A113 Speederbot

Campaign news for 2023

2023 is the year we’ve decided to turn up the pressure on those that should be supporting the campaign to make Stanford Rivers and the A113 safer.

Happy new year to you all from the developer, the bot and the rest of the team. We’re hoping that our local councillors, MP and police force have made new year’s resolutions to help our campaign for safer roads.

Support for the bot from those that can really make a difference has been a bit thin on the ground, despite us campaigning as hard as we can so we’ve decided to be a little more proactive this year by sending out personalised tweets to some of the people that can actually make a difference.

Cloning The Bot

depicts an image of the bot being cloned

The effectiveness of the bot gathers pace, with Stanford Rivers Parish Council supporting the A113SpeederBot campaign.

We’re happy to report that the Parish Council have been working closely with our developer over many months and we are now working together with them in running the a113SpeederBot.

Who Owns The Roads? Myths and Misunderstandings.

nick freeman, a tax disc and a warning sign for cyclists

Sometimes I get involved in debates on social media regarding vulnerable road users, who I always end up defending. Usually people on bikes, though I’m really defending people on horses and people on foot as well. People in cars don’t need defending, because they aren’t vulnerable to the more benign road users, so I usually end up siding with the people on bikes, horses or foot. Notice that I refer to all these individuals as people, not cyclists, horseriders or drivers. They’re people, okay, so why not treat them as such?

Permanent Signage!

We have permanent signage!

Back in December of 2021, I reported that The Parish Council was considering supporting the bot and I’m delighted to be able to say that the first its-real-and-you-can-look-at-it-and-touch-it evidence of this support has now manifested itself as permanent signage at both ends of the village.

Festive speeding

There has been no letup in speeding through the village of Stanford Rivers during the festive period, when we would all expect the volume of traffic to be much reduced, especially during the current pandemic and the holiday period meaning fewer people using our roads, the A113 included.

The Parish Council Considers Support

Really moving along now, since positive action has been deployed in Stanford Rivers by Essex Police and, more recently, we have seen interest from the local Parish Councillor, Cllr Adams, who I am in touch with from time to time, and I have also received a thank you message from Cllr Jackson via email on 19th November 2021:

Enforcement Begins

Really happy to update the blog with some good news.

Essex Police visited the village late last month to carry out speed checks through Stanford Rivers.

Essex Police make contact

After contacting our local MP, Alex Burghart (Conservative MP for Brentwood and Ongar), only to be told he cannot help me unless he has my name and address, together with being ignored over and over again by our local councillor, Jaymey McIvor, PC Fenn from the Essex Police Rural Engagement Team has made contact, initially with this tweet and more recently via email.

A113SpeederBot in the media

Yay! My first real blog post.

We are very pleased to see that Ongar News, a local newspaper for the people of Ongar and by the people of Ongar, has published a piece on the SpeederBot.