Road Safety

Early this bank holiday, after a lousy day yesterday, Hathersage Road was as quiet as I've known it . And two stags were on the road. I was driving fairly slowly anyway but slowed down more when I spotted them. They saw me just as quickly and shot off the road and into the woods. After all these years it's the first time I've seen deer on the road.

So some speculative thoughts:

1  They keep away from traffic generally. This road can be very busy indeed especially in early mornings and I've often disturbed deer within 30 yards of the road and they always ran off in the opposite direction to traffic.
2 That's quite different to escaped sheep which wander from side to side alarmingly. It's worth saying this because some people, notably some farmers, have been known to complain that deer need to be controlled (i.e. culled) because of dangers to traffic. My guess is that deer would keep away from obvious traffic, preferring to cross at quiet times particularly at night.
3 That would be consistent with incidents I've heard of when drivers have reported deer running over the road  at night
4 The local highways department is negligent in failing to limit speeds on this and other roads. The very least should be signs warning of sheep and deer on the road.
5 There's a very strong case for reducing the speed limit. This is national park and not a suitable place for the kind of speeding and aggressive driving I regularly see here. Perhaps it's time to revisit the aims and vision for the national park. There's this idea around that 'the economy' is important but that is used by some people to reject any kind of restrictions or regulations. There have been some dreadful accidents on this road. My preference would be no higher than 40 mph.