed limit road with
restricted sideways visibility.
The night driving picture (below right)
is actually from America but it illustrates
the restricted scope of your lights in such
an area.
The point I want to make is how driving
on rural roads can be dangerous because
of the presence of large wild animals. It
doesn’t have to be a forested area either
because some deer can easily come over
a field hedge onto the road; this is why in
some deer areas they actually erect high
deer fence. Large wild animals such as
Red, Roe, Fallow and Sika deer can
nowadays be found virtually anywhere in
the country.
So the question is: although this is a
national speed limit and even if it didn’t
have a Wild Animals warning sign, which
are found in a relatively few areas, just
what speed would you consider doing on
a dark night even if you can use main
beam because there is nothing coming
the other way?
You might think that traffic on the road
might deter the animals from crossing,
but I have actually experienced a large
deer crossing between my car and the
one in front at about 25 yards. In that
case we were actually doing about
30mph through the Forest of Dean.
I wonder how often fatal single vehicle
crashes involving vehicles leaving the
road have actually been caused by a
driver, using an inappropriate speed,
swerving to avoid a deer, or other,
smaller, wild animal which has suddenly
emerged into their path from the
darkness.
Do you raise this sort of scenario with
your pupils when doing or discussing
night driving – particularly (though not
exclusively) if you are an ADI in a rural
area, or whose pupils are more likely to
drive on coutnry roads?
“How fast would you
fancy driving down the
dark road right, in the
event of a large wild
animal coming out of the
forest into your path?”
My line of vision
over the car park.
It offered a
grandstand view
of some dubious
parking
techniques
38 NEWSLINK n APRIL 2024