RE: Smart motorways are dumb: Tell Me I'm Wrong

[anonymous-user]

All that jazz said:

I'd imagine most drivers would have dismissed it as another case of crying wolf after not seeing anything in the next mile or so.

Especially if it was deer

So there is a prob up there with deer, why hasn't deer fencing been installed albeit it may be for long stretches, also you probably know it's not needed for 10 months a year ie if it's not rutting season or whenever deer mooch about, same applies at the time of year when badger yearlings are turfed out of setts you get a preponderance of 'debris'.

All of these things have patterns but its all down to economics, or someone bothered enough to look for the patterns.

The odd fatal is cheaper than miles of fencing or other mitigatory measures?

[All that jazz]

speedyguy said:

Especially if it was deer

So there is a prob up there with deer, why hasn't deer fencing been installed albeit it may be for long stretches, also you probably know it's not needed for 10 months a year ie if it's not rutting season or whenever deer mooch about, same applies at the time of year when badger yearlings are turfed out of setts you get a preponderance of 'debris'.

All of these things have patterns but its all down to economics, or someone bothered enough to look for the patterns.

The odd fatal is cheaper than miles of fencing or other mitigatory measures?

Not sure I agree with the only needed for 2 months of the year comment. I go back down the A6 to Kendal from Shap and it's a fairly common occurence to have them stood in the middle of the road regardless of the time of year. As you say though, the odd fatal is "cheaper" than fencing and their arses are covered with the triangular deer warning signs.

[anonymous-user]

All that jazz said:

I go back down the A6 to Kendal from Shap and it's a fairly common occurence to have them stood in the middle of the road regardless of the time of year.

Maybe they are like the dozy sheep on the cat and fiddle and just stand in the middle of the road licking the salt

[NelsonP]

BiggestVern said:

Once the Traffic Officers or Police radio in a "no trace", we have 2 minutes to turn the signs off.

Wow - that isn't long. Good to know, thanks!

[Gafferjim]

NelsonP said:

Wow - that isn't long. Good to know, thanks!

We are measured on everything. We also note the various points of an incident, ie;

Where did the information come from ? (Too many to list!)
Was it reported as, an RTC, Debris, Breakdown, Animals, Abandoned veh, Veh fire, verge fire, Suicide, Pedestrians, infrastructure problem, Weather, Flooding, roadworks, other (catch all for anything else)
Location given by informant./ location where incident actually found. (Often no-where near each other!)
Were signals set, how many lanes, c/ways, junctions were closed, and for how long.
At each point in time who was in charge of the incident. ie. Police, fire, HATO, Contractor
If an RTC, was it with injuries.
What type of vehicles involved; car, motorcycle, PSV, HGV, Light goods, Motorhome, plant, foreign veh,
What recovery attended; none (made there own way) Recovery organisation, Friend/family, roadside join, free recovery, Police recovery (seized usually) HATO Statutory recovery.
Was there any motorway infrastructure damaged? if so, what, by which vehicle?
Was there any spillage of liquids involved.
If a rolling block was used, did the traffic get stopped with the block.(All mark-posts noted at each stage usually)
VRM's of all vehicles involved.
VRM's and descriptions of any vehicles breaking a rolling block (Reported to police afterwards, who then deal with it)
Throughout the time of the incident, EVERYTHING on the log is time-stamped, with who entered it, all telephone / radio calls are recorded.

This is where all the information comes from for the governments statistics.

1. ##################################################################################################################

This was just recently posted elsewhere;

Almost half a million incidents took place last year

More than 40% of all motorway and major A road lane closures in England in 2014 were caused by vehicle breakdowns – and 122 unsupervised children caused them to be shut too… obviously not at the same time

In total there were 443,590 lane closures on motorways and primary A roads in England last year for 44 defined reasons by Highways England.

The information came from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the IAM, the biggest independent road safety charity in the UK, which asked for the number of incidences of lane closures on roads managed by Highways England’s in 2014.

Some of the major findings of the report were as follows:

12,759 pedestrians walking on a motorway live lane or active A road caused lane closures (three per cent of all incidences) in addition to the 122 unsupervised children.There were also 7,446 cases of a ‘non-legal’ use of the hard shoulder – some two per cent of recorded incidences.Other causes listed were 3,990 animals loose on the network; 2,598 abandoned vehicles and 6,742 shed tyres6,288 injury collisions and 29,656 non-injury collisions also caused lane closures856 suicides or attempted suicides caused roads to be shut on England’s main routes.There were also 152 cases of objects being thrown onto the roads, and 567 cases of a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road causing roads to be closed.
Of the 185,457 breakdowns, 40,192 were in a ‘live lane’ i.e. a lane with other moving traffic around it.

Almost half a million incidents took place in 2014 that led to a lane closure costing the economy an estimated £1 billion a year in terms of lost man hours on motorways alone.

Edited by Gafferjim on Tuesday 12th May 16:02

[Geekman]

hora said:

Does the SMART motorway do away with the yo-yo'ing in heavy traffic- people flooring it, everyone bunching up. Stopped. Then crawl, speed up and repeat?


If so - I'm sorry to say I'm in.

IME, it causes it. Some people blast through the gantries and ignore them, others brake for them and then accelerate between them, all whilst other drivers are slamming on to make sure they're under the speed limit, others are making a half hearted attempt to obey the limit, and the foreign trucks who know the cameras can't catch them just sit on the limiter regardless.

At least if they'd used average speed cameras to enforce the limits instead of the traditional GATSOs, a lot of those problems would be elmininated. But no, someone clearly thought putting fixed cameras every few hundred metres was a much better way to ensure everyone sticks to a steady speed

[Hackney]

M25 this morning.

Approaching the A1 north from Elstree a sign warned of long delays on the M25 junction 22-24
On the A1 a similar sign.

Actually on the M25 and basically, failures on all sides.
The traffic is heavy and slow but not stationary. Various gantry signs warn of lane closures ahead.

No lanes were closed.

Other signes warned drivers to stay in lane.
Several drivers changed lanes, some even changed back within 50m. This, more then anything else I saw today contributed to delays as when someone forces their way from one lane to another, someone else has to brake. Multiply that by 10 or 20 in a couple of hundred metres and you get delays.

FWIW there were no lane closures, no incident, no indication as to what could have caused the delays which disappeared just after J24. So, having warned my boss I'd be very late given what the signs were telling me I actually rocked up with 5 mins to spare. The boss wasn't in so will assume I was actually late anyway.

[Fastdruid]

Gafferjim said:

Almost half a million incidents took place in 2014 that led to a lane closure costing the economy an estimated £1 billion a year in terms of lost man hours on motorways alone.

So it costs roughly £2000 per lane closure?

That makes it all the more incredible that they close lanes and cause massive tailbacks for cars parked/broken down in the emergency lay-bys (obviously it's different for breakdown in a live lane).

[Fastdruid]

Mandown46 said:

Safety comes first. If there is a lane closure on, its because there is no other option available.
A lane closure costs a hell of a lot less than a total closure for an investigation into a fatality

Absolutely. HATOS parked means 40mph time and a full lane separation between them and a live lane.

I have seen multiple instances of the hard shoulder lane closure due parked cars in the emergency lay-bys.
With the accompanying 40mph for ~5miles and jams all the way back of course.

A bit different for a car in a "live" lane (even if it is the ex-HS) but we're talking about a car in a lay-by ffs.

I do wonder sometimes how anyone in the bad old days managed to stop in a lay-by on a single lane DC without them shutting the road for hours. Or for that matter taking a 2-lane DC down to one lane.

[anonymous-user]

Fastdruid said:

I have seen multiple instances of the hard shoulder lane closure due parked cars in the emergency lay-bys.
With the accompanying 40mph for ~5miles and jams all the way back of course.

Send your idea's on a postcard how you get the car out of the emergency layby into full speed 50mph flowing traffic with no gaps

[trashbat]

speedyguy said:

Send your idea's on a postcard how you get the car out of the emergency layby into full speed 50mph flowing traffic with no gaps

JATOS NOT HATOS

[Fastdruid]

speedyguy said:

Fastdruid said:

I have seen multiple instances of the hard shoulder lane closure due parked cars in the emergency lay-bys.
With the accompanying 40mph for ~5miles and jams all the way back of course.

Send your idea's on a postcard how you get the car out of the emergency layby into full speed 50mph flowing traffic with no gaps

1) It's apparently perfectly fine to have traffic lights at the bottom of the slip roads with an equal run-up (and potentially faster traffic).
2) It's no different from any other lay-by on any other road. I've had to wait for some considerable time for a gap in the past pulling out from a lay-by. There *will* be one at some point.
3) The hard shoulder has a fraction of the traffic of lane 1 and there is no way it would be 50mph with no gaps.

[masermartin]

Gafferjim said:

More than 40% of all motorway and major A road lane closures in England in 2014 were caused by vehicle breakdowns
...
Of the 185,457 breakdowns, 40,192 were in a ‘live lane’ i.e. a lane with other moving traffic around it.

Won't this go up drastically with the widespread introduction of hard-shoulder running?

trashbat said:

JATOS NOT HATOS

golfclap.jpg

[CallorFold]

Had to take a trip down to Slough and back (to Birmingham) for a training course earlier this week, nice cruising speed all the way North on the M40 ....joined the M42 and it was absolute chaos!

Thankfully I didn't have to stay on it for very long, but with the overhead gantry signs going from 50-40-50-60-40 all it did was cause a chain of non stop braking and speeding up which I'm sure in absolutely no way helped the flow of traffic at all!

[Swanny87]

And this is the reason I always take the A1 out of London. No amount of roundabouts, 'it's only two lanes' or elephant racing can make it slower than taking the M1. The money should be spent on better driver education, specifically following distance and lane discipline. If you improve these you improve traffic flow.

[Craikeybaby]

BiggestVern said:

Well I've read the whole lot of comments on this topic so far & I agree with many of the criticisms of Smart Motorways, I must point out that before working for Highways England (née The Highways Agency) I was a courier for 8 years so I've learnt a thing or 2 about motorway driving.
Perhaps Dan Trent would like to spend a day or 2 in South Mimms Control Centre to see what really happens on the Traffic Management desk although I think a nice Friday late shift would be enough to have him screaming & running for home. Drop a line to our boss, Stewart Turner & ask him for a day or 2 in the Control Room, I'm sure he'd agree. Oh and please ask for Team 4!

Has Dan actually taken you up on this offer?

[BlueMR2]

Calling it "Smart" motorway is a bit like calling a politician trustworthy.

Maybe they should call it Meddling motorway.

[BiggestVern]

Craikeybaby said:

BiggestVern said:

Well I've read the whole lot of comments on this topic so far & I agree with many of the criticisms of Smart Motorways, I must point out that before working for Highways England (née The Highways Agency) I was a courier for 8 years so I've learnt a thing or 2 about motorway driving.
Perhaps Dan Trent would like to spend a day or 2 in South Mimms Control Centre to see what really happens on the Traffic Management desk although I think a nice Friday late shift would be enough to have him screaming & running for home. Drop a line to our boss, Stewart Turner & ask him for a day or 2 in the Control Room, I'm sure he'd agree. Oh and please ask for Team 4!

Has Dan actually taken you up on this offer?

Not yet although I'm going to put it to the boss tomorrow that we invite either PistonHeads or Autocar (I'm a subscriber so maybe I'll get to be in the mag!) into the control room to see how it works from receiving a new incident right through to it's conclusion. Perhaps if a journalist can explain what happens in layman's terms to enthusiast drivers at least, you may see that rather than being against the motorist, we are for them.

[BiggestVern]

Dan Trent said:

Esceptico said:

Perhaps what we need is a journalist to do some investigating and speak to the people that operate the motorways/speed limits so we can understand what they are doing and why. Over to you Dan....

I'd be up for that and hope to explore opportunities if offered. I did a couple of shifts on the beat with Northants traffic and it was fascinating and exploded a lot of assumptions. Maybe the same in a control centre would do the same. If there is anyone in the business drop me a line and as per basis of the piece you can tell - and show - me I'm wrong.

Cheers,

Dan

Well Dan, I have sent an email to our boss, Stewart Turner, asking that you be invited in to see how we work so here's hoping he agrees.

[zebedee]

hora said:

Does the SMART motorway do away with the yo-yo'ing in heavy traffic- people flooring it, everyone bunching up. Stopped. Then crawl, speed up and repeat?


If so - I'm sorry to say I'm in.

Yes. The M6 above Birmingham was stop start all the time whereas now it does tend to keep moving.