I KNOW it's a victory for safety but it's a crashing defeat for my suspension and - by proxy - my spine. The council has ruined one of my favourite roads.
If, like me, you ever travel between Churchtown and Crossens you'll know what I'm on about. Where once there was smooth tarmac there are now rows of humps, right the way between these two charming parts of Southport, and they haven't succeeded in slowing me down. They've made me stop using it altogether.
“A-ha!” I can hear the council's road safety boffins retort in response, Alan Partridge style. Where once souped-up Saxos and Corsas screamed along this stretch of road they're now having to brake before each and every bump; that or face the prospect of either breaking their backs or damaging their shock absorbers. I'm sure, in a year's time, the stats will show the council's mission of reducing the speeds along Bankfield Lane and Rufford Road will have been easily accomplished.
Don't think for a moment that I'm demanding the right to drive down it like a man who's late for the birth of his first child - I couldn't agree more with the need to slow people down along some roads (and everybody's got at least one in mind). There are, for instance, far too many single track roads I know which you can legally do 60mph on, but to even attempt it would be insane. 30mph too fast for Bankfield Lane? Yep, at quite a few times of day I'd go along with that.
Bankfield Lane is one of my favourite roads for a very simple reason - more often that not, it connects where I live with where I want to go. I know that plenty of motorists took the mickey a bit with it, and on some tragic occasions with fatal results. As a motorist I loved it, but as a Crossens chap I couldn't agree more something needed to be done to slow people down.
But did it really need an endless series of enormous speed humps to cure the problem? Couldn't chicanes have done the trick? Or lowering the speed limit? Or even - and I know this is dangerously avantgarde thinking - road safety cameras? I have a particular hatred reserved for speed bumps because while they slow down the dangerous minority (who'll only find a different road to strut their stuff on anyway), it's the majority of motorists who have to pay the price of the additional wear and tear.
The irony is that it's those who live locally - the ones who called for traffic calming in the first place - who'll suffer the most.
