NIP arrived. 929

ÛÛÛ Abo ÛÛÛ

That is the price you pay for making a serious mistake crossing a stream of very fast traffic. There is no second chance if you get T-boned at 70+ the driver almost always dies.

The remodelling incidentally was the cheapest and most ill thought out paint job I have ever seen. A "line and sign" in HA newspeak. Trimdon in co Durham has a far better A19 wake up to hazard paint job.

That depends on your perspective. Statistically the Black Swan was 30% *safer* than the average for that design of at grade junction - it is just that whenever there is a collision it is invariably a KSI.

According to their standard cost benefit analysis model COBA there is no justification for closing it beyond the "something must be done" mentality.

I can't defend some of the appalling driving that I have seen on that junction. White line overruns were and still are common. And the most dangerous manouvre was when some doddering old idiot turning right onto the A19 lines up their door post blind spot with the road and then edges out into L2 with glacial acceleration.

There are now head on crashes on the alternate local routes and some wally managed to roll a car on the Crathorne junction runin last month. Vast numbers of bent metal crashes there too - record so far is 3 in one day.

Not from the Black Swan AFAIK. The police told me that none of the recent KSI's have involved drink or drugs (although there are 3 older ones where I could not get a straight answer).

The Black Swan pub went bust 3 months after the junction closed.

And now there are 3 times as many accidents on the next junction down at East Harsley - an intrinsically much more dangerous junction geometry where visibility of turning traffic is restricted by the brow of a hill.

Make no mistake I believe the Black Swan junction to be a hazard but the so-called "alternatives" for local traffic now are even worse.

Regards, Martin Brown