News / Action aimed at reducing accidents at Brig o Fitch
A NEW traffic island is to be introduced to stem the number of accidents occurring at the busy Brig o Fitch junction just outside Lerwick.
The measure is to be introduced on the junction at the A970 road to Scalloway, where traffic coming from the village meets vehicles travelling in and out of the north end of the town.
It was agreed at Monday’s meeting of Shetland Islands Council’s environment and transport committee following a report outlining 30 accidents had been reported since 2000 – a dozen of which resulted in injuries.
Road safety engineer Colin Gair said some of the accidents were the result of the junction being located on a “fairly tight” bend on the islands’ busiest road junction, with 9,400 vehicles passing through each day.
The local authority’s records show that a number of the accidents are caused by drivers “misjudging the gaps” in traffic coming north from Lerwick.
Gair said officials believed that installing a splitter island on the approach road from Scalloway “would help encourage drivers to slow more on the approach, and potentially stop on the approach, to judge the gaps better”.
His report also looked at another of the islands’ busier intersections, the B9073 Black Gaet junction which joins the A970 between Lerwick and Sumburgh.
Gair said that, while there had been “a fair amount of representations” about the junction being a potential accident black spot, only three out of 22 recorded accidents in the past 14 years resulted in an injury.
He told BBC Radio Shetland that it had not been possible to identify a “cost-effective solution” to the problem at the Black Gaet, meaning no action will be taken at this stage.
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