For Argyll

For Argyll, with other media, has consistently drawn attention to the installation of wooden barriers in lochside locations in Argyll by TranServ. This was done against all advice and against the experience of traumatic injuries when such fences were in use several years ago. At that stage the fences were withdrawn for safety reasons but have recently been reintroduced to sustained controversy.

Now, after an investigation into what happened when a car left the A83 south of Inveraray and went through one of these fences, the fences themselves are to be buffered against traffic leaving the road with the installation of additional barriers.

Since the Inveraray incident, there has been a very recent fatality where two vehicles were in collision at Ardgartan on the A83 on Loch Long. Both vehicles went through the fence there, and man in his sixties who was a passenger in one of them, died. It is not yet known what injuries contributed to the death of this man.

While Transport Scotland’s plans may reduce injuries to road users if the approporiate barriers are installed, it does not answer some basic questions aroud the introduction of the fences themselves.

The fences were said to have been installed t=for the protection of pedestrians, regardless of the risk they posed to road traffic. For Argyll is pursuing the matter. It wants to know:

• What risk assessment was done before the fences were installed?
• What the results of such risk assessments were?
• What numbers of pedestrians had been falling onto the shores in the locations where the fences were later installed?
• Did the man killed at Ardgartan in the recent road accident at the fence there, suffer injuries caused by the fencing and contributing to his death?