No Lights On Motorway

[FiF]

Smint said:

Normal unlit motorway, no problem.

So called smart motorway where the hard shoulder is now a live lane i have always believed should be lit, or during hours of darkness the nearside lane should revert to hard shoulder, overhead and roadside electronic signs informing.
Yes i know working such things out is a bit too difficult these days, ie witness the number of fools who can't work out whether the left hand lane in West Mids M6 sections is live or not despite the overhead gantries providing information, thick as two planks and driving right up the chuff of the truck in fornt so they can't see a thing.

Why i believe smart motorways should be lit is the evidence of numerous unlit cars (and their unfortunate occupants) breaking down on such sections being cleaned up by trucks, which are almost the sole users of the left lane in smart sections at night, or any other time (granny lane the back to front empty baseball hatted would call the nearside lane)
Even at 50mph given standard dripped headlights the time to take evasive incl harsh braking action after registering an object is desperately short, if you're being overtaken at the time by another truck then a panic stop will be the only solution which still won't be enough, the driver who attempts to harsh brake and swerve a loaded truck at the same time is only going to end up jack knifed or rolling the lot or both, whatever happens when a truck is involved all the Ncap stars in the world account to the square root of bugger all.

Very reasonable summary all said and done, and backs my condemnation of Highways Agency and their later identities attitude towards removing lighting to save conversion costs.

Much of the M6 issue is partly due to the many variations of the smart motorway system but especially drivers not taking notice of signs. Every day one sees people totally oblivious in many situations where to anyone awake it's obvious what is required. All that's for another thread though.

Although there are some that are deliberately obtuse. Some time since I've had to do the late Friday evening schlep up the M40 homewards from a late Heathrow arrival but invariably got irritated by M40 roadworks. Lots of signs trying to shepherd traffic into lane 1, only to see utter assholes blasting past the red X's at speeds approaching 3 figures and then diving into barely available gaps in traffic just before the cones. Those fools need to cease driving, or have licence revoked by force.

[Pueblo]

Years ago (trying to recall) the MI was illuminated from the blur boar (Watford Gap services) all the way to London.
As a HGV driver we all welcomed this after the miles of darkness prior to & many lorries would just run on sidelights as far as I can recall.
It was simply much more relaxing & that reduced fatigue / tiredness that can creep up on any driver very quickly. That of course was known and why it was done in the first place.

[Smint]

Pueblo said:

Years ago (trying to recall) the MI was illuminated from the blur boar (Watford Gap services) all the way to London.
As a HGV driver we all welcomed this after the miles of darkness prior to & many lorries would just run on sidelights as far as I can recall.
It was simply much more relaxing & that reduced fatigue / tiredness that can creep up on any driver very quickly. That of course was known and why it was done in the first place.

Yes, i think you're right about that, including the 2 lane section from (was it Hemel?) to the Nth Circular.

Side lights only what bliss that was, everyone used to drive around the whole of London on side lights only, night vision intact, pedestrians and cyclists didn't disappear because of that night vision, any stranger driving around with headlights on was about as popular as a dose of the clap.

Just confirm one other of my memories if you can, obviously the M25 didn't exist, if heading towards Dagenham area you'd branch off down the M10, then the North Orbital and then onto the A6 past London Colney, now i recall the A6 where it met the A1 (two way road at that point) wasn't it a T junction?

[Randy Winkman]

Anyone else know the bit of the Kent motorway (M20, I think) where there's a permanent sign up as you join from a roundabout that says "Irregular lighting". When I see it I always think "Well why don't you just sort the flipping lighting out then and you could get rid of the stupid sign?"

[donkmeister]

Riley Blue said:

donkmeister said:

NRG1976 said:

Cats eyes good. Motorway lighting not good.

Some years back there were "active" cats eyes installed on some roads, which had different colours and (due to being powered LEDs rather than reflectors) were visible much further away than standard cats eyes. I seem to recall they got rid of them due to strobing having the potential to cause fits.

Most likely these:

https://www.clearview-intelligence.com/products/ac...

Yes, those are they. Fantastic things. You could see your route outlined off into the distance even when other light sources are present.

I don't know how great the fits risk really was or if it actually caused any incidents... perhaps in a parallel universe where they became ubiquitous the "oh, you find night driving more pleasant with lights? YOU ARE THEREFORE BLIND!!!" crowd are instead shouting at people for daring to be epileptic.

[Dingu]

FiF said:

Dingu said:

Anyone who can’t manage driving on an unlit motorway should seriously consider their fitness to drive.

How is that a helpful comment when the general tenor of comments and discussion is along the line of different conditions need to be recognised and different approaches may well be useful.

It’s factual. If someone is incapable of driving to conditions on an unlit motorway they shouldn’t be driving.

Or minimum shouldn’t be at night on a motorway.

[donkmeister]

Randy Winkman said:

Anyone else know the bit of the Kent motorway (M20, I think) where there's a permanent sign up as you join from a roundabout that says "Irregular lighting". When I see it I always think "Well why don't you just sort the flipping lighting out then and you could get rid of the stupid sign?"

The M20 is used at night? Whenever I have tried to use it when returning from the continent during the night they have closed the bd thing and are shuttling all the traffic past some lucky people's houses.

[donkmeister]

Dingu said:

FiF said:

Dingu said:

Anyone who can’t manage driving on an unlit motorway should seriously consider their fitness to drive.

How is that a helpful comment when the general tenor of comments and discussion is along the line of different conditions need to be recognised and different approaches may well be useful.

It’s factual. If someone is incapable of driving to conditions on an unlit motorway they shouldn’t be driving.

Or minimum shouldn’t be at night on a motorway.

There's a gulf between "incapable of driving to conditions on an unlit motorway" and "have better vision when the motorway is lit.".

[Dingu]

donkmeister said:

Dingu said:

FiF said:

Dingu said:

Anyone who can’t manage driving on an unlit motorway should seriously consider their fitness to drive.

How is that a helpful comment when the general tenor of comments and discussion is along the line of different conditions need to be recognised and different approaches may well be useful.

It’s factual. If someone is incapable of driving to conditions on an unlit motorway they shouldn’t be driving.

Or minimum shouldn’t be at night on a motorway.

There's a gulf between "incapable of driving to conditions on an unlit motorway" and "have better vision when the motorway is lit.".

You fund it then. Why don’t we lower the speed limit to 20 too so all the old duffers can manage

[Mr Tidy]

donkmeister said:

There's a gulf between "incapable of driving to conditions on an unlit motorway" and "have better vision when the motorway is lit.".

Is there really?

Either you can or you can't!

Motorways would work much better without both classes of visual impairment. Doubtless pootling along in the middle lane oblivious to all around them.

[FiF]

Dingu said:

FiF said:

Dingu said:

Anyone who can’t manage driving on an unlit motorway should seriously consider their fitness to drive.

How is that a helpful comment when the general tenor of comments and discussion is along the line of different conditions need to be recognised and different approaches may well be useful.

It’s factual. If someone is incapable of driving to conditions on an unlit motorway they shouldn’t be driving.

Or minimum shouldn’t be at night on a motorway.

Based on the topic discussion what do you consider to be driving to the conditions? Give some examples.

It's one thing to just blurt out a blanket barbed statement. Needs some qualification adding otherwise doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

Observation of what goes on suggests that some people think blatting along at 3 figure speeds is driving to the conditions. Others with severe astigmatism, for example, might think of speeds that I would consider dangerously slow and they shouldn't be there, true.

[Second Best]

As someone who works night shifts regularly, at this time of year I'm often driving in the dark.

My thoughts? I prefer motorways to be lit as best as possible. I've seen plenty of stuff abandoned in the live lanes of a motorway at 5am - the usual stuff like tyres, ladders, nappies etc - but there's often stuff that you can't quite just jink around. I remember seeing a slot machine on the M25 and genuinely a fking boat on the M6. Not on a trailer or anything, I guess it fell off, but a 45 foot small yacht just hanging around in L1+2.

For smaller A-roads, I prefer them to be unlit, because I can see headlights coming the other way so I know to be prepared for anything from a scooter to a crane truck. On modern motorways, enough money has been spent on concrete and disruption to create a solid barrier, so add some LEDs and turn the fking lights on.

[oyster]

An eminently predictable set of responses based around an assumption that public roads are only for PHers and those in the Top 10% of driving capability.

The other 90% of drivers are crap.
Most don’t enjoy it.
Most aren’t paying much attention.
Many will be tired at night.
Many will have defective eyesight.
Many will have cars with less bright headlamps.
Many will be distracted by their phones.
And so on and so on.

And guess which group the authorities will base motorway lighting installation on?

It will come down to a cost benefit analysis of lives saved cost versus cost of lighting. PHer, internet tough-drivers won’t get a look in.

[dlks151]

alangla said:

There's definitely been a move towards de-lighting motorways in Scotland as well. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, there was a big project to add lighting to the M74 from Glasgow out towards Hamilton/Larkhall. When the road was widened in the late 2010s, the lights were all removed.
Same with the new M8 heading east from the city, the new section is unlit, but the parallel A8 that it effectively replaced remains fully lit as far as Eurocentral. Either there's been a change in standards, or it's just about saving cash, though one would have thought the A8 would have been de-lit at after the new road opened, given it now carries hardly any traffic.

The M8/M74/M73 contract was a design & build job. The Employer as is usual for them let the contract to the lowest priced contractor who had hopelessly underestimed the contract. The Contractor was looking for savings and saw the M74 lighting as an opportunity, they carried out risk assessment on the basis of accident statistics and argued they didn’t need to light it despite what was in the contract. So de-specified but not because the Employer wanted it so.