Planned road hump schemes

Roadhumpcampaign.org is a non-profit public effort to raise awareness of road hump issues, encourage democracy and to provide a public discussion and information centre for safe street technologies, slow-zone engineering and to determine the costs and benefits of different approaches in the UK and other countries.

It is essential that every resident in a planned slow-zone area is fully informed and has an opportunity to air their views to authorities before a scheme is implemented. Views of individual residents should be given proper consideration. Both the benefits and potential costs of any plan should be stated in the consultation. Failing to properly inform and listen to residents will lead to those not properly consulted rejecting the scheme after it's deployment. If the public are properly consulted, and a debate is encouraged, the final scheme may better fit the stated goals, and carry general support. It is not a good idea for councils to adopt a take it or leave it attitude. Given that there are so many ways slow zones can be implemented, and given the council's plans are probably not perfect to begin with, the council must adopt a flexible policy, encourage local debate and listen to what residents say. Unfortunately, some consultations fail by not reaching all residents, and have a very poor response or involvement rate. Sadly, often councils will ignore residents then deploy a very expensive, flawed scheme.

In London, UK, authorities (with notable exceptions) often implement slow zones with road humps as an enforcement measure. Road humps have a huge environmental impact in an area, requiring a strong general consensus. Their large environmental and sensory impact probably explains why they are the first measure which occurs to engineers of slow zones (sometimes referred to as "Traffic Calming"). Authorities will typically publish the location of planned speed humps in the local paper but not mark the position of the humps until a day before they are to be laid. Often, residents will overlook the plans, and will not know where the hump is in relation to their property. To help your neighbours become engaged in the discussion and learn more about slow zone technologies, please print out our road hump marker then place it in the prospective location of the speed hump to ensure everyone who will be affected knows of the humps planned position and can find the web site to take part in the debate.