Longparish Parish Council

Driver Feedback Signs

37 people from 24 parish councils braved the wind and rain to attend the presentation at Longparish Village Hall on 11 January 2008. Presenters from 3M (the manaufacturer) and Signway (the local distributor) explained the DFS700 Traffic Safety System and answered questions. This was followed by a practical demonstration in the road outside the Longparish Village hall. Initial feedback was that councillors found the presentation helpful.

As we get more information we will publish it here.There was an excellent report in the Andover Advertiser of 18 January which you can read here.

The system gives a display which tells drivers how fast they are going to encourage them to moderate their speed. It also records details to provide information about the speed of vehicles. The system is portable and the idea is that half a dozen parishes could share the cost and use the equipment one week in six.

Here are the sign and some of the councillors. The flash from the photo is reflected in the sign which makes it look very white	Here is the sign in action (the smaller one - the other is our school sign). Note how dedicated your councillors are and how they brave adverse weather for their parishes

The display can be red, amber or green and you can set it to suit yourself. For example red over 30, amber 25 to 30 and green under 25. It responds very quickly; you could easily see it change as our test driver (Stig) slowed down. The photos are over-exposed due to the reflective nature of the sign and the dull conditions making the camera falsh go off, so you cannot actually pick out the figures on the sign. You can get a much better impression from the leaflet (link at the foot of this page).

Unfortunately Stephen Lugg from HAPTC was unable to attend. Longparish councillors Ricky Bourne and Jeremy Barber agreed to contact him with a view to HAPTC liaising with 3M and Signway and

• getting agreement from county police and highways people abouthow to use the system in a village environment
• considering purchase of the system by HAPTC; and/or
• HAPTC helping groups of parishes to buy and use the system.

Ricky Bourne, who is the Longparish Lengthsman kindly agreed to act as a contact point. You can phone Ricky Bourne on 01264 720500 or email him or write to him at Woodstock, Sugar Lane, Longparish, ANDOVER, Hants, SP11 6PP.

Keith Pitter from Signway emailed the same afternoon in response to a couple of queries raised by councillors. He says,

"Firstly, may I thank you and your colleagues in Longparish for your assistance and support throughout the demonstration and I hope that the following information will make the process of placing orders that much easier for the parish councils that attended today, as we will be able to offer an option that will allow posts to be used for two purposes, but not create a cluttered look.  

1. Here is the DFS700 price list and I would like to confirm that prices exclude VAT.  

2. One issue raised was where to locate the signs. We had similar issue about where to actually position the DFS's with Basingstoke Council, however after some experimentation we decided to replace several repeater speed sign posts (1.5m high) in the areas required,  with a newly designed 1.5m post, which allowed a "Spigot" extension post of 1m to be fixed, as and when required. The 1m post just slots into the existing 1.5m post, after removing the capped top (similar to a rotary clothes line), but with a special hole pre-drilled so that a pin can be pushed through, this will secure the whole post, as if it were one. (The 1m post can be priced as an accessory to the DFS Unit).  If anyone is interested in this idea please contact Ricky and I'll let him have a price which can be published on the Longparish website.

If anybody needs to talk to us personally about this maybe Ricky could compile a list of interested parties and I will then send them a design and an idea of the cost."

There's more information about Signway on their website

You can find out a lot more about the DFS700 and see better images of it in action than our photos in this leaflet from the manufacturers. (NB this is a 1.2MB PDF so it may take a while to download.