Traffic smoothing or traffic calming?

Following local residents' concerns about the perception of the junction of  Basire Street with New North Road as being a dangerous junction, council officers commissioned a traffic report on the junction.  I was not the only person to be surprised that the report was mainly concerned with "easing traffic flows" through the junction.

We all thought we had expressed the concern that the junction was dangerous, and needed moderating.  - Most people would agree that traffic tends to build up some speed on this section of the road.  Yet the mind-set of traffic engineers still seems to be to make traffic flow more smoothly (ie speed it up).

It is a well know fact that Islington has relatively low levels of car ownership, and is plagued by traffic from elsewhere trying to get through our borough, which is actually nothing to do with us.  What we need is traffic calming, and if it takes traffic longer to get through Islington, so be it.  The above sign outside Whitmore Primary School (just over the border in Hackney) sums it up nicely.