New road signs to target tailgating drivers on busy Fife road

They are to be installed on the A915 Standing Stane Road between Windygates and Dysart, the busiest non-motorway stretch of tarmac in the Kingdom. Eight people have died in incidents on the road since 2005.

The new signs will be able to detect when a car is breaking the 'two second rule' of distance from the vehicle in front, and flash a warning.

They are also able to flash a different warning to vehicles driving too fast, and can differentiate between vehicles with varying speed limits such as cars and heavy goods lorries.

Such signs are currently only in use on a stretch of the A701 in Dumfries and Galloway, where they are predicted to save thousands of £s in accident-related costs.

Levenmouth Area Committee heard today that signs will be installed in both directions at the junctions of Checkbar Road and Wells Green.

19 charities and voluntary groups hit as Fife Council slashes £400...Almost 4000 Fife pupils attending school during lockdown

Steve Sellars, lead professional in road safety, said the A701's main problem was not excess speeding but the volume of traffic using the road, and how often vehicles would drive too close to one another.

"That leads to difficulties when vehicles slow and drivers don’t have a fast enough reaction time," he said.

The £80,000 investment will, he added, recognise when drivers are failing to leave a two second gap to the vehicle in front and single them out for criticism. Road safety bosses hope this will encourage drivers to drop back, giving them more time to react in the event of having to take evasive action.

Funding from Levenmouth's community pot will be used to cover a quarter of the price, with the remaining cash coming from Fife Council's central road safety and traffic management budgets.

Councillor Ken Caldwell, committee convener, said: "The safety of the Standing Stane Road has long been an issue. We have taken various measures over the years to tackle this, and they have met with various degrees of success and reduced the death toll on the road until recently.

"I'm sure that this system will help to make drivers aware of this.”

Thank you for reading this article on our free-to-read website. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

Please consider purchasing a subscription to our print newspaper to help fund our trusted, fact-checked journalism.

https://www.localsubsplus.co.uk/nord/dm/FFP/V