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I know this has been adressed before, but this is the first comprehansive article I've seen about it

Quote:

Are cheaper new road surfaces lethal? George Saunders reports
It seems strange that so few people are making a fuss about the fact that local authorities in Britain have, for the past 10 years or so, been resurfacing roads with a material that is so lethally slippery that its use is banned elsewhere. One of the ingredients of this material, Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA), is an oil-based substance that remains slippery until it is worn off the surface of the road by the passage of traffic. How long this takes depends on the amount and weight of traffic using the road. It can take up to two years - or, in the case of the strip between the wheel tracks of four-wheeled vehicles, where motorcyclists can be expected to ride, never.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/.../mfgrip126.jpgHidden menace? Roads surfaced with SMA can be dangerously slippery
In a reply to a petition to the Prime Minister to have SMA banned in this country, it was admitted that the Highways Agency had, in the early 1990s, conducted trials but "decided not to continue its use following concerns regarding skid resistance". Later in that decade, the Government apparently decided it knew better than the experts and reversed this decision.
The BBC then aired a number of programmes drawing attention to "the hidden menace on Britain's roads" and the Transport Research Laboratory carried out another investigation into SMA, concluding, among other things, that "dry friction on new asphalt can be lower... by up to 30-40 per cent at intermediate and higher speeds", and also that, "at very low speeds, wet friction can exceed dry friction" (ie, it is less slippery when wet than when dry). Believe it or not, one of the recommendations was that a warning about newly laid road surfaces should be included in the Highway Code, which suggests the TRL recognised there was a problem but was not confident the Government would do anything about it other than issuing advice.
I have first-hand experience of the dangers of SMA. As a 70-year-old retired police inspector who has ridden motorcycles for 54 years, I am an experienced rider. But just before noon on a sunny day in November 2006, I was riding a Moto Guzzi Breva 750 at about 45mph along an almost deserted A1244 in Essex when a car some distance ahead indicated to turn right. I reached for the brake lever to check my speed slightly, and a split second later found myself bouncing along the road, sans motorcycle. I broke my left wrist so badly that I was kept in hospital for four days. A police officer who attended the scene could find no sign of gravel or diesel, but said the road surface "felt greasy". It had been resurfaced six months previously with SMA.
I have since learnt of a number of instances where vehicles have gone out of control on SMA, sometimes with fatal consequences. The British Horse Society has succeeded in having several stretches of SMA-surfaced roads treated with quartzite grit, because horses were losing their footing on it.
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SMA has a few properties that would appeal to local authorities - it is cheap and quick to lay - but does this justify being so reckless about the safety of road users?

[telegraph bike week article]