The Cat and Fiddle is a road in England between Buxton, Derbyshire and Macclesfield, Cheshire, named after the Cat and Fiddle Inn public house at its summit. Formed by parts of the A537, A54 and A53, it is famous for its scenic views across the Greater Manchester conurbation, the Peak District National Park and the Cheshire Plain, and for its many bends. It is extremely popular with motorcyclists, and is often classed as the most dangerous road in the United Kingdom.
The road takes its name from the Cat and Fiddle Inn which is at an elevation of 1,690 feet (520 m). [1] [ better source needed ] The road can be considered to start in Buxton at the junction of the A53 and A5004 Long Hill road just north of the Buxton Opera House. It follows the A53 through the western outskirts of Buxton until a right turn onto the A54 at Ladmanlow. It then climbs in a series of sharp bends onto the flat moorland of Goyt's Moss, where it runs as the A537 in a fairly straight line until it reaches the Cat and Fiddle Inn (which closed in late 2016 and reopened as a distillery and bottle shop in 2020).[ citation needed ] From the inn, it descends to Macclesfield via a continuous series of sharp, and often blind, bends.
It is one of only two roads into Macclesfield from the east and thus carries long-distance as well as local traffic, including heavy goods vehicles. It also carries tourist traffic into the Peak District National Park, including cyclists and walkers. It is part of the "Cat and Fiddle – Long Hill – Highwayman" triangle, which is particularly attractive to motorcyclists because of the frequency and severity of the bends. Given this mixture of usage, the number and sharpness of the bends and the frequent straying livestock on the road, a great deal of caution is needed. Bad winter weather can make the road even more hazardous.
The Cat and Fiddle Road was used as part of the route of the third stage of the 2016 Tour of Britain from Congleton to Tatton Park, forming the longest and highest climb of that year's race. [2]
A 2016 report indicates that between 2007 and 2011, there were 44 serious or fatal crashes on the 7.5 mile stretch. Between 2002 and 2006, there were 35. The report states that the safety issue is caused by "severe bends, steep falls from the carriageway and edged by dry-stone walls for almost the entirety of the road". [3]
As a result, the speed limit on the section between Macclesfield and the Cat and Fiddle Inn was reduced to 50 mph (80 km/h) from the national 60 mph (97 km/h) limit. The road is regularly patrolled by unmarked police cars and motorcycles and a mobile speed camera van is used most weekends during the summer. A police aircraft is often used in conjunction with these to enforce the speed limit.
The road was named as the UK's most dangerous in a 2008 survey. [4] The single-carriageway route was the location of 21 fatal and serious crashes and was rated in the EuroRAP report as Black, the highest risk rating. [5] This was in spite of a number of countermeasures installed by the road authority, including motorcycle-friendly barriers. The Foundation attributed this high number of accidents to road user behaviour; indeed, when motorcycle-related collisions are removed from the results the road became one of the safest in the country. [5]
Cheshire County Council also pointed the finger at motorcyclists' behaviour: [6]
"The fact is that it’s an attractive road to motorcyclists – they see it as a challenge to ride with its hairpin bends, limited views, downhill descent and uphill ascent. The thing that angers us most is not the fact that it’s dangerous, but that there are a group of people on that road who knowingly push the boundaries. We have tried to get the message across, that it is the emergency services that have to pick these people up off the road and have the duty of telling their families that they have killed themselves."
Having already spent £500,000 on a number of safety measures (including reducing the speed limit, installing high-friction surfacing, barriers and signs, widening the carriageway and using mobile speed cameras), [7] in January 2009 it was revealed that Cheshire Council, on behalf of Cheshire Safer Roads Partnership and Derbyshire Partnership for Road Safety, intended to spend a further £1.2 million on installing average-speed cameras along this road. [8] Installation of these cameras began in February 2010. [9] However, the initial operation of the cameras did not go smoothly, because along the full route of the cameras' operation there are a number of shortcuts which have the full national speed (60 mph) and decrease the overall distance of the route. These two factors, when combined, can give inaccurate readings from the speed cameras. [10] The average-speed camera scheme is a joint initiative between the Cheshire Safer Roads Partnership (including Cheshire East Council), Lee Murphy, Cheshire Safer Roads Partnership manager, said: "Major resources have been committed to the Cat and Fiddle road since 2000, including reducing the speed limit, high-friction surfacing, high-visibility warning signs, red warnings painted on the road, motorcycle-friendly safety barriers, enforcement signs, carriageway widening, mobile safety cameras and police operations. Even without police costs, we estimate that more than £500,000 has been spent on the road in Cheshire alone. Despite all this work, casualties remain high."
Of the 264 casualties on the road since 2001, approximately 70% of those killed or seriously injured were motorcyclists, the main causes being poor cornering/manoeuvring, exceeding the speed limit and failing to judge another vehicle’s speed/distance. "The information and statistics show that it is riding behaviour not the road condition that causes the majority of collisions. We don’t have a problem with other road users not seeing bikes, because the majority of collisions are single vehicles," added Murphy. [11]
The Cat and Fiddle again topped the list in the 2010 report, which claimed that fatalities on the road rose from 15 in the three years to 2005 to 34 between 2006 and 2008. [12] However, following the introduction of further safety measures including improved road barriers, a 50mph speed limit and the installation of average speed cameras, the road dropped out of the Foundation's top ten list in 2015. [13]
Road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Typical road users include pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, vehicle passengers, horse riders, and passengers of on-road public transport.
The A49 is an A road in western England, which traverses the Welsh Marches region. It runs north from Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire via Hereford, Leominster, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and Whitchurch, then continues through central Cheshire to Warrington and Wigan before terminating at its junction with the A6 road just south of Bamber Bridge, near the junction of the M6, M65 and M61 motorways.
The A53 is a primary route in the English Midlands, that runs from Buxton in Derbyshire to Shrewsbury in Shropshire.
Shining Tor is the highest hill in Cheshire, England. The summit has a maximum elevation of 559 m (1,834 ft) above sea level. It is in the Peak District, between the towns of Macclesfield in Cheshire and Buxton in Derbyshire, and is on the administrative boundary between Derbyshire and Cheshire East. The hill is at the south end of a north-south moorland ridge, which also includes Cats Tor, 519 metres (1,703 ft) high. There is also another hill named Shining Tor, above Dovedale in Derbyshire, at grid reference SK145545.
Motorcycle safety is the study of the risks and dangers of motorcycling, and the approaches to mitigate that risk, focusing on motorcycle design, road design and traffic rules, rider training, and the cultural attitudes of motorcyclists and other road users.
The A54 road is a road in England linking Chester in Cheshire with Buxton in Derbyshire. Its route through both urban and steep rural areas presents a challenge to Cheshire County Council in maintaining the safety of the road. Many years ago it was the main east–west route in Cheshire. The importance of the A54 through Middlewich and Winsford decreased in the 1970s and 1980s with the building of the M56 motorway and dualling of the A556 at Northwich. The section through Winsford carries approximately 30,000 vehicles per day.
The Maju Expressway (MEX) (formerly known as Kuala Lumpur–Putrajaya Expressway(KLPE) and KL–KLIA Dedicated Expressway) Maju Expressway (Malay: Lebuhraya Kuala Lumpur-Putrajaya) is an expressway network in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The 26 km (16 mi)-long expressway links the Kuala Lumpur City Centre with the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang, Selangor. The expressway is a backbone of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) area.
SPECS is an average speed measuring speed camera system introduced in 1999. It is one of the systems used for speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom.
Motorcycle lane is a term used for the special lane on a roadway that is designated for small vehicles such as motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and trishaw. It's usually situated between the other lanes, marked by 2 parallel yellow lines. Due to the popularity of such vehicles in several Asian countries, motorcycle lanes are commonly found there.
The A5004 is an A road in Derbyshire, England running north from Buxton to Whaley Bridge. A large section of the road is called Long Hill. It was formerly part of the A6. It runs through a scenic area of the Peak District National Park. In 2010 it was named as the seventh most dangerous road in Britain.
The A537 is a road linking Knutsford, in Cheshire, and Buxton, in Derbyshire. Part of the route includes the Cat and Fiddle Road, one of the most dangerous roads in Great Britain.
Cheshire East is a unitary authority area with borough status in Cheshire, England. The local authority is Cheshire East Council. Towns within the area include Crewe, Macclesfield, Congleton, Sandbach, Wilmslow, Handforth, Knutsford, Poynton, Bollington, Alsager and Nantwich. The council is based in the town of Sandbach.
The Road Safety Foundation is a United Kingdom charity which carries out and procures research into safe road design and road safety. The Foundation is responsible for the European Road Assessment Program (EuroRAP) in the UK and Ireland.
Freeways
Roads and Expressways
. Cities
or Temporary signs such as detours and construction sites
Road signs in South Korea are regulated by the Korean Road Traffic Authority.
Road speed limits in the United Kingdom are used to define the maximum legal speed for vehicles using public roads in the UK.
Road speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom is the action taken by appropriately empowered authorities to attempt to persuade road vehicle users to comply with the speed limits in force on the UK's roads. Methods used include those for detection and prosecution of contraventions such as roadside fixed speed cameras, average speed cameras, and police-operated LIDAR speed guns or older radar speed guns. Vehicle activated signs and Community Speed Watch schemes are used to encourage compliance. Some classes of vehicles are fitted with speed limiters and intelligent speed adaptation is being trialled in some places on a voluntary basis.
Terminology related to road transport—the transport of passengers or goods on paved routes between places—is diverse, with variation between dialects of English. There may also be regional differences within a single country, and some terms differ based on the side of the road traffic drives on. This glossary is an alphabetical listing of road transport terms.
These road signs are used in Vietnam following Chinese and French practice. Some signs are written in both Vietnamese and English. The signs are prescribed by the Ministry of Transportation of Vietnam.
