Driving standards

[MarkC]

Just now, shortliner said:

Re nobody seeing patrol cars any more - I'd suggest you don't drive badly on the A9 in Northern Scotland - this morning - going to Inverness and back I saw four  - two of which had pulled drivers over - and south of Inverness in the last month they have stopped 3 on the A9 doing 140+mph!  (And the A9 from Dunblane through Perth, to Inverness has average speed cameras fitted!!!) On the other hand, foot patrols seem non-existent! I don't remember when I last saw a policeman on foot(or a traffic warden) !

I have no problem with patrol cars 'tugging' miscreant motorists. Indeed, I'm all in favour of that. How else are you going to catch tailgaters, nutters who undertake, lane hogs, mobile phone users etc...

 

Average speed cameras, on the other hand...I know of a few folk who have been caught out shortly after these things were put up on 'normal' roads - the A1079 Market Weighton bypass caught 3 of them...

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

I do see foot patrols. Earlier this week was in conversation which went thus:

Officer: Did you get his number?

Me: Started HA, that was all I got.

Officer: OK, vehicle description?

Me: Masterbati super Oaf, in black and chrome.

Officer: Driver?

Me: male, ginger hair.

Officer: Well I'll call it in and hope.

 

Had the call back yesterday, they think they know who it may be, stand by...

 

That's the trouble when on foot, the guy doing 60 in a 20 zone some distance away is gone before you can get eyes on properly.

[TheQ]

There is a classic in Alnwick in Northumberland.

Come out a car park, turn right and go through the hole in the town wall and you've broken the law.

Come straight along the same road you've turned onto above and you CAN go through the hole in the town wall..

[Hobby]

As I'll be up there in June I'll try to remember that!

[Nick C]

45 minutes ago, TheQ said:

There is a classic in Alnwick in Northumberland.

Come out a car park, turn right and go through the hole in the town wall and you've broken the law.

Come straight along the same road you've turned onto above and you CAN go through the hole in the town wall..

 

Looking on google maps, and it's the turning right that's the problem, not the going through the hole? Especially as there's also a no-left-turn coming from the opposite side of the crossroads. Presumably there's often a queue waiting to go through the hole and they believe that cars trying to join it from the side roads would be dangerous.

[peanuts]

7 hours ago, shortliner said:

Re nobody seeing patrol cars any more - I'd suggest you don't drive badly on the A9 in Northern Scotland - this morning - going to Inverness and back I saw four  - two of which had pulled drivers over - and south of Inverness in the last month they have stopped 3 on the A9 doing 140+mph!  (And the A9 from Dunblane through Perth, to Inverness has average speed cameras fitted!!!) On the other hand, foot patrols seem non-existent! I don't remember when I last saw a policeman on foot(or a traffic warden) !

may be to do with the experimental raised speed limit on the section north of Perth for HGVs to aid fraffic flow and cut out the dangerous and often fatal overtaking by impatiant car drivers where HGVs are correctly observing the single carriegeway limit of 40mph in scotland think it has been raised to 50mph for just that section of the A9 .they were enforcing it hard initialy 

[Hobby]

I was going to say that it's already 50 but just checking I hadn't realised that Scotland hadn't raised it like the rest of GB...

[ejstubbs]

If you'd seen what a lot of Scotland's single carriageway roads are like then you might understand why!

 

It's only on the A9 that lorries are allowed to do 50mph, and only pro tem until the A9 dualling project is complete.  The average speed cameras are primarily there to stop drivers of smaller vehicles from going at warp speed when they're not 'stuck' behind a lorry, only to get 'stuck' behind the next one and trying suicidal (and, all too often, homicidal) overtakes.  It's basically like a smart motorway: everyone does the same speed and most people are much less tempted to act like wallies.

 

People really didn't help themselves on the A9 before the 50mph limit came in, though.  Yes, you used to get long tailbacks behind heavy lorries on the single carriageway sections, but the occasional dual carriageway sections were often inadequate to clear the backlog because (of course) some charlie would make an absolute meal of overtaking the lorry thus unnecessarily holding up everyone behind them.  I think many of them were taken by surprise when the lorry they were trying to overtake sped up as well, even if it was only by 10mph to the heady heights of 50mph.  That, and the road's unhelpful tendency to go uphill sometimes*.  In the Highlands: who'd have thought it?  (IMO far too many drivers are noticeably bad at managing their speed, especially when it comes to speed relative to other traffic.)  A fair few accidents were caused by frustrated drivers trying desperately to barge in front of a lorry as a dual carriageway section came to an end: burying the throttle and flying through on the hashes at 80+ mph then having to squeeze back in ahead of the lorry while trying to avoid running in to the back of the line of cars doing 60mph just in front.  What fun we used to have in those days...

 

The other major cause of serious accidents on the A9 was (and to an extent still is) the ordinary road junctions on the single carriageway sections.  If you were familiar with the area then you soon learned to be very wary, when trying to join the main road e.g here, of the aforementioned warp speed drivers approaching much faster than you might otherwise have expected.  All too often it was a new visitor to the area who got taken out by one of those barely-guided missiles - and the results were never pretty.

 

* The Edinburgh City Bypass eastbound from the M8 junction is a classic case where it's rarely possible to do more than about 50mph even in lane two because of the numpties who have never noticed that your car goes slower up steepish hills unless you press a bit harder with your right foot.  I think the fact that it's a motorway standard road is one thing that confuses people: they expect to able to go into "autopilot" on roads like that - i.e. not to have to really concentrate much on the actual driving part of, er, driving - especially if they've just come off the M8 which is pretty much flat all the way.  (For those of us who do actually have an 'autopilot' - i.e. cruise control - this is particularly noticeable.)

Edited April 6, 2019 by ejstubbs

[Hobby]

48 minutes ago, ejstubbs said:

If you'd seen what a lot of Scotland's single carriageway roads are like then you might understand why!

 

The vast majority of my driving up there has been in the Central belt and the good old A702 which is a cracking road even with some 40/50 limits on it... In those areas the roads don't seem any different to the majority of English and Welsh roads I've driven on...

 

Ah, the Edinburgh Bypass and it's stupid connections to the motorways... I assume it was planned to be a bottle neck?

[ejstubbs]

IMO the A702 is a frustrating road because it is so heavily used by lorries avoiding the 'long way round' from the M6/M74 via the M8.  I much prefer the A701 if heading towards the M6.

 

Away from the central belt - and even within it eg some of the A roads between Stirling and Glasgow - the single carriageway roads tend towards the narrow and twisty.  Basically not particularly suitable for large vehicles at all, but you can't ban them altogether.  Of the few exceptions - such as the Inverness to Ullapool road, parts of the Lochcarron to Shieldaig road, and the Broadford to Armadale road - many have been improved using cash from the EU.

 

I would tentatively suggest that the Edinburgh City Bypass is not as much of a bottleneck as would have existed between the M8/M9/M90 and the A1(M) had it not been built!

[Enterprisingwestern]

5 minutes ago, ejstubbs said:

- many have been improved using cash from the EU.

 

That's the end of that then!

 

Mike.

[alastairq]

''No more than three sheep abreast'' country, eh?

[ejstubbs]

1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

That's the end of that then!

 

You might say that.  I couldn't possibly comment (at least, not without risking a telling-off from the mods.)

[raymw]

If you have a sat nav, it may behave a bit odd after today. (not just Tom-tom) It's to do with the ten bit week number rollover used in earlier models. https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/updates/

 

[rockershovel]

10 hours ago, raymw said:

If you have a sat nav, it may behave a bit odd after today. (not just Tom-tom) It's to do with the ten bit week number rollover used in earlier models. https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/updates/

 

 

I’m generally quite taken with my Skoda, but the satnav defies all logic at times, apart from being quite seriously out of date in some areas (and having no useful updates available). This is particularly true of the M6/A46 area... it also has a tendency to direct the driver up irrelevant slip-roads, round the junction and back onto the carriageway. The remedy is to zoom out and decide to ignore it! 

[peanuts]

5 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

I’m generally quite taken with my Skoda, but the satnav defies all logic at times, apart from being quite seriously out of date in some areas (and having no useful updates available). This is particularly true of the M6/A46 area... it also has a tendency to direct the driver up irrelevant slip-roads, round the junction and back onto the carriageway. The remedy is to zoom out and decide to ignore it! 

blame google maps which is what 99% of sat navs use as thier base map try using one around Hindley area of wigan where some of the post codes are upto a mile out of place and have been for over 10 years 

Edited April 7, 2019 by peanuts

[Hobby]

I've had that too, Peanuts, with the (same?) VW satnav. Google Maps certainly doesn't do it. I use my satnav as an aid, not gospel, so if it tells me to come off and then go back on I use my eyes and make my own decision!

[Guest]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

 

I’m generally quite taken with my Skoda, but the satnav defies all logic at times, apart from being quite seriously out of date in some areas (and having no useful updates available). This is particularly true of the M6/A46 area... it also has a tendency to direct the driver up irrelevant slip-roads, round the junction and back onto the carriageway. The remedy is to zoom out and decide to ignore it! 

 

The one in my Nissan is similarly awful. It's also four years out of date. I could pay Nissan £170 for an update. Then it would only be two years out of date.

 

I just use my phone. 

[rockershovel]

39 minutes ago, Hobby said:

I've had that too, Peanuts, with the (same?) VW satnav. Google Maps certainly doesn't do it. I use my satnav as an aid, not gospel, so if it tells me to come off and then go back on I use my eyes and make my own decision!

 

My 2015 Skoda has a system called Amundsen. I believe it has now been replaced by something called Columbus. 

 

It’s worth bearing in mind that Amundsen, although best remembered for being first at the South Pole, previously demonstrated that the fabled North West Passage existed, but was of no practical value; that he was not able to accurately fix the South Pole by the methods available to him, and so traversed a box which undoubtedly CONTAINED the Pole... and could easily have ended up like Scott, when inadequate navigation left him lost at the top of the crucial glacier descent. 

 

Columbus, of course, was quite wrong about the size of the ocean he intended to cross, which even by the standards of the time could be intelligently guessed - it was no particular secret that the Earth was round, and its diameter approximately known. Nor did he ever understand, as far as can be told today, that he had discovered a hitherto completely unknown continental landmass.

 

So both sound appropriate! 

 

 

[kevinlms]

On 05/04/2019 at 18:36, Hobby said:

Best to look from above at the lane markings. When the buses come out of that bus stop they end up in the "left turn" lane (right two straight on, left hand one left turn only), I suspect it is to indicate that the buses have the right to use that lane and merge with the traffic on the roundabout rather than force their way across before joining the roundabout?

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4419935,-1.3233855,134m/data=!3m1!1e3

In Australia, the footer instruction in that type of location is 'Buses Excepted', which to me, is a clear instruction that buses, don't have to turn left, but everyone else does.

 

It has to be remembered, that whether it's 'proper English' or not, the message needs to be put in the least number of words practical to convey the meaning, otherwise you'd end up with prople stopping and reading the sign to comprehend it's meaning!

 

Near me there is a roundabout with two lanes approching. It has two large signs depicting that to go straight, you use the left lane & to turn right, the right lane. I normally go straight and the number of times, I've had to take avoiding action to avoid hitting someone, deciding to come across into the left lane at the last moment. The roundabout isn't THAT busy, they just haven't read the sign.

The last one was a big 4WD with a large boat - cretin!

[PhilJ W]

Cockwomble of the day week month year this morning. I was taking my friend and his young son to Brooklands this morning. As we approached junction 8 (M25) a BMW undertook me using the hard shoulder! This was in foggy conditions and heavy traffic. I really must fit a dash cam to the car.

[petethemole]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

Cockwomble of the day week month year this morning. I was taking my friend and his young son to Brooklands this morning. As we approached junction 8 (M25) a BMW undertook me using the hard shoulder! This was in foggy conditions and heavy traffic. I really must fit a dash cam to the car.

 Or get one of these https://www.rallypoint.com/shared-links/machine-gun-car-horn-prank

This might be more appropriate for RMWebbers  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4115036/Australian-man-installs-world-s-annoying-car-horn.html

I don't suppose they're legal here though.

Edited April 7, 2019 by petethemole

[Jol Wilkinson]

 A four hour drive back from Scalefour North last night highlighted a, for me at least, new rule which is that Volkswagen Golf drivers do not have to adhere to speed limits, especially those in the roadworks along the A14 near Cambridge. VW drivers seem to be picking up some of the traits normally associated with Audi drivers. Perhaps it is a VAG group mission statement in the owners handbooks.

 

The "car joining a dual carriageway from a slip road have right of way" rule was also in force so not only did I have to brake on several occasions to make way for the entitled (I couldn't move into the RH lane), I also nearly got a Vauxhall Cabriolet through the passenger doors on one occasion.

 

Oddly, despite the roads being considerably busier with HGVs, the drive up to Wakefield on Friday was definitely less fraught but no more enjoyable.

[kevinlms]

12 hours ago, petethemole said:

 Or get one of these https://www.rallypoint.com/shared-links/machine-gun-car-horn-prank

This might be more appropriate for RMWebbers  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4115036/Australian-man-installs-world-s-annoying-car-horn.html

I don't suppose they're legal here though.

Looks dubbed to me, judging by little reaction from anyone!

Definitely wouldn't be legal in Victoria, either.

[RAF96]

Going back to TomTom briefly. 

My old 910 (the display has gone dim so I can’t see to use it) had superb mapping and instant and accurate rerouting and traffic avoidance, but no new maps available for it now or,I would fit a new screen.

My new 620 has the worst mapping algorithms under the sun. I wanted to vary my route recently coming back from Yorkshire into Norfolk by heading for the Humber bridge rather than use the A1 and I was 30 miles into the detour and it was still trying to turn me back onto the original route.

TomTom Forum chatter slates their mapping engine on most models.