Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Smart Motorway - near death experience!

I begin to wonder if the people who run the roads actually know how to drive or own a car?

Interesting sign on the gantry this morning, on a stretch of the M1 known for fatalities in lane 1.............

X will be enforced.

I just wonder if that's a bit too obtuse for the unwashed.

Now to me that obviously means they'll enforce lane disipline but don't worry about your speed because that's in the Y-axis 🙂 .... I rest my case your honour! 🙂

K

The answer must be 42 surely unless X= infinity +1.

Perhaps the van driver had been in the outside lane and got to the centre lane by following the guidance in the imbecilic "Go Left" campaign.

The ones who post the silly low speed limits clearly dont!

I wonder what sort of Morgan 3 wheeler the OP has. If its one of the old originals I would seriously question the wisdom of taking it anywhere near a motorway. If its one of the new ones then MMC is as guilty as the road designers - there simply should be no possibility of losing all electrical power like he describes

LOL… See http://www.bleazey.co.uk/M3W.html
Phil has been fixing some of the MMC’s poor design decisions with the M3W “5 speed” for a while.

I think Howard would try and start an argument in a room with a mirror

I try and avoid motorways where possible as I find them extremely boring, and the constant poor lane discipline really boils my piss.

However I will use dual carriageways, and have had a couple of issues recently with fuel starvation/blockages that have caused me to come to a halt. Same issues - no hardshoulder, and Artics baring down fast within even less chance of evasive action due to lack of lanes.....

(fuel issues have been caused by a previous owner lining the tank, and the lining is now coming away - sometimes in chunks which temporarily block the fuel line. I'm hoping Father Christmas is going to bring me one of Simons shiny new stainless tanks.)

There are lots of things wrong with Motorways as traffic volume has increased.

HGVs blocking traffic by slow overtaking is an issue.

So is hogging lane 3, which is now an epidemic

And pulling out without signalling.

But also some slip roads are now too short, and some junctions, especially where a down slip merges into an off slip on an incline are just dangerous.

And the speed gantries do cause bunching.

So we also avoid motorways much more than previously.

Agreed, but I think the principle is that if you improve any road, it will simply attract more traffic until it reaches a balance between efficiency and congestion. If they made motorways better, you'd start using them again (as would many others) and they'd become congested again. The trick is to reduce congestion by reducing average speeds whilst ensuring constant flow.

This is the thing that surprised me most when I first learned about it: roads with slower average speeds can carry a much greater density of traffic with faster overall journey times, due to the closer spacing that's possible and the relative lack of bunching and resultant longitudinal waves. There's also the significant reduction in emissions you get when traffic is freely flowing at lower speeds.

To improve things significantly but still permit higher average speeds you'd have to build more road capacity than the demand can use, and as it's taxpayers money that funds it, who's going to vote for the government to build more roads than are needed?