Viewing 34 posts - 1 through 34 (of 34 total)
  • M1 roadworks…. Concrete barriers
  • burko73
    Full Member

    I just spent a lot of Monday and Tuesday going from southampton to Dalby and back. It seemed like most of the m1 I was in a 50 zone.

    If I remember last yr when I was last on the m1 the highways guys had a 50 zone again where they were removing miles and miles of the old metal barriers and putting in new concrete central barriers.

    Yesterday I seemed to spend hours in a 50 limit in pretty much the same place where they seemed to be chiselling out the concrete barriers and taking them away on trucks…. .

    What’s all that about?

    Also I spent the entire duration of the one 50 zone with an artic truck about a foot from my back bumper flashing and tooting the horn at me as he wanted to overtake me it seemed cos I had the cheek to leave about 3 car lengths in front of me. You know the score, all 3 lanes are doing between 45 and 55 some lanes faster than others but changeable and this d£&k is right up my jacksie in a massive truck basically trying to bully his way through. There’s no way of moving aside or no need as we’re all pretty much governed to the same speed as there are average speed cameras.

    Is it the case that no one gives a shit about the av speed cameras then? There were loads of them.

    bluearsedfly
    Free Member

    Not sure about the speed cameras, but there are several sections on the M1 barriers where the concrete has failed and is having to be replaced.

    jambourgie
    Free Member

    Dunno about the barriers. ‘Jobs for the boys’ maybe? As for the truck, he’ll know that he can go say 54mph without getting a ticket, so he’ll bloody well drive at 54mph! If you’re driving at 50mph he’ll be wanting to overtake. See this a lot on the A1, trucks overtaking another truck going 1mph slower, and taking 3 days to do it.

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    scotroutes
    Full Member

    Your indicated 50mph may well be as low as 45-46mph in reality. Add in a little lee-way (you don’t get ticketed for 51mph) and there could be a 10mph difference between the speed you were travelling and the speed he wanted to travel.

    Drac
    Full Member

    The concrete barriers were temporary ones whilst work is going on or at least normally they are.

    Onzadog
    Free Member

    A while back, I noticed that lots of the “new” concrete barriers had cracks and flakey bit in them. A while after, these were highlighted with yellow wax marker. Now they’re being cut out. I imagine someone somewhere has dropped the mother of all bollocks and there’s some major rework going on. I just hope the contractor is paying and not the public, but I somehow doubt it.

    Drac, the ones on the m1 28 to 32 are being cast in place as new central reservation. Driving it at least twice a day for the length of the works feels like they’ve been doing it for about ten years or so.

    craigxxl
    Free Member

    A lot of people are that stupid that they don’t understand the concept of “average” speed cameras as you see them bombing along in excess of the limit before slamming the brakes on to go through the camera at 50 then speed up again.

    bluearsedfly
    Free Member

    I just hope the contractor is paying and not the public, but I somehow doubt it.

    The contractors insurer.

    Mr_C
    Free Member

    I thought they finished the barriers between 28 and 31 ages ago. The current work is to upgrade it to a smart motorway. I’m sure they’ll think of something else to cause delays when they’ve finished with that.

    I can’t remember a time in the last ten years when there weren’t long sections of road works going on somewhere on the M1 – will they ever finish it?

    Houns
    Full Member

    The M54 central reservation is being dug up, new drainage put in and a concrete barrier put up, I think they are also going to tarmac the lot too. Great, it all needs doing.

    However I can’t fathom out why the Westbound speed limit is 40mph and the Eastbound is 50mph? Work is identical on both sides

    jambourgie
    Free Member

    A lot of people are that stupid that they don’t understand the concept of “average” speed cameras as you see them bombing along in excess of the limit before slamming the brakes on to go through the camera at 50 then speed up again.

    Out of interest, could you, in theory, speed through the first cameras at 90, and then stop just out of view of the other cameras, sit and read a book etc, and then drive through safely?

    Edit: Not on the M1 obviously, but country roads.

    PePPeR
    Full Member

    European road safety. Most motorway is being upgraded to concrete barriers!

    EN1317 to be precise.

    scotroutes
    Full Member

    Yes.

    Although you’d be breaking the law

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    You should try the M3. Recent trips to Heathrow have been dull as dishwater, as there’s a very long 50 limit with seemingly nothing being done apart from converting it to a “Smart Motorway”. Which, I suspect means more average speed cams.

    My driver hates it. I try not to join in the ranting and sit quietly in the back and look at my phone! (VW Phaeton, BTW. Awfully nice to be driven in, and I was buying myself a luxobarge, I’d certainly look at one!)

    themightymowgli
    Free Member

    It baffles me as to why they need to reduce such great distances of it to 50mph. I think the M1 is about 23 miles and the M3 about 17. The M6 and M5 is also riddled with them. Why can’t they caterpillar the work, have a 5 mile section that crawls along as its completed?

    As for the tailgating I can’t condone that at all, it’s leathal. However as someone sat in a truck in these systems on a daily basis it can be extremely frustrating sitting at 40-45mph when you can clearly see someone several vehicles ahead dawdling along in the middle lane with everyone else stuck behind.

    burko73
    Full Member

    Thing is I wasn’t dawdling. I was just keeping a bit of space in front of me. Prob 3 car lengths. He’s sat right up my arse, he’s loaded up, I’ve got nothing more on board than me, a bag and a bike and I’m stopping quicker than him. I can’t go anywhere, if I do force my way in to a different lane I just sit there either 15 m behind him, alongside him and 15 m in front alternating those positions for 23 miles. As soon as the works end, I’m off at (just over )70 he’s back to 56 mph…

    It’s basically like someone’s balancing a fuc£&sing massive anvil above your head waiting for it to drop….. I use the m3 and m27 a bit and the a34 and m40/42 m6 toll a bit but the m1 is just full of idiots. It would be carnage if one person slammed the brakes on in one of those 50 sections.

    Oh, it’s not the temp barrier, it’s the permanent cast in place barrier that they are air chiselling out and taking away. I watched them lay it last yr….

    timba
    Free Member

    Not an excuse, but his tacho is within +/- 2%, your speedo is +/-10%
    His speed limiter is set at 90kmh. Bottom line he’s unlikely to get a ticket with his foot flat down

    Concrete barriers are fine until someone hits them and they need replacing, and quality control is probably quite difficult too

    senorj
    Full Member

    If you’re really lucky you get to see the machine that forms the concrete barrier.
    That’s up there with a Norbert Dentresengle truck!

    muddy9mtb
    Full Member

    sorry to be a tree hugger but in the days of metal barriers wildlife at least had a chance of crossing the road. but now great swathes of the uk are cut off by these structures…hmmm

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Thing is I wasn’t dawdling. I was just keeping a bit of space in front of me. Prob 3 car lengths.

    Aye, I’ve said before on various driving threads, it is impossible to keep a recommended gap* these days without some tool tailgating you to encourage you to close it up a bit. I’ve never really figured out why that helps them.

    * (at 50 the recommended gap would be roughly ten car lengths)

    but now great swathes of the uk are cut off by these

    Good point. Also I thought the whole point of metal barriers was that they are designed to snap at the posts and deform, causing the vehicle to be slowed and guided back along the lane. Concrete seems a lot less forgiving.

    engineeringcowboy
    Free Member

    The little animals use all the new wildlife tunnels installed across the roads

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    there always used to be 3 or 4ft either side of the Armco to contain anything that hit the barriers and allow for the deformation – this ‘spare’ space is being turned into a running lane now so if Armco is still used it would deform into the oncoming traffic immediately the other side of it.

    Concrete is now the only way to keep cars with a closing velocity of 180mph apart if one of them veers to the right into the barrier for any reason.

    andermt
    Free Member

    timba – Member
    Not an excuse, but his tacho is within +/- 2%, your speedo is +/-10%
    His speed limiter is set at 90kmh. Bottom line he’s unlikely to get a ticket with his foot flat down

    Slightly pedantic but there is no -10%, speedos are not allowed to under read.

    nickc
    Full Member

    Also I thought the whole point of metal barriers was that they are designed to snap at the posts and deform,

    was the point, sadly it didn’t work

    speedos are not allowed to under read.

    mine pretty much over-reads by 2-3mph consistently (compared to SatNav, I’ve no idea how accurate that is)

    hairybiker84
    Free Member

    With regards to tw*ts in HGV’s tailgating we had one playing silly games on a Sunday and the missus took down the registration and telephone number sign-written all over the thing. She called them up Monday morning and relayed the entire episode to a nice lady that said they took these things very seriously and would be calling the driver in to explain his actions. If that’s his job and he can’t handle keeping a safe distance or driving at the same speed as the rest of the traffic in situations like that he should maybe go and sweep some streets or do something else less stressful instead.

    iain1775
    Free Member

    I thought they finished the barriers between 28 and 31 ages ago. The current work is to upgrade it to a smart motorway. I’m sure they’ll think of something else to cause delays when they’ve finished with that.

    They already have
    A permanent reduction to 50mph to aid ‘pollution levels’
    Local industry is currently arguing against it as it will apparently hurt the local economy

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    Aye, I’ve said before on various driving threads, it is impossible to keep a recommended gap* these days without some tool tailgating you to encourage you to close it up a bit. I’ve never really figured out why that helps them.

    My car has a little indicator thingy that tells me the gap to the car in front in seconds. The 2 second gap is MASSIVE. People from the lane to my left will merrily just pull out without any indication or thought for speed differentials into any gap bigger than (oh, yes, scientifically tested 😉 ) half a second

    It’s entirely possible that the same thing is what’s pissing off Burko’s lorry driver – if cars are pulling into Burko’s safe gap, all the lorry driver sees is the queue in front of him getting longer

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    this ‘spare’ space is being turned into a running lane

    Mmmm… that sounds suspiciously like sacrificing safety for MOAR CARZ!!!1! 😕

    was the point, sadly it didn’t work

    It didn’t? I thought that the use of metal barrier was one of the commonly cited reasons that we have some of the lowest motorway fatality rates in the world? Do those figures not stack up?

    I don’t fancy doing this against a concrete barrier:

    [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o09FC1xWGbA[/video]

    😯

    The 2 second gap is MASSIVE.

    Yep. 44.7 meters at 50mph, but in my experience many people seem to object to anything more than about 10 meters, regardless of speed.

    natrix
    Free Member

    Most motorway is being upgraded to concrete barriers!

    EN1317 to be precise.

    To be really precise; as motorways are only found in the UK (the rest of Europe having autoroutes, autobahns etc) they will be subject to BS EN 1317 which is the UK interpretation of EN 1317.

    nickc
    Full Member

    GrahamS I could be wrong, but I think the issue with metal barriers is that while they offer some protection from cars, Lorries can just plow straight through them, or be launched over the top of them.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    I’m not sure that’ll be much consolation to anyone that happens to be between the lorry and the concrete barrier. 😯

    oliverracing
    Full Member

    I’d imagine they don’t offer very good protection, but a pretty cool idea.

    [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl0Q2bDnBUc[/video]

    konabunny
    Free Member

    To be really precise; as motorways are only found in the UK (the rest of Europe having autoroutes, autobahns etc)

    Those 13 motorways in Ireland must be mirages then 😉

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    a pretty cool idea.

    Impressive tech, but seems like a pretty hard way to go about it.
    When I lived in Adelaide one of the main roads to/from the CBD had a reversible central lane which changed direction for rush hours. As I recall they just used big signs and overhead lights.

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