ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56815522

After encountering a MPV jacked up and changing a tyre in a live running hard shoulder on the M42, forcing traffic to swerve round him, I can say finally the powers that be are realising these 'smart' technologies in monitoring for stationary cars on a live running hard shoulders are not reliable.

The MPV was still changing the tyre and hard shoulder still open when I went past him 15mins later in the opposite direction. Looked in mirrors and hard shoulder still wasn't 'X'ed out.

And the number of times I've been on a near-empty motorway at 4:00am only to go past matrix boards saying congestion ahead and 40mph limits when there is absolutely sod all.

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

It is funny how nothing new ever works in the UK, smart motorways have been in use for years in other parts of the world and they work just fine, we have them here in Germnay.
we also have motorway service stations that are not hundreds of miles apart, we also have stopping areas where you can stop and rest, all the UK does is put signs up saying Tiredness kills take a break but then there is nowhere to stop, Trams, and bendy busses also work perfectly well in Europe but not the UK Trains run on time and snow doesn't kill the country. Maybe now you are out of the EU and don't have to abide by the nasty EU rules any more that the rest of the EU abides by and manages perfectly well, you can solve all these problems.

I had to leave the UK to see just how arrogant and useless the Brits actually are. Don't worry the myth about Germans and efficiency is just as crap.

^Qwerty^

Had what I could call a near miss one night. Lorry on nearside lane, I was overtaking it. Light rain, and then we came upon a broken down van, no lights. I think it's fairly clear that both myself and the Lorry driver spotted it at the same time, and fortunately for us both, there was nothing on the lane outside me, so I could pull out. I think we were 1-2 seconds from having the lorry plough in to the back of the van. I'm sure there are some on here that will say you should have seen it sooner, and I'd probably agree, but nobody manages 100% focus on the road ahead. Until that time, I'd not really seen a problem with these so called Smart Motorways, but that close encounter made it very clear on how easily you could get killed if you break down.

BMWhere?

One of the things that surprised me in Europe were the Italian trains. They are old and dirty, but they are cheap as chips and run on time! It seems just about every country in Europe can run their trains on time with minimal problems. Train services in the UK are an absolute disaster - Old and dirty like the Italian trains, but stupidly expensive and always late if they even show up at all! I really wonder how a train can even be delayed? It can only be down to poor planing and critical state of the infrastructure!

If the UK had a half decent rail service, then the people wouldn't be so dependent on driving in the first place and there wouldn't be the need for smart motorways!

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

The MPV incident still has me reeling. For me it was lucky; I was following a HGV so little view ahead and only saw the MPV when he HGV made a quick change to lane lane two (lane 1 is hard shoulder, or should that be lane 0 ? ). Luckily traffic was slow and only doing 30mph and cars were not nose-to-tail so managed to quickly push into the adjacent lane.

But was left gobsmacked at how a car could be there so long to enable the driver to empty the boot and start jacking it up!!! Looked like there was a family in the car too! To me it's a combination of lunacy, idiocy and ***** of steel (was the driver's side rear wheel too). I'm still not sure if I'm more angry at the driver (nothing stopping you limping to a refuge point with a flat tyre) or Highways England for promoting a 'Smart' system that clearly doesn't work when it supposed to automatically spot stationary vehicles and alert control room staff as well as close the lane.

I bought a dashcam after that.

The Joshua Tree

I'm a HGV driver, they should scrap them altogether. The amount of times i've seen a vehicle broken down in a live lane, and someone coming up behind not paying attention and swerving at the last minute to avoid them is alarming. These emergency breakdown zones are not long enough, an artic coming along at 56mph and suddenly has an instant failure can't just dive into one those lay byes, it's dangerous in a fully loaded artic to try and take all the speed off instantly just so you can try to get into a lay bye that's coming up on you quickly. I see loads of stranded vehicles in live lanes as they obviously couldn't make it to a lay bye, what happens if thats a family with kids and maybe the pet dog in the car, are they expecting them to get out onto a live motoroway ? Yes they are with not so smart motorways, at least with a permanent hard shoulder people can just ease over onto the hard shoulder instead of possibly panicking to try and get into and emergency lay bye that's coming up as they'll be thinking i need to get into this one as i might not make it to the next one, that's encouraging people to dive into them at speed which they probably won't have the skills to do.