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Sight tests every two years. I can't believe the amount of people I know with dodgy eyesight who get behind the wheel.
Merge in turn doesn’t mean merge at the last f****** second.
But if you merge at the last minute like a zip, left, right, left, right, etc. then your using the maximum length of both lanes and so reducing congestion further back.
Where is stops working is if people don’t let others merge.
Merge whilst the traffic is still flowing. That way it stays flowing.
If it was that simple we could reduce all motorways to one lane. You can't fit a pint into a half-pint pot.
It’s generally fairly obvious what is and isn’t antisocial, Things like the big red cross on the gantry
Passing the big red cross isn't "antisocial," it's illegal.
Far tougher sentences for drink driving, years rather than months.
Repeat offenders should be banned for life, no hardship clauses, no appeal.
Immediate driving ban for people who bang on about winter tyres for negotiating the roads around the home counties.
Less ****s.
IMO what lies underneath most problems, is the whole entitlement thing. People feel they've got a divine right to drive on a beautiful smooth road (which at the same time, must never be closed for repairs). But that's an upgrade to users not roads, is that allowed? We've already got a country built around the car (or, alternatively, cities not built around the car, which are then torn apart and filled full of the things anyway even though it doesn't work), and that's not enough. Everything is a "war on the motorist"
People in court who say "I can't lose my licence, I need it for my job". I need to drive for my job, so I avoid losing my licence. It's not hard! Professional drivers shouldn't be held to lower standards than randoms.
Oh yeah, as a side order let's ban anyone doing any sort of work while on a motorbike CBT.
Also, every time the police do some sort of road safety campaign on facebook and every post is people saying "I drive like that, you can't stop me"- let's pass that info to the Facebook Traffic Police and have them go door to door ****ting people up.
Ban Fiat 500's with young blonde ladies behind the wheel. They're usually on Facebook so wouldn't notice any difference between train or car.
🙈
On a serious note, to make our roads better, plough a lot more money into mass public transport. Imagine if everywhere had the funds and connectedness of London for public transport?
I'd also change all road design law requiring priority to pedestrian and cycle infrastructure over cars.
I'd also require a minimum by law of walking and cycling infrastructure, again over the road space and design for cars, for all new developments. Bye bye guidance, hello law of 'have to'.
Cars should be made less safe and not as big or cocooning.... I’m thinking a caterham or aerial atom with a tiny engine and limited to 80mph.... oh and have a big spike sticking out of the steering wheel towards the driver. Having people open to the elements and having no crash protection around them will get the driving more carefully.
We also need the traffic police back on the roads (not read all the thread so don’t know if this has been posted) driving standards are shocking as folk know there’s no one out to catch them.... Redlights are a prime example, every day i see numerous cars go through lights on red.
We need harsher fines/penalties, cars being crushed if you’re banned
On a serious note, to make our roads better, plough a lot more money into mass public transport.
I've no idea of the practicalities / feasibility of such a thing, but I've thought for years that rather than having thousands of lorries thundering the length of the country we should be looking to move freight onto the rails where it belongs.
We also need the traffic police back on the roads (not read all the thread so don’t know if this has been posted) driving standards are shocking as folk know there’s no one out to catch them…. Redlights are a prime example, every day i see numerous cars go through lights on red.
I said that earlier, yes.
Anecdotally, red light jumping seems to have shot up in the last couple of years. I routinely see folk not just "amber gamblers" but three, four, five cars going through lights after they've turned red. This is surely an easy fix given how much we love cameras?
cars being crushed if you’re banned
The lease companies might have something to say about that, mind.
The lease companies can bill the driver for the full amount
If it was that simple we could reduce all motorways to one lane. You can’t fit a pint into a half-pint pot.
It all gets quite complicated because faster moving traffic needs more space between vehicles, so you can fit more into less space when going slower. But then decelerating takes more space than going fast.
As a gross generalisation to the point of inaccuracy; we cope fairly well with two lane motorways, because that's what pretty much all of ours are due to the person in lane 3 blocking lanes 1-3, it's only an issue for overtaking.
Passing the big red cross isn’t “antisocial,” it’s illegal.
I'm still a little bit naive and tend to think most illegal things are antisocial.
The last time I saw a lorry blocking both lanes it was well after the red cross, but I suspect everyone here has a slightly different scenario in their head and we're actually all in roughly the same place.
I’ve no idea of the practicalities / feasibility of such a thing, but I’ve thought for years that rather than having thousands of lorries thundering the length of the country we should be looking to move freight onto the rails where it belongs.
Yup. That's what HS2 will enable by freeing up track paths for freight.
Average speed checking on all motorways, like they have in France with the péage booths. I assume this is the reason that everyone seems to be going at the same speed on Autoroutes. If everyone goes at the same speed then traffic flows far better and driving is much much easier.
Speed limiters in cars to prevent us from speeding. Smart speed limiters would change according to the speed limit where you are driving at any given time.
Wales is talking of blanket 20mph limits in urban areas. That would be a step forward.
All vehicles to be fitted with mobile phone signal jammers
Nice idea, until the satnav stops working properly, and the inbuilt systems too, because they both need traffic conditions updates for rerouting.
Car exclusion zones, a 3mile ring around the centre of every city and town over x size.
Hopelessly unrealistic, for a whole bunch of reasons - a child could work that out.
Make car journeys of under five miles illegal.
Well, there goes the monthly supermarket food/essentials shop, then. No way could we carry the bootfull of stuff back home, and a taxi would cost almost as much as driving to Bristol to do the shopping!
And how would people manage who live five miles or so from a major town with no reasonable public transport, like friends of mine who live in outlying villages?
One friend lives at least a mile from the nearest bus stop, along a narrow country road that’s also steep and with sharp bends. I’ve walked along it to the nearest main road, it’s bloody terrifying in the dark, almost single track in places, totally blind bends, and no footpath. And only about five miles from Chippenham.
There are people demanding things on here which would render people’s lives completely impossible by any reasonable standards.
Taking freight off road onto rail is important. But if the extra road capacity this would free up is taken up by cars we have got nowhere.
Make all bad drivers give up their car and replace it with a Honda Firebird. To be ridden without helmet or leathers, and a free beer voucher at an out of town pub.
There may be a snag in there somewhere, but I'm hard pressed to see it. 🙂
The snag being Honda don't make a Firebird?
Don't particularly care about lorries overtaking each other. How often are you genuinely held up by them? My experience is that when there are fewer HGVs on the road (around holidays etc) there's no improvement in traffic flow.
Enforcing the existing laws would be the simplest solution with hidden speed cameras and modern algorithms to spot dangerous driving, along with increased undercover traffic police presence.
* Actively identify and prosecute drivers who tailgate. This is by far, IMHO, the cause of accidents on the roads, followed by...
* Start banning for phone use. My car shows me the speed of surrounding vehicles. The ones that can't keep a constant speed are nearly always tapping away on their phone thinking they're out of sight.
* Slowing down for gantry cameras should be really jumped on. I think the ripple effect of the drivers throwing out the anchors to slow from 100+ to 60 to go under the gantries is a significant impact on traffic flow.
* Headlights must be on at all times, then imbeciles won't forget or drive on sidelights with one bulb out.
Everything else is by-the-by. On a quiet motorway I'm not particularly bothered by someone sat in the middle lanes and often just pass them in lane 1 to avoid pulling across two lanes to pass. On smart motorway sections with no hard shoulder I'll often choose to use lane 2 myself, having come across a stranded car in lane 1 at night with no lights on.
Edit: Oh yes, forgot about red light jumpers. Definitely getting worse, and I frequently see people run the red at pedestrian crossings once the person has crossed. Good thing number-plates and road tax are stopping these criminals, eh?
How often are you genuinely held up by them? My experience is that when there are fewer HGVs on the road (around holidays etc) there’s no improvement in traffic flow.
More often than you'd think. It forces other drivers to slow down, then everyone wants to change into the outside lane as the inside two are going slow. If it's over a certain level of traffic then you can't pull out from the middle lane so people get frustrated and dive into a small gap in the outside lane which causes the people behind to brake gently which causes the people behind them to brake slightly harder, and so on until you get a slowdown event, and it's these that cause traffic jams.
On the M4 there's a point where it gets too busy for this and everything is doing the same 55-60mph, so no-one changes lanes, and the amount of traffic that can move smoothly along is astonishing. This is only possible though when there's enough of a gap between junctions, but it IMO this illustrates how lane changing is a major cause of traffic jams.
On the soon to be smart M6 driving South near Stafford last weekend in the first lane following a car about probably just under 2 seconds ahead I was quite surprised to find that lane 1 ended suddenly with no warning. That very nearly caused an accident.
I once complained to a friend about how frustrating 50mph average speed zones are as a driver - he has done some work on traffic modelling, and pointed out that 50 is about the ideal balance between traffic flow, and allowing space for necessary merges to happen. It makes sense that the most efficient speed is also the most annoying. It's also apparent just how many cars can get through a stretch of road when everyone is doing 50mph and not changing lanes (because there's no point!).
And in answer to the OP's question - stop using them.
Hopelessly unrealistic, for a whole bunch of reasons – a child could work that out.
and yet it works well in other countries.
Your sat nav need not use your actual phone for any data transmission to make things work - it would be easy for the car to distinguish between the inbuilt system and your hand held device phone.
I once complained to a friend about how frustrating 50mph average speed zones are as a driver
Why are they frustrating? I'd rather sit at a constant 50 than contend with the speeding up slowing down cycle that happens on unrestricted motorways.
Why are they frustrating? I’d rather sit at a constant 50
It's probably just me - I don't use those zones very often. It's quite a change from unrestricted motorway to a 50mph zone where there is much less to do as a driver, and where your responses are pretty much fixed. Sounds like a good use-case for an autopilot....
When the traffic density and lower average speed reaches a certain level, then overtaking rules are relaxed so if someone wants to sit in the middle lane, then you can select the safest route.
When the traffic density and lower average speed reaches a certain level, then overtaking rules are relaxed so if someone wants to sit in the middle lane, then you can select the safest route.
That's already sort of the case, IIRC the HC suggests when it's busy just pick a lane, but it doesn't tell you exactly how busy or under what conditions. But clearly if you are thinking about what you are doing it can make sense to keep a lane rather than glue yourself to the leftmost available space. I've seen speeding drivers apparently obsessed with keeping left despite doing 10mph faster than everyone else, so they end up weaving all over the road and drive about 10% more miles than they need to.
How about defining better and defining measurable targets for them.
Safer
Better Flow
Better economy/Emissions
Other
Then using evidence based decision making to work towards hitting those targets, rather than throwing stuff into the pot that statistically speaking would make little difference (Re-testing older people for instance, they are not the ones having accidents).
The hatred for the car here is bordering on comedic 🙂
A remote shut down, which the police can operate when they pull a car over, or even if it is safe to do so, in motion. Stop all these tossers from racing off and smashing into the general public.
Seems to be pretty frequent around Manchester.
Matt
I’d get rid of all the broken heroes on last chance power drives...
I’ve no idea of the practicalities / feasibility of such a thing, but I’ve thought for years that rather than having thousands of lorries thundering the length of the country we should be looking to move freight onto the rails where it belongs.
Arguably the Beeching report happened just two or three years too early - just as the decision was made to cut back much of the smaller branch line network was made..... ta-daaaaa the ISO Shipping Container was invented - perfect for distribution by train.
You know those signs you get that flash up your speed and either a smiley face or a frown. I'd replace the speed (if your over the limit) with a display of the number of points you'd be incurring if caught at that moment.
More Traffic Police . Nothing improves driving standards. All the legislation and retesting won't help people will just ignore it. We've enough laws governing driving now, if they were obeyed the roads would be much more pleasant and safer. People ignore them as there's bugger all chance of being caught.
On a personal note stop ****s stopping at the side of the road whenever they see a blue flashing light. Pull over by all means but think where you should do it. Not when it's hundreds of yards behind you and then has to negotiate a slalom of stopped vehicles, most of wnich are doing more harm than good.
Merging for roadworks lane closures does need a fix. People taking each approach genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. What's needed is a sign saying "Merge Here" and signs before that "Merge in 200m" etc. Just telling people to merge in turn doesn't work, as some interpret "in turn" to mean "with the vehicles that are in the next lane as you approach the roadworks" and see those who want to merge at the point where the lane stops as merging ahead of turn. What needs to be avoided is drivers getting aggravated, as that's when silly collisions occur.
"Use both lanes" is less ambiguous than "merge in turn" ... although you can argue that the lorries driving down the white line are literally doing what it says!
I’d get rid of all the broken heroes on last chance power drives…
Going to send them to a Cadillac Ranch?
Mandatory dash cam. mandatory upload to a site for full public scrutiny and rating of driving. Public would self police and report all bad driving. I think similar has been tried with CCTV surveillance.
I think this would work on a number of levels. Casually bad drivers would improve after public slating. More criminal behaviour reported. Neighbourhood watch curtain twitcher types would live their life watching hours of it to find stuff to joan about.
Simple enforcement of the two existing rules of the road:
Keep left unless overtaking.
Give way to the right.
The rules already exist, they’re simple, straightforward and yet carried out with minimal compliance.
Anecdotally, red light jumping seems to have shot up in the last couple of years. I routinely see folk not just “amber gamblers” but three, four, five cars going through lights after they’ve turned red. This is surely an easy fix given how much we love cameras?
Agree 100% but a friend who is in the traffic light manufacture business once told me that it is difficult to design a traffic light that can legally capture images needed for prosecution. Not sure what the issue is but, if it could be solved, then issuing fines and points to drivers who do this would very quickly change drivers behaviour or remove many dodgy drivers from the road.
Immediate confiscation of both vehicle and mobile device of anyone caught using their phone behind the wheel when there is inbuilt technology in the vehicle to allow phone connections via Bluetooth.
Like the silly cow that nearly ran me and my dog over as she exited a roundabout this morning - clearly she couldn't indicate her intention as she was holding her phone in the 'raised up to chest level in the palm of the hand' position that they think no-one will notice. Your brand new XC90 has the technology to allow phone connections you silly cow, if you must use your phone, at least connect it to your car.
Moar betterer rumble strips
a friend who is in the traffic light manufacture business once told me that it is difficult to design a traffic light that can legally capture images needed for prosecution.
Huh. How long ago was that? I'd be curious to know what the issue is given that speed cameras, bus lane cameras etc are prevalent.
So, if there was one thing only that you could change in order for our car-based infrastructure to function better, what would it be? (Provide a rationale if you want.)
So we're only allowed one change eh?
Make driverless cars the default choice then, without (or with minimal) manual control/override available.
Rationale:
Eliminate the fallible meat-sack from the control element of cars and a whole host of benefits ensue.
The traffic can manage itself, journeys and routing can be planned more efficiently, but best of all I'd imagine it would drive down the amount of cars in private ownership; if driving is no longer an "engaging" experience (i.e. it's no longer fun to be a nobber in your M5/S5/E55) you might as well use uber to get about as pay road tax and insurance to still be driven by a computer, then I reckon more people will choose to own either no or fewer cars.
If you have fewer cars on the road, and those that there are, are being used more efficiently to ferry multiple people about, more safely (because humans aren't in control), then our "car-based infrastructure" will probably operate betterer...
It's 2020, we still can't manage driverless trains and they're on bloody rails. Driverless cars in our lifetimes is a pipe dream.
Both my current car and the previous one have various driver aids like adaptive cruise control. The number of times it'd get it wrong or otherwise shit itself, I wouldn't be trusting a driverless car any time soon. Eg, the Octavia's CC wouldn't let you undertake vehicles on the motorway and would brake if there was something either directly in front of you or in a lane to your right. Unfortunately it sometimes applied the same logic on regular roads where someone was waiting to turn right and would suddenly drop anchor unless you got your foot back on the Go pedal.
It’s 2020, we still can’t manage driverless trains and they’re on bloody rails. Driverless cars in our lifetimes is a pipe dream.
I didn't see any caveats about feasibility...
although... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/05/nissan-self-driving-car-leaf-longest-journey
I didn’t see any caveats about feasibility…
Fair.
Huh. How long ago was that? I’d be curious to know what the issue is given that speed cameras, bus lane cameras etc are prevalent.
Speed camera - faster than permitted speed, get a photo. Number plate recognition for the naughty person.
av speed camera - time between two known points for all number plates, flag up a list of those who did it too quickly.
bus lane - photo of everybody; is the license plate on the allowed (busses and taxi) list; time stamp, is it between 8am and 6pm;
Only a guess, but you not only have to photograph/record the car driving through the junction, but also prove that the light was red at the time.
The lights at any meaningful modern junction have sensors on all the approaches and adjust the timings constantly. Only way to do this to my mind is to have the camera far enough back that the light is in shot, along with a sensor at the stop line, connected to the light. If triggered, save the second of footage before and after that instance.
Then hope that a camera, at some distance away, has sufficient resolution to pick up the reg no (and the software needs to know to ignore the reg nos of all the other cars in shot obeying the rules and stopping - remember the wide angle needed to get the light in shot)
Not impossible but far harder than speed and bus lane cameras.
That’s your view as you fly past the stationary traffic at 70mph and brake at the last second.
To everyone else they merged in turn half a mile back, probably still managing to do 50, and then the lane comes to a complete standstill to let Mr SelfImportant in his silver BMW “merge” at 5mph. This then has a knock on effect behind of the open lane backing up, making it look like it’s occupants are just being stupid, when infact they’re only stationary because the 1% who insist on bombing down to the end and forcing everyone to slow down for them.
Merge in turn doesn’t mean merge at the last f****** second.
If you don't agree with me, have a read about what the RAC think.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/driving-advice/zip-merging/
(Ps. Grey Skoda)
"I would ban lorries from ever pulling out of the inside lane on motorways and dual carriageways, unless the speed of the vehicle in front of them is less than the posted speed limit by more than 20 mph.
Lorries trying to pass other lorries when one is going 62 mph and the other is going a whopping 62.5 mph seems to do more to plug up traffic on motorways than any other factor I can think of."
But you'd be only be overtaking them by doing a massive 8mph more than they are. I don't think it is a massive problem. Even if there's a big queue of traffic behind the lorry for say, 30 minutes, that doesn't mean everyone has been "held up" for 30 minutes, you're just doing 62mph instead of 70mph, which by my maths means you've wasted only 3 1/2 minutes over 31 miles.
Like lots of driving complaints, there's little justification for getting so annoyed.