TobyV wrote:Eddie I know what you are saying is textbook stuff, but I would have thought that to a degree the whole point of multiple lanes is the same reason you have larger pipes to carry mains water than the ones inside your home or a databus with more "bits" inside your computer - that you can carry a greater volume at more or less the same speed and thus everyone arrives at their destination sooner.
Hypothetically, if the average speed of vehicles in lane 1 has to be less than 70mph on account of lorries being limited to 56mph as Steve A said, and cars in lane 2 say overtaking them at 70mph, then in theory, no one except emergency services should be using lane 3 because to be overtaking cars doing 70 mph, except on a tight bend, you'd have to be speeding yourself.
Sorry to be devil's advocate but I'm just trying to make sense of the official purpose of havign a three lane motorway.
Hi Toby,
travelling on carriageways cannot be compared to water mains or computer technology as the principals are not the same.
We all know that people drive at excess speeds on the motorway and smaller roads. Those offences can be enforced but never stopped as ever since speed restrictions were introduced, people will contravene them continually.
Motorways are designed for many various type of Motor Vehicles and the principle of having three lanes is to cater for all such vehicles. Many people for reasons personal to themselves, prefer to drive at 50mph on the motorway, others prefer 120mph+.
The lane system provides a facility for larger or more powerful vehicles the opportunity to overtake when appropriate.
Thats basicially the official purpose. And oh my god I'm boring myself..
Last edited by VEGAS on 05 Aug 2006, 20:51, edited 1 time in total.
I suffer from paranoid amnesia. I can't remember who I don't trust.
steveS4SSL wrote:....time to put on my tin hat but.....
I also think HGVs and over lorries should be banned from overtaking unless it is required for safety reasons, during rush hour.....
It isn't even vaguely amusing being stuck in a load of traffic caused by a truck doing 45mph being overtaken by one doing 45.5mph and taking several miles to do it!!!
....retreats to safe distance....
Steve, how can overtaking be required "for safety reasons"?
Under normal circumstances, HGV drivers are restricted to 9 hours driving per day, and are restricted to 56mph.
I used to drive from Manchester to Park Royal in Middlesex and back on a daily basis. That would take around 4hrs each way IF I wasn't delayed.
If I was delayed, I simply wouldn't have got home, and that would cancel my next days work.
HGV's can't afford to get stuck behind other slower traffic, and have to overtake, otherwise, your daily bread will not be on the shelves in Tesco.
This is obviously a very complex problem with lots of people (from different driving perspectives and a wide variety of different vehicles with different purposes and capabilities having posted) and I suppose with all this motorway talk we've got away from the original post about 40mph limits in Lincs.
A quick play on my calculator suggests that reducing limits from 60mph to 40mph is going to increase your journey time by 50% and if it were from 70mph to 40mph then that would increase it by 75%! So if you were doing a long journey through Lincs then you would become more tired (and more likely to have an accident, so sayeth the big signs by the side of the road!). Perhaps Lincs. council just want to reduce the number of cars driving through their county in much the same way Red Ken wants to discourage people driving into London by relieving them all of a fiver each time for the privilege?
Just as a quick note about semi's (vans/lorries in your neck of the woods) - there is an ongoing test here in Texas on several stretches of our busiest Truck Highways through Dallas and Fort Worth.
The test is that all "trucks" (for the purpose of this test, it's any vehicle that requires a Commercial Driver's License to operate and carries a revenue load that is not passengers so it includes not only the classic "18-wheeler", but also concrete trucks, dump trucks, and large non-articulated delivery-truck style vehicles) cannot use the far left (inside) lane at any time. On I-20, this gives them 3 lanes, and on I-30 this gives them 2 lanes (4-lanes and 3-lanes per side respectively). In the first 6 weeks of the test, accidents involving "trucks" went down 20% and injury accidents involving "trucks" went down nearly 75% over the previous 6-week average. There's also been fewer traffic jams in areas notorious for them.
What it sadly says about the majority of our "truckers" is that they don't posses the same education and courtesy that they used to and are more of a detriment to our roadways today than they were in the past. I know I have personally reported 4 "truckers" in the past 2 years for reckless driving (cutting off other drivers, changing lanes without signalling and almost running over me or another vehicle, tailgating me or others, etc) and I've seen even more that I didn't report. I personally only report the ones that almost cause an accident, but I see on average 1 bad trucker a day on my 40-minute drive to and from work. I also see a lot of bad car drivers, but I hold truckers to a higher standard since they're supposed to have completed more training than normal drivers.
well, judging by how much more enjoyable the M6 toll road is, let's have all Motorways as toll roads, and push the trucks down the A-roads...
.....duck.....
"safety reasons" - ie the left left is blocked!
whilst I see where you coer from on the subject of hours, I am merely suggesting spreading the load by getting trucks out of the way during the peak (worst congested) hours. I seem to recall some other countries ban HGVs at certain times of the day....
steveS4SSL wrote:well, judging by how much more enjoyable the M6 toll road is, let's have all Motorways as toll roads, and push the trucks down the A-roads...
.....duck.....
"safety reasons" - ie the left left is blocked!
whilst I see where you coer from on the subject of hours, I am merely suggesting spreading the load by getting trucks out of the way during the peak (worst congested) hours. I seem to recall some other countries ban HGVs at certain times of the day....
Steve, if you did that, there would be nothing on the supermarket shelves.
Your local Tesco needs 24 artics per day to keep up with the shopping trolleys going out of the front door. So does your local Sainsbury/Asda/etc. 1 every hour needs to arrive at the store. If you banned them during the day, you wouldn't be able to do your shopping untill 8 PM.
I suffer from paranoid amnesia. I can't remember who I don't trust.
