It’s that time of year again Milton Abbot residents!
With the worst of the pandemic hopefully behind us, it’s a great time to refocus on communicating our village commitment to the speed watch campaign and delivering road safety for all users in particular the village school children and their right to a safe walk to and from school.
This year, we invite you to register for free with Brake Road Safety Week and display proudly your speed awareness and speed limit signs safely in the village as before.
Let’s see how many signs we get this year! Together we can send a message to motorists traveling through the village that we care passionately about road safety and will work tirelessly to ensure our speed limits are respected by all road users.
Craig is organising with Emily a special large scale kids walk to school with high viz vests and we will invite local media to cover this event. Details to be on village social media. We invite all, not just parents and kids to get involved.
Ask your kids to start designing posters and notices to display in your windows/ walls/ parked car windows to share the 30mph speed message and inspirational road safety messages.
We will be approaching local land owners to seek permission to repeat previous years signage positioning and hopefully we will have another famous ‘speed crow’ to grace the roadside.
A committee of parents will liaise with the school to arrange complementary activities of the children who have excelled in previous years.
Please do get involved! Use FB and the village Massive WhatsApp pages to share your support! You can also comment on this post.
We are launching a new campaign to slow the traffic down through the village. Since lockdown, traffic speed has increased alarmingly and we feel the 30mph limits are not being adhered to.
We plan to launch a series of initiatives between October and March which will focus on slowing traffic down in and around our village, making roads safer for all users. The pillars of our campaign will be community, education, awareness, signage and speed reduction.
We will work with a number of established organisations to build momentum and meaning into our campaign including, but not limited to, Devon & Cornwall Police, Devon Council, Local MP’s, Brake The Road Safety Charity, The Countryside Charity (formerly Campaign to Protect Rural England).
Timetable of activities;
Road Safety Week
The first campaign will focus on Road Safety Week , and we encourage you all to get actively involved! The dates are 16th -22nd November
Please access their website here (when asked for access code enter RSW2020);
In due course, a speed watch campaign will take place in the village which aims to remind drivers the importance of respecting and complying with the speed limit in our rural village.
It will be run as an official Community Speed Watch Group and we will in time, once training has been undertaken, by the community, in line with the availability of the Police, share the full details of the objectives and timetable of activities.
We have many youngsters commuting to the primary school and crossing roads to catch school buses. We have young mums with prams and expectant mums too. We enjoy an active pensioner community. Everybody whether young , old, horse riders, cyclists, ramblers or dog walkers , and our much loved pets, deserve safety.
Let’s work together to encourage all drivers to slow down in our village and keep everyone safe.
Together, we can reduce greatly the likelihood of a tragedy and keep beautiful Milton Abbot safe.
Contacts;
Your local lead coordinator for Community Speedwatch is Chris Stone , Sonia Callaway is the deputy coordinator. The communications coordinator is Angus McKenzie. Please feel free to speak to us , respecting social distancing by email or phone please,if you have positive ideas or wish to contribute to the campaign.
Whilst Chris is focused exclusively on the community speedwatch element, both Sonia and Angus are organising the wider campaign.
Perhaps you’d like to join as a volunteer to be trained by the police in the speedwatch campaign? If so please get in touch with Chris.
Alternatively you may want to be involved in the wider campaign, have time, energy or ideas to share and just want to connect with our group. Our success depends on the many, not the few, and we are an inclusive group so please reach out with any messages of support to Sonia directly.
A series of trained volunteers will carry out planned one hour traffic monitoring sessions with a legally calibrated Police speed gun. Warnings will be sent to offenders, offering the chance to ammend their ways. Persistent offenders may, at the discretion of the Police, face further action.
We simply want to keep our village safe!
Community
It’s your community! Perhaps you have an idea or suggestion? Let’s put all our heads together to create and deliver and hugely successful campaign.
Reporting of incidents
Have you or your family been a victim of a road traffic incident resulting from speeding in the village? Maybe you’ve witnessed a driver not leaving a safe distance between you and their vehicle?We’d like to hear from you, in order that we can build a formal record of incidents to carry weight in applications for revisions of traffic signage. Please email any such incidents via the contacts page.
Covid 19
Just a reminder that in all of our communication and activities, safety is paramount. We will in every instance observe the current Government regulations relating to Covid 19. Please bear this in mind at all times.
Now is the right time!
Together , we can do this! With the forthcoming National Campaign and current Government policy, there has never been a better moment in the villages history to seize the opportunity and make lasting positive changes for future generations.
Good luck and thanks for reading this post. Feel free to comment!
Milton Abbot Speed & Road Safety 