Would you mind posting the Google Streeview link so that we might have a look for ourselves and decide whether or not it's typical?
What sort of speeds are we talking about here? Assuming that the National Speed Limit applies, traffic should be going no faster than 60mph. Furthermore, most considerate drivers will slow down when they encounter slower-moving traffic such as cycles or horses.
All electric SUVs, oh my! While they might be a relatively recent phenomenon, we've had Range Rovers since the 70s.
I very much doubt that a bridleway, so named because it would have been used by horses in the days before mechanised transport, would have been created purely to avoid having to ride on the lane!
As I explained in my post, just because there isn't an obvious cluster of houses in the immediate vicinity doesn't mean that nobody uses the stop. People who live in the countryside may often have to travel for a mile or more in order to catch a bus.
How can you make such a guarantee? Do you use those bus routes? Even the major groups can have regular drivers on the route; it may not be the same driver at the same time each day, but it's likely that they'll work a rota that means they'll eventually do a turn on the route. Also, buses do not have to belong to a dedicate schools fleet in order to convey schoolchildren.
There don't have to be any road markings, bus stop flags or any other visible clues. Passengers wishing to board a bus will stand at the road end and make themselves known to the driver as it approaches. What's so special about this particular location that makes it any different to any other unmarked rural stop?
Any kids living in the countryside should already be aware of those clear and obvious risks and will have had it drummed into them from a very early age that they need to be careful. As I previously mentioned, if they're living on the farm then the likelihood is that they'll face far bigger dangers on the farm itself (chemicals, machinery, cattle etc.).
A farmer may be too busy doing farmery things to take their kids to school, and why would they when there's a perfectly usable school bus that stops right at the end of the farm road? Depending on how far away the farm is from the school, the transport may even be free.
The situation you describe is perfectly normal and you're reading far more into it than there needs to be.
I have to side with
@GusB on this one.
I'd ask
@Magrar - where's the evidence that this is a problem? Where are the cases that school kids are being knocked down waiting for buses in this scenario? Where are the school buses being struck when stationery?
I was brought up in a rural area. I live in one now. I see schoolkids waiting patiently at road ends and farm gates even on 60 mph roads.
Exactly. My local bus has a listed stop - no markings, no refuge, no flag - at a crossroads on a national speed limit road. That said, you'd not be doing 60 mph there. There are no houses... until you walk down one of the lanes and there's a farm and 6 cottages in a hollow.
As an aside, prompted by
@GusB, I remember bumping into my dad in town. He suggested I have a trip out with him up the dales on his bus. Near the top of the dale, I looked out and saw a school friend driving a tractor in a field, harvesting hay in a pasture. He and me would've been 14! It is a different life on a farm!!
I'd rather not reveal the location as we're potentially discussing the parenting decisions of an identifiable individual. But it's clear to me you're both not giving due weight to the specific situation here, namely the risks of this site and the times we live in.
Other than being a lane with a farm on, this is by no means the country or a rural area. There's a large city just 5 miles away, the nearest bus depots and their operations reflect this being just 500m from a Metropolitan Borough. The nature, frequency and behavior of the traffic reflects that. It is a rat run basically.
Being an experienced motorist, including vans and modern electric SUVs (diimensions and performance), a keen cyclist, and familiar with horse riding children, and old enough to have seen and known proper rural types in proper rural areas, I know for a fact you would not use this lane in anything but a motor vehicle. It's just too dangerous.
The site location and approaches are very unusual. It's clear the straight and layby were all created for the farm, which sits right next to the lane, which follows a natural ridgeline. This allows safe use by trucks to park and cars or farm vehicles to make simple left/right turns into/off the lane. Nohing more dangerous is needed, it has ample space in and behind the shed.
Even if a truck was parked up, absent the usual signs of imminent activity, even the safest drivers would feel quite happy approaching this straight at upwards of 40 mph, and once free of the villages and windy sightlines, think nothing of taking this opportunity to speed up, however brief.
If the layby were empty, there are plenty of scenarios where you would not even bother to slow down if a vehicle was travelling slowly or even stopped in the other lane, on this straight. Nor would you think twice about overtaking a similar vehicle in your lane.
Of all the things you would be thinking here, either when choosing your speed, or passing/overtaking, the potential presence of children in the road is not one of them. Or at least as low down the priority list as a suicidal badger.
It's also clear to any half way experienced driver that this stretch of lane is neither accessible (or desirable) to any animal large enough to cause you a serious issue. It's clearly an arable not livestock farm. You'd be in default mode - weather/light, surface, sight lines, blowout/mechanical failure. And that's an attentive hazard focused driver.
You'd see the shed in good time, but as I noted on streetview, when the doors are closed, it looks almost like it could be a disused (but not dillapidated) building. The shed is far enough back that when I passed on the farm side when its doors were open, it did not make me change my mind about what the biggest risk was at that moment - the idiot tailgating me.
The farmhouse is far harder to see, and in one direction at least, won't be visible in time to do anything about the thought it might mean children live there and so might do things like catch buses from invisible bus stops.
Not even a bus stopped in the road, even with indicators on, would immediately make you think MIND THAT CHILD. It would make you think, what's that silly sod doing, or there's another broken down bus.
It's not an absolute certainty that every car would fail to stop before striking a child, having not seen them early enough, or been travelling too fast, or just not being mentally prepared. We are talking 300m at the shorter side from stop to curve.
But look at how far out they warn you to slow down when approaching a roundabout on a long stretch of dual carriageway with sightlines of miles, and you get the idea of the physics of worst case scenarios. Time. Distance. Options. The boffins know it's as much if not more about driver awareness and processing time, as it is the physics of braking.
For a pretty featureless section of straight lane, if there are multiple vehicles and the potential for bus stop use, all of a sudden there are lots of different things you should be thinking about, and lots of different directions to be looking. At speed.
There's even a scenario here where the presence of a view opening up after some distance of classic tree lined no line painted running, but on the opposite side of the road to the hazard (the farm), could cost valuable moments.
There is no safe place to stand in the lane. That's what you're not appreciating here. The lane really is that tightly bordered by hedges, bushes and uneven high verge, to make standing in it for even a minute, a risk not worth taking.
There are only two places that are identifiable "locations" in the sense you say kids/drivers use rural stops, somewhere knowable, a gate or junction, where you can stand a little off the road. One is the corner of the farm entrance nearest the farmhouse, for buses on the farm side of the road, or a field gate for the opposite side.
These are dangerous for many reasons. In both cases, you can't be seen by oncoming traffic. And you are at the entirely wrong end of the straight, meaning you have little time to see or hear an approaching bus and decide if it's safe to make your presence known by literally stepping into the lane.
Even if you can signal, you are asking the bus driver to make a split second decision, or travel dangerously slowly. And if they overshoot, in both cases, you're in for an interesting choice, risking either squeezing down the nearside or walking around the far side, to board. The farm gate entrance is steeply sloped and (probably for that reason) surfaced with cobbles. Made for standing on, it is not.
This all leaves the safest, yet wierdest, place you should choose to stand/stop. The middle of the layby, using this shed side for both sides. It's wierd, just standing in the middle of the side of 100 foot long shed. And you are technically trespassing.
But you can see the oncoming traffic, and bus drivers can see you in good time, but can also stop in the safest place from the perspective of other traffic. It is certainly the safest option for far side boarding/alighting, given the need to probably slightly encroach the (invisible) median with your bus so the kid can physically get on/off.
And of course, that assumes the shed doors are closed and nobody is parked in the layby. If it's not, that opens up a whole can of worms regarding where the bus driver should be looking or what the child should be doing.
I'd say that without the farmer's cooperation, and even with it, there's no safe way to use this stop, even if you did the sensible thing and painted bays, a SLOW, and put a flag on the shed. I'd say the only reason there isn't any sign this has been the location of a tragedy, is that it isn't being used.
If a kid had been hit here, the place would look much different. That's sadly how it works, but until I saw this nightmare, I had assumed we no longer did that. That we were proactive now.
We can't even be sure there are children at the farm of course. But given where it is, I see no reason why they would be rural wise, much less steeped in generations of farming.
I could see this farm being a satellite, the farmhouse sold to other occupants. Whether or not they are the farmer's kids, the schools they go to will be by a vast majority, attended by city kids. So wearing, doing or acting in any way different, would not be wise.
I looked up the bridleway on streetview, and was unsurprised to see it's not for horses at all, it's a gated rough farm track, used presumably to allow the farmer to access a plantation to the south, and a wood beyond.
Funnily enough there is a "school" further along the bridleway, but like I said, by the time you get that far from this farm and its virtual bus stop, you're as close to the villages and their real stops via other routes. And as its remote location suggests, it's a special school. You'd never get risk assessment clearance for a horse trek up the bridleway, let alone onto the lane.
The dangerous nature of the lane is surely why that site is now served by a modern looking private road, a full 1km long. But since it still emerges onto the lane 200m from one of the villages (because of a wood) I noted with amusement that even this junction was served with official bus stops.
Only flags on poles, but with safe places to stand, and while not ideal (buses still stopping in the traffic lane in a tree lined curving road) there is far more space between the road and the the trees/shrubs, so it's far easier to assess on approach, and you'd be going slower by default. The junction is wide and clear, showing the risks it was designed with in mind, despite being a simple rural affair in its immediate locale. Fast moving frequent traffic.
In conclusion therefore, any council that put this farmer into the position where he had to either choose between making his kids use this bus stop, or not go to school, is asking to be sued. Or at the very least, compensate him for doing the only sensible thing and ensuring his kids stand in the middle of his layby, and he suspends all farm business for the duration of their arrivals and departures. A nice little earner.
