A question about merging and closed lanes on the motorway
Discussion
Driving home on the M25 late last night I came across some roadworks that necessitated 3 of 4 lanes closed (aside: many thanks to the Highways Agency for informing me of Hindhead Tunnel closure (25 miles away), A2 at Canterbury closure (70 miles away), and A14 in Cambridgeshire closure (100 miles away), but not the M25 roadworks directly ahead 
)
Anyway, inside lane "move out a lane" indicator comes on on the gantry, next gantry the 2 inside lanes had them, next one the 3 inside lanes had them with an an advisory 40 on the outside lanes. I had got across to the outside lane earlyish aiming to get past a few more heavies, and we ground to a halt. 3rd lane was doing 30 or so, and 2 inside lanes fairly empty but with people flying down at 60 or 70. After about 10 minutes of crawling I pulled into the 3rd lane and cruised down the 4th lane queue at about 30. I could see red crosses over lanes 1,2,3 in the distance and a couple of cars in front of me stopped to indicate right into the queue. I cruised past them up to the red X in my lane and merged into the slow moving 4th lane. Nothing else going past in lanes 1,2,3.
Then a heavy came past in lane 2, and all hell broke loose - 100s of cars in lanes 1,2,3 all passing the red cross, going for another 2 or 300 yards to the cones where they all started to pull across.
It all left me scratching my head to be honest.
I like to think I have a reasonable amount of roadsence (IAM about 10 years ago) but the actions of others really leave me in doubt of what I should be doing sometimes. If I had not nipped down that lane 3 I would have added another 15-30 mins to my half hour delay. If I had bombed straight to the front I would only have been delayed 5 or 10 minutes!!!
)Anyway, inside lane "move out a lane" indicator comes on on the gantry, next gantry the 2 inside lanes had them, next one the 3 inside lanes had them with an an advisory 40 on the outside lanes. I had got across to the outside lane earlyish aiming to get past a few more heavies, and we ground to a halt. 3rd lane was doing 30 or so, and 2 inside lanes fairly empty but with people flying down at 60 or 70. After about 10 minutes of crawling I pulled into the 3rd lane and cruised down the 4th lane queue at about 30. I could see red crosses over lanes 1,2,3 in the distance and a couple of cars in front of me stopped to indicate right into the queue. I cruised past them up to the red X in my lane and merged into the slow moving 4th lane. Nothing else going past in lanes 1,2,3.
Then a heavy came past in lane 2, and all hell broke loose - 100s of cars in lanes 1,2,3 all passing the red cross, going for another 2 or 300 yards to the cones where they all started to pull across.
It all left me scratching my head to be honest.
- Pull into lane 4 to soon and you end up with a long 1 lane queue. (what I did initally)
- Use all 4 lanes and merge sensibly as indicated by the arrows BEFORE reaching the red crosses, best using available roadspace (what I subsequently did)
- Just fly down the inside lane past the red crosses and merge at the obstruction (what some people did).
I like to think I have a reasonable amount of roadsence (IAM about 10 years ago) but the actions of others really leave me in doubt of what I should be doing sometimes. If I had not nipped down that lane 3 I would have added another 15-30 mins to my half hour delay. If I had bombed straight to the front I would only have been delayed 5 or 10 minutes!!!
NiceCupOfTea said:
Driving home on the M25 late last night I came across some roadworks that necessitated 3 of 4 lanes closed (aside: many thanks to the Highways Agency for informing me of Hindhead Tunnel closure (25 miles away), A2 at Canterbury closure (70 miles away), and A14 in Cambridgeshire closure (100 miles away), but not the M25 roadworks directly ahead )
They warned you of totally closed roads. The M25 was open...)NiceCupOfTea said:
Red X means "proceed no further in this lane" IIRC, in fact there was an ad on the radio mentioning it as I was queueing - but how many people realise this?
Anybody who vaguely recalls reading the Highway Code back when they sat their driving test.https://www.gov.uk/motorways-253-to-273/motorway-s...
I believe it's not unknown for video evidence from the m'way cameras to be used to send little reminders to those who ignore them.
TooMany2cvs said:
NiceCupOfTea said:
Driving home on the M25 late last night I came across some roadworks that necessitated 3 of 4 lanes closed (aside: many thanks to the Highways Agency for informing me of Hindhead Tunnel closure (25 miles away), A2 at Canterbury closure (70 miles away), and A14 in Cambridgeshire closure (100 miles away), but not the M25 roadworks directly ahead )
They warned you of totally closed roads. The M25 was open...)TooMany2cvs said:
NiceCupOfTea said:
Red X means "proceed no further in this lane" IIRC, in fact there was an ad on the radio mentioning it as I was queueing - but how many people realise this?
Anybody who vaguely recalls reading the Highway Code back when they sat their driving test.https://www.gov.uk/motorways-253-to-273/motorway-s...
I believe it's not unknown for video evidence from the m'way cameras to be used to send little reminders to those who ignore them.
Gratifying that some may at least receive a warning shot across the bows - presumably not the couple of dozen foreign artics though...
I think a lot don't have a clue what the sign means. On the M6 I came across a red cross over the outside lane, had to assertively shove my way across to the middle lane and everyone else carried on driving past it. Annoyingly I wasn't even vindicated for doing the right thing as there was never any obstruction or reason present for the red cross to be there and the next gantry was blank.
I think this demonstrates that 99% of drivers on the road are just following the car in front, which is a bit sobering. Even if you haven't read the Highway Code it's pretty simple to work out what a red X means.
I had a similar situation to you recently. I was driving Oxford bound on the M40 a few weeks ago and there had been an accident on the 4 lane (3 + 1 lane for J3) bit after Beaconsfield which made the 2 outer lanes closed. There must have been about 3 or 4 drivers (including me) that made an effort to get into lane 1. There were also people driving down the lane for J3 and cutting back in to join the M40
Sounds like you were doing the right thing and you plan ahead enough not to end up like the steering wheel operating sheep we share the roads with!
I had a similar situation to you recently. I was driving Oxford bound on the M40 a few weeks ago and there had been an accident on the 4 lane (3 + 1 lane for J3) bit after Beaconsfield which made the 2 outer lanes closed. There must have been about 3 or 4 drivers (including me) that made an effort to get into lane 1. There were also people driving down the lane for J3 and cutting back in to join the M40
Sounds like you were doing the right thing and you plan ahead enough not to end up like the steering wheel operating sheep we share the roads with!
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