Road Safety on the cheap?

There is an implication in the Conservative election material for Carsington Water Ward that Tories are taking road safety seriously. However it seems that they are not taking it seriously enough to spend their 'own' money on it.

The Conservative controlled County Council are telling Parish and Town Councils that they can put up their own reactive traffic speed signs in their village or town.

This could be a way of encouraging motorists to obey the law but the County Council have probably seriously limited the take up of the project by saying that the village councils will have to fund the purchase of the signs themselves, including a yearly fee for a licence and any maintenance costs. It has been suggested that the cost of each sign will be between £2,500 and £3,500 plus the installation and maintenance costs.

There is a 'Road Safety Fund' of £150k for the whole of Derbyshire administered by the Police and Crime Commissioner but since the signs will add up to at at least £7k per village this is not going to go very far, with no indication that this fund is exclusively for this scheme.