Yesterday I was bowling along the M62 managed motorway section. There was a decent volume and the overhead signs were indicating 60mph and the hard shoulder was open as a lane. In other words nowhere to hide if there is a problem.
The car-in-front's draft threw up an empty builders merchant square sack up from the inter-lane dotted line into the middle of my lane. With nowhere to manoeuvre the sack wrapped around the my front-end.
With a closed hard shoulder I wondered fleetingly if it was safer to drive to the next refuge/sliproad. I never had time to come to any conclusion as clouds of black smoke billowed from the front end and made the decision for me.
I had to stop on the "hard shoulder" (now lane 1) with my hazards to pull the now-burning plastic-weave sack off my exhausts.
Happily all the traffic using the hard-shoulder as lane 1 were really awake and changed lanes early. Off course the clouds of black smoke might have provided more obvious early-warning than my hazard-lights!
'Twas an interesting experience all told.
