Post by Robin BignallA "Black Spot" is a place which is prone to troubles, usually vehicle
accidents. Signs for them appear all over the country.
I wonder how the saying came about. In the states, a black spot is something
bad-- a "black mark" on your record. But never heard in connection with autos
or traffic.
The way it was explained to me as a child is that the police kept maps
with black dots for each accident location. When there were so many
black dots that black spot was formed, they knew something was wrong,
and put a sign up. Seems fanciful now, but I believed it at the time.
Do "accident black spots" have some commonality between them?
Tend to be bad curves, poor line of sight, heavily used round-abouts, etc?
I'm sure they do and there's a great deal of research on the matter. IME
it's usually a junction where traffic on the major road is moving much
faster than emerging traffic would expect. The authorities usually
concentrate on trying to slow the major road traffic down (that is their
instinct for almost every traffic problem), and rarely take steps to
raise awareness in emerging traffic. A junction near us has a reduced
speed limit, two speed cameras, and "black spot" signs on the major
road; nothing on the minor roads. Bonkers.
[Gus: your posting style needs some work. Quoted material should be
indented, line length should be no more than 72 characters, and
important content shouldn't be placed below a sig separator.]
--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England