Managed Motorways

[crofty]

Thing that strikes me first about all this is why are 78 year old guys driving coaches with presumably 40+ plus folk on board. I'm in my mid sixties and am finding night driving getting more and more difficult. I wouldn't want the responsibility now never mind in 10 years.

[Gedge]

I don't like smart motorways but 2 things stand out ..

1. Nobody else was using the hard shoulder at that time

2. The other vehicle was parked and visible for some time with lights and hazard lights working ...

Could just as easily been sat in any other lane broken down or crashed and the 78 yr old drivers guide dog would still not have seen it .....

[ollydog]

This links to the recent tram crash in Croydon....bear with me.

So the report today's said the tram was going too fast when it crashed. The oh so helpful unions said the was because of a lack of safety equipment on the trams. But when any such equipment or ideas are put in place the unions say it's unsafe as it's taking safety away from people!

So back to motorways....people make mistakes. While people are in control of cars the will always crash and some will die. Three lanes or ten...hard shoulder or not..makes no difference.

Put humans in the loop and some will die...this will never change.

Mike

nothng there i can disagree with there mike, in my job i have to a lot of risk management and root cause analysis, guess what if rca is done properly it never comes done to human error, training always rears its head, i carnt say bollocks cause that would not be correct thing to say in my line of work cause it would upset the thick shites

steve

[SteveR]

And as an aside, there's no way I would sit in my car on a motorway if it had broken down. I would be well behind the crash barrier, further back down the road (in the direction of oncoming traffic) so that if something did hit it I wouldn't be hit by flying debris. (I always wonder about the risk of standing a little way up the road as you see some people do, since that's the direction everything's going to go flying in if it gets hit.)

Very, VERY sensible. But in freezing weather conditions, it is understandable why folks will stop in their cars. How often do people carry a winter kit in their car these days...? My daughters were not that impressed with their early Chrissy pressie 2 years ago when they both started driving to work, in Steph's case a 50-60min commute.

One of these sorts of Kit.
They were less money then and had little food inside and I tweaked it for their needs, lots of hot coffee drink for Kate! Sweets for Steph!

However, going back to your point, one thing I noticed t'other day on the telly was a trick the emergency folks are supposed to do when parking well behind the broken down car, turn your wheels into the left, so if it is hit, it will not go forwards as easily and hit the breakdown (and you!). I remember being told this donkeys years ago, but will admit to having forgotten it...

[phillh]

A side issue I know but:-

A couple of weeks ago, I was travelling South on a 'smart' section of the M1.

There had been some sort of incident Northbound and all 4 lanes were stationary for aprox 1 - 1.5 miles. The emergency services - fire, ambulance, police were having a hell of a job trying to get through the stationary traffic to the scene - no hard shoulder. These delays can cost lives!

[Zappa]

Mike[/quote]

The second statement I have quoted here is indeed true.

But the bus driver in this crash was on a managed motorway, and he thought the hard shoulder was open for use. Had this not been on a managed motorway, he would have known without doubt the hard shoulder was not open for traffic, the accident wouldn't have happened, and three lads would not be dead. So the first of the two statements certainly is not true, it certainly does make a difference.

Humans are already fallible by nature, do we need to introduce more confusion?[/quote]

Really? as so called professional driver did not know what type of motorway he was on? This is human error, not the fault of the road.

[Richard Simpson]

What prat stops on the hard shoulder of a motorway to 'top up their oil'?

[Tonibe63]

What prat stops on the hard shoulder of a motorway to 'top up their oil'?

A bit harsh there Richard, maybe it broke down when it ran out of oil.

[Dave DRZ]

Slightly off topic... they are working on the M60 turning it into a smart motorway... there are currently speed restrictions in place "average speed checks" at 50mph. Does anyone know how these are calculated? Does it calculate your average speed along the whole stretch of roadworks, or from where you join to where you leave, or between each camera?

I figure that if you are stuck somewhere not moving for a while that you should be able to counteract this later on by racing away - as long as your average doesn't go above 50mph you should be ok.

To some extent it doesn't matter to me as I'm riding and the cameras face the front not rear of the vehicle (thumbs)

I'd be interested to know how many tickets have been issued.

Dave

[-Ralph-]

Really? as so called professional driver did not know what type of motorway he was on? This is human error, not the fault of the road.

So in your view removing the hard shoulder on managed motorways is perfectly safe is it?

Can you deny that it wouldn't have happened on a normal motorway where the same driver wouldn't have had any question about whether or not the hard shoulder was open?

IMO it's both the driver AND the road. And with drivers like him about we don't need to introduce dangers in the road layout.