Almost to the A46 junction with the A1, came to a grinding halt. About 1 and half hour wait. Obviously a bad smash but nothing to see when we turned off. Hope there are no serious injuries or God forbid deaths.
As well is two words!
How does a sage know everything about everything? or does he? or does he just think he does?
Remember, if you buy something you bought it, not brought it.
Beginning to find nearly every journey I do is affected by these sorts of summery road closures! I almost despair of ever doing any road trip without some sort of unforeseen delay.
One of my regular trips with the van is London to the Lake District, often do it more than once a year, I used to be able to do it in 5.5 hours many years ago, last few years it's taken me up to 10.5 hours, and best I can seem to achieve now is 8 hours! Always delayed by part of my route (of which I've tried just about all variations!) being completely closed without notice by Police/Highways dealing with something or other!
Years ago, traffic was either redirected, or filtered past any incident, these days you just end up trapped on a closed road, sometimes for hours!
I get involved with lots of long journeys, not just with my trips away with the caravan, but with the dog rescue charity I volunteer for, where dogs are often transported from one end or side of the country to the other by a relay of drivers. We need to plan our rendezvous points and times carefully to ensure the dog's journey flows as smoothly and quickly as possible, but when someone before your leg in the relay gets held up for an hour or more, then another one gets held up again, the schedule and plans just go out of the window! We often use Motorway service areas as a rendezvous point, and it's become quite common for one or more of the transporters to outstay the free 2 hour parking, either having to move off site to another place, leave and return a bit later, of pay the extortionate paid parking rates. We fund this out of our own pockets, no one covers our costs, so maybe a 200 mile round trip home to home to do your transport leg, PLUS £15 or more for parking hits our pockets pretty hard in these challenging times. It's not even possible to relocate a rendezvous in a ad hoc way in many cases, as the summery closure of a major route usually results in complete gridlock of lesser roads in the area, so no one goes anywhere! Worst case was a dog scheduled to be delivered to new owner around 6pm, didn't arrive until nearly 1am the next day!!!!! I've kept dogs in transport at home overnight (as have many other transporters) where the journey has got horribly delayed and it's deemed better to split the journey over two days, rather than expect a volunteer transporter to drive excessive hours into the night.
Do any of those that deem it necessary to just instantly shut a road down for hours give any thought to the consequences on the long suffering motorist!!! On my dog transports, that has a knock on effect on up to 20 people across the country! Multiply that by the many hundreds if not thousands that are caught in the chaos, and it's impacting a sizeable chunk of the population, not to mention the impact on business, and the financial penalties on individuals, of the delays!
I've been trapped on a motorway where a minor 'nudge' in a queue prang occurred in a 8 lane wide section and on the inside lane! The whole motorway was halted for nearly an hour while this minor incident was dealt with, yet at least 6 lanes were clear and fully usable! I could see the whole fiasco just in front of me, so fully aware of severity, resources employed to deal with etc. - It was just the high handed way that incidents are dealt with, and complete contempt for road users that Police and Highways Agency have!!!!!! No doubt some jobs worth mentioned health and safety protocols, and that was that, SHUT THE ROAD DOWN!
It's made me wonder more than once, whether I wish to carry on with the caravan, it's becoming more stressful than ever trying to tow, between the lost hours of going nowhere, and if not caught in the stationary traffic, some of the horrible diversions I've been punted down, that I would NEVER consider normally towing the van down! All too often I seem to arrive, hours late, very tired, more than a little stressed (and I'm normally renowned for my calmness!), it just isn't the enjoyable experience it's meant to be! I've driven thousands of miles abroad (which some people find excruciatingly stressful, or just point blank refuse to do), but I find so relaxing compared with the chaos of UK roads.
Its mental the amount of time it takes to re-open our roads after accidents. We must be the only country in the world that prats about something shocking. The cost to the economy is massive. I was watching a policing programme from Oz, where after a really bad smash, they got people into ambulances whilst simultaneously dragging the wrecked cars off the road with the police vehicles, in order to open up the road again.
It's a bit difficult in some places, that stretch of the A1 is just a normal 2 lane dual carriageway road. The 2 fire engines which attended had to go southbound, then back up northbound between the 2 rows of traffic. They managed it, just . The ironic thing is that we were almost at our turn off to the A46.
Quote: Originally posted by Mrs. Bonce on 02/3/2023
It's a bit difficult in some places, that stretch of the A1 is just a normal 2 lane dual carriageway road. The 2 fire engines which attended had to go southbound, then back up northbound between the 2 rows of traffic. They managed it, just . The ironic thing is that we were almost at our turn off to the A46.
The 8 lane section of motorway I mentioned, was virtually in sight of the exit I was going to take, so doubly frustrating to be held for so long for such a trivial incident within 1/2 mile of where I would have been well clear of the chaos!!!!!
Where I used to live in Northern Ireland there was an old railway bridge near us (from an unused line) over the road with a height restriction. Some daft lorry driver didn’t read the signs, hit the bridge, did serious damage to the lorry and made the bridge unstable so the road was closed for several weeks making a ridiculous detour to get round it. In a 3 year period the same thing happened with busses and lorries 5 times making the road closed more than it was open!
Was coming back from my friends farm to my place on the edge of Dartmoor, when I came up against Farmer Phil driving about 50 sheep to another field! I must have been held up for 10 minutes or more.
Not only that, but my pick up truck absolutely smelled of sheep sh*te!……….Please have a thought. 👍
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Topic: Grrr, traffic
via mobile 01/3/2023 at 1:34pm
