TRAFFIC PROBLEMS FOLLOWING INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS

[SteveW]

You may have a short memory or just not heard.
It's not that long ago that one of our own suffered life changing injuries
while working on the M6.
That alone answers your question for me.

So many times I see warning signs lit up with....Incident, debris in the road, pedestrians on carriageway, 50 mph etc....
When actually the carriageway is clear.
These signs are not updated quickly enough or they are switched on way too early or inappropriately this causes motorists to ignore them. In fact if I slow down to 50 mph after seeing one of these random 50 mph signs, I'd probably get rear-ended by a plastics salesman in an A4 Audi.
For me these signs are counterproductive and a total waste of money unless they are managed correctly.

[DavidS]

While driving up the autoroute through northern France a couple of years ago, an accident warning sign was on and that was it.
About 3 miles later there were three police cones and a car with no front end at 45º on the inside lane where it had bounced back from the central reservation.

That was it, no-one there, no flood of police cars and no traffic queues.

Simple.

[scouse]

I lost a club member on a German Motorway this summer in an RTA. The other club members who unfortunately witnessed this were not allowed to even cover the body and the traffic kept flowing past while countless ghouls videoed and photographed his lifeless body. With that and what happened to Paul, and other friends in the past, due to feckwit impatient cockwombles ignoring warning signs - I have all the patience in the world with these delays as it could be someone elses lives being ripped apart because someone feels that they are too important to be delayed.

[Crossrutted]

I'm all for prudent safety measures, however I think the "incident and accident" handling routines in the UK are far too cautious, causing unnecessary delays and frustrations.

I think a more pragmatic approach could be taken - we are slaves to the "'elf & safety"
minions in the UK. There seems to be no method to control/curtail this "jobs for the boys" culture.

(Just my opinion, not having a dig at anybody on here.)

[Old Git Ray]

You may have a short memory or just not heard.
It's not that long ago that one of our own suffered life changing injuries
while working on the M6.
That alone answers your question for me.

I understand (and remember) what you say and yes Paul is a good guy but that was not the point. The point is that it is abused by the traffic regulators, so often that motorists get used to seeing no problem and consequently ignore the limits. I hasten to add that I am NOT one of them.

Needless to say I do not know what was or was not displayed during Pauls accident but it could well have been a dick head ignoring a posted speed limit for the reasons above.

[Mr K]

As someone who works in or beside the road, I trust nothing more than a huge concrete barrier or at least my van to protect me from the zombie driving nation.

You're all too busy to see why you need to slow down. Everything is perfect until you fuck up..

[pinball1008]

Response to any incident/accident will be based on the information given by the caller reporting it. So perhaps a large part of the responsibility lies with us the public. Perhaps also the disproportionate number of deaths of people on the hard shoulder has led to a greater reaction to even seemingly minor incidents?
OGR, I am intrigued as to what abuse traffic regulators are committing?

[Old Git Ray]

............
OGR, I am intrigued as to what abuse traffic regulators are committing?

To be fair, abuse is probably too strong a word. Over cautiousness with a possible dose os laziness is probably a better way to describe it.
What I am trying to say is the warnings and speed limits are usually for several miles and are left on long after the problem is resolved. How hard would it be to advertise the approximate distance to the problem ?

This encourages people to ignore them. Like I said earlier, I was passed by hundreds of cars over several miles, all doing at least 70 in a displayed 40.

[SteveW]

I regularly travel on th M6 between junction 29 and junction 19.
We endured months of delays during the installation of carriageway-side electronic signs, no doubt some motorists lost their lives encountering sudden standing traffic during this period. Millions of pounds were spent hours and hours of delays ensued, no doubt causing a lot of inconvenience sometimes with tragic results.
The whole process has been a total waste of money, it's the motorway that cries "Wolf"
Poor management of these signs has resulted in out of date information, over cautious warnings, random 50 mph restrictions and miss-information.
This has resulted in motorists ignoring the signs, totally counterproductive.
I'm pretty sure we could get our motoways moving better and greatly improve safety by restricting HGV's to the inside lane only.

[jaffa1963]

The way the UK deals with accidents etc is different to most European countries and is based on the way our law operates. In addition to our old common law, we also have a legal system where guilt is based on "beyond reasonable doubt" in addition to the law of tort. Put all this together and it creates a system that considers reasonable safety measures to be the highest level that is practicable. This is why we have such safe motorways and a legal system that is better than most.

Add that to some of the most congested roads in Europe and we have what we have.

I'd rather have it done our way than see an accident being dealt with by insufficient resources to ensure safety of police, victims and other road users and being left unable to investigate the incident properly.

I can see this from the point of view of the police, the victims and those inconvenienced by the delays as part of my job is to investigate railway incidents. I try to do the best I can for the victims and people on the train(s) involved. I do try to get trains moving as quickly as I can but safety and preserving of important evidence comes first.