Hi all,
Bit (more) advice please!!!
We live on a newish estate with one main estate road running through the houses.
You HAVE to drive down the bigger road to get to our house.
In roughly quarter to half mile stretch there are no less than SIX speed humps,
both the "cushion" type and "table top" type.
My problem is when i go over the cushion type its scraping underneath the car.
I go really slowly and carefully straddling the cushion and its scraping each time.
The speed humps are a fairly new addition. When they were first put there i called the council and asked about it and was told they were checked and were the correct height.
I cannot believe a standard vehicle cannot pass over them without being damaged.
Its a mini cooper S, which is not exactly a rare car! The piece on the car is below the front bumper, i guess its called a splitter or valance????????????????
I want to have this replaced as its all scraped and scuffed and imo the council should pay to replace this and come and look at the humps and adjust them???
Is this a resonable request????? What can i expect the council to say???
Any help/experience of similar problems greatly appreciated.
P.S Im not saying i want the humps removed, the people on the end of the estate drive with nutters and i have to go so slowly ive actually been over taken.
AND its right outside a school so its a good thing i suppose, although SIX its quite excessive.
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If I am reading you correctly, I am having a bad day BTW, could you not drive one set of wheels, left or right, over the cushion rather than straddling it? This would raise the car better but I appreciate that this could cause problems with either being into the wrong side of the road or hitting the kerb!
In my view, if humps or whatever are designed to control/limit speed to 30 mph, it should be possible to cross them in a normal car (like yours) at 29 mph. Of course this will never happen!
Information on dimensions here
Road Hump Dimensions
Road humps constructed to meet the regulations must be between the heights of 25mm and 100mm respectively and have a minimum length of 900mm. To limit the effects of vehicle grounding, it is recommended that the ramp gradients of road humps should not be steeper than 1:10. Other considerations such as inclines, presence of buses, etc. along a route may demand shallower gradients. Humps may either be curved or flat topped. More severe humps, which reduce vehicle speeds to 10mph or less, may be used on private roads, but are not permitted on the public highway.
Rumble Devices
These are narrow transverse features raised slightly above carriageway level, which are cheaper but less effective than road humps. The maximum height permitted under the Traffic Calming Regulations for a rumble device is 15mm. Due to the noise generated by rumble strips they should not be used near houses. They can be used in rural areas without street lighting.
Hope this helps ie are your humps and cushions legal?
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 02/08/2008 at 14:08
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Sorry you are having a bad day Armitage!!! It is possible to go either side but it is a MASSIVE bump and it feels like a am going to damage the car and have visions of going back every month to get my tracking done. At the moment i am going in the middle of the humps but i cant see this doing the car much good either as it forces the wheels in???
AND obviously you have to make sure its clear?
i really try to look after the car and was v annoyed to see all the front scuffed.
we have a hilux which deals with the humps quite nicely!! although coming back from shopping i sent a loaf of bread flying when i went over the hump!!
Whats really annoying is that the people who seem to speed are not the ones with decent cars imho and go flying over them anyway!
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Get a couple of plastic rulers and glue/screw oneto a long bit of straight wood with 10cm of ruler showing at 90˚. Place over the hump, and use the other free ruler manually at 90˚ to the wood -if the rulers can't both touch the floor, then take some photos and complain to the Council.
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Bear99. Thank you for your concern! A late shift, some vino collapso and another late shift to come! I recall the the very useful and well informed Dwight Van Driver helped me with a similar query and here is a link (non-clickable) to the Rules and Regs re humps and bumps which he provided.
www.tinyurl.com/29xef
You will need Adobe reader to be able to read it. The post suggesting measurement and photos is obviously a good way forward too.
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 02/08/2008 at 15:18
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In my view if humps or whatever are designed to control/limit speed to 30 mph it should be possible to cross them in a normal car (like yours) at 29 mph. Of course this will never happen!
I tend to think that they are designed to slow cars well below 30mph as most people seem to speed up between them so a hump which could be taken at 29mph wouldn't keep people's speed down enough - I know the ones on my road are best taken at about 20mph!
The only cars that seem to have any issues are the ones that have been lowered, though, there are a few Coopers locally and they seem ok, though if its bottoming I'd have thought that putting one side on and one off should work?
BTW what speed are you taking them at?
Edited by b308 on 02/08/2008 at 17:08
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Although my car's front valance seems to go down quite close to the road, I can't remember it ever grounding on speed bumps, and I usually straddle those cushions. The car has fairly stiff springs and never bottoms over those big trapezoidal humps either on the rare occasions I go over them too quickly. And the suspension and steering seem fairly resistant to the pounding they get.
I do really hate the things though. They subject car suspension to gratuitous heavy wear and cause extra noise and pollution; and they are dangerous because they unsettle cars and project them and motorcycles into the air. The creeping effrontery of the British petty official - and he is not alone in the world - surpasses belief sometimes.
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I go really slowly ........
Yeah, right!
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The problem is that MINI is entirely unsuitable for urban motoring in modern Britain - this situation is exactly what Honda CRV etc were invented for.
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The problem is that MINI is entirely unsuitable for urban motoring in modern Britain -
Actually, this isn't a new phenomenon. In the early 90s I had a (sadly missed) Mk2 Golf GTI 16V whose front valence would ground on a number of speed bumps around where I lived at the time in southern Cheshire. The car, by the way, was completely standard, did not have lowered suspension, and I used to literally crawl over speed bumps.
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worst bumps i saw recently were in a cinema complex car park, i dont know if its deliberate to stop the mad get away at the end of the "evenings last showing" but they were huomungous, scraped a really old merc the other night it started blowing from the underside as i followed it out
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L'escargot, believe whatever you like, I know I go slowly, I don't have to prove myself to you or anyone else and the poxy thing is trashing the front of the car, im hardly going to go too fast and deliberatly wreck it am i? Think about it.
I go over in first or second gear, no more than 10mph. I go so slowly Ive had people over take!
Thanks for the advice everyone anyone, i'll go and measure one and see what its like and take some pics of the valance.
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Near where I live there is a retail park. They installed a gratuitous speed bump, which seemed to me to be unbelievably high. Within a very short space of time it was gouged out with loads and loads of scrapes.
I'm appreciative of the advice over testing the legality! In Rainford, Merseyside, they have some relatively new bumps that feel like you are driving over a wall. Must be murder for the residents.
HJ in the telegraph has hinted at the murky side of things here = who gains from the no doubt incredibly lucrative local authority -awarded contract to instal these things?
also - police cars who wont patrol estates with bumps, cos it hurts their back
funerals... ambulances! fancy having a broken neck on bear99's estate??
By the way, what is the point of saying "oh yeah" as if bear99 is going to say, cheers, silly me, I thought you had to smash into them at top speed.
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the cushion design in speed bumps have 2 distinct reasons for being constructed the way they are
1. they force drivers to stay on their own side of the road by forcing the driving to keep over to one side so that only two wheels go over the bump.
2. the spaces between the cushion allow wider axle emergency vehices (ambulances and fire engines) to pass over the cushions with their wheels in the gaps between the cushions thereby not being impeeded as they would with regular speed bumps
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One of the things I hate on this website is people describing in disgusting, leering, pornographic detail just how incredibly slowly and carefully they try to manoeuvre their horrible jalopies over these vile speed bumps, righteously indifferent to the wishes of other traffic to stay above 5mph.
The simple image of all this creeping and creaking really makes my heart sink.
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Soz, bear99. It was a case of post in haste, repent at leisure.
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Who said 5pmh Lud? Think I was the only one originally to give a speed and I said 20mph, though now the op has said 10mph - if they really are that bad then I suspect they must be illegal... we shall see...
Re the "gap in the middle" - the ones our way don't have that - even if I went down the middle I'd hit both! Also I've seen road in Brum with three humps across the road, though they were quite low and not so much humps as small bumps!
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I want to have this replaced as its all scraped and scuffed and imo the council should pay to replace this and come and look at the humps and adjust them???
Yes, this is the thing. Although most speed bumps/humps/cushions/whatever may be within
the height/length etc. parameters, I'm sure many are not constructed in a way that stops contact with car bodyparts even when crawling over the things.
It seems many are simply segments of a circle, i.e. there's no feathering up the curve, just a discontinuity which car suspensions can't react to easily - hence the type of damage you describe.
I would challenge the council bear99 - provide what you can in proof - perhaps a picture or two of your car with its front wheel at the start of the offending hump (obviously within the constraints of safety etc.) to show its imperfect design. A properly feathered hump should raise the car enough (at reasonable speed) so that bodywork doesn't contact it.
The MINI CooperS isn't outrageously low (I had a standard Cooper with sport suspension & 17inch wheels a while ago - so very similar) so it does bear some invesigation by the council.
So would suggest getting your documentary evidence together & making the council show its not their fault. If they can't, any claim for damages has passed the first hurdle (no pun intended!).
Good luck -let us know what happens.
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It's not just Cooper Ss that can't get pover standard road humps. We have a Clubman D at work which also scrapes the rubber strip under the bumper on speed humps.
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It's not just Cooper Ss that can't get pover standard road humps...
Ditto Mk I Seat Leon - my perfectly standard SE TDI used to do that too. Good job it was rubber.
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There are some wierd replies to this thread! I don't go creeping along and i don't belt along like a nutter i just try to get to and from my house without wrecking my car!!
Thanks to everyone who has given helpful replies!!
Im rang the council and as yet no one has bothered returning my call, ive send a letter as well, no news yet!!1 will reply when i have some!!
Bear
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Bear
Do you know who built the humps, the Council or the Developer?
I thought Housing Estates are meant to be inspected by Council inspectors to confirm things are built to current regs. If the council have passed this and you find it is illegal, and it is later confirmed by their or an independent inspector, you may have a case to recover any damage to car. Maybe point that out to them in your correspondance if you haven't already. However make sure it is not a private road first (unlikely if it has street lamps).
Hopefully someone who has significant legal experience could confirm this.
S.
Edited by Saltrampen on 07/08/2008 at 13:54
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Hi Saltrampen,
Yes it was the developer who built them and i was told at the time the council had inspected them. The roads were not adopted at the time but have been now.
They said that the humps were the correct size, but if so surely they cant be if they ground out a standard vehicle??
Will see what they reply with i guess. will update as soon as they do!
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I think that a lot of people who drive 'normal' size cars, such as a Focus, don't realise what a difference it makes driving over them in a smaller car where you don't get the 'wheels each side' benefit.
I treat them the same way that I would a pothole of similar dimensions. That is a complete stop before each one and a 5mph crawl over. One road I drive down every day has 1/2 mile of them.
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