I WAS on Selsley common yesterday:-

1. There is a cattle grid in the road at each end of the common.
Next to each grid is a standard Department of Transport warning sign, a triangle with a cow in it (at waist height, unfortunately).
Near each grid is a homemade sign that is too small and which, of course, has no force in law.

So, on this common, the signs are inadequate.

I suggest a sign should be in view on all stretches of the road.

This would mean, say, two extra legal signs each way on this common.

Sticking up a few, legal, signs requires neither an exhaustive imaginative leap on the part of the council, or much money and time (a sign costs 30 quid (discount for bulk), plus pole, plus someone to erect it—maybe the farmers could do this?).

2. If speeding is an issue, why hasn’t the council put a 20mph limit on stretches of roads between cattle grids for the time that the cows are out?

3. In previous years, I have read in the SNJ, stories of farmers bleating (if that is the right word) that it is just too hard to put reflective markings on the cows themselves because the markings just fall off.

This is pathetic.

I think that they could find suitable products on the internet in a matter of minutes.

Alternatively, they could periodically check that the ones they have used in the past haven’t fallen off.

Presumably farmers believe they have a duty of care to these animals, yet do not take the most basic precautions to improve their safety.

How else protect a black cow on a black night?

The fact is that this story comes up with dreary regularity every year.

Yet the solutions are obvious and cheap.

Here are the action points, chaps:

1. Council to erect adequate signs.
2. Council to impose 20 mph limit between cattle grids for the periods in which the cows are out.
3. Farmers to fit fit-for-purpose reflective markings on cows.

Now, please just do it, before someone less patient than me bangs your heads together.

Jeremy Marchant
Stroud