Do 4 lane motorways work?

[The Li-ion King]

Kev_Mk3 said:

MrGTI6 said:

They work brilliantly. You can bomb down lane one at 85 while everyone else sits in the other three lanes at 55-60.

this.

so in short no they dont

The section of the M1 from the M25 to Hemel Hempstead can be chaos if there's traffic or an accident, but in general it's not bad. It allows the various lorries to have their 57mph battle between one another and you can stay in the far right lane at 75 Those cameras are on all the time, so no more than this It's the "Use Hardshoulder" bit between Luton and Milton Keynes I don't like so much, too lazy to build a 4th lane so convert the hardshoulder instead

[MrGTI6]

A Winner Is You said:

Kev_Mk3 said:

MrGTI6 said:

They work brilliantly. You can bomb down lane one at 85 while everyone else sits in the other three lanes at 55-60.

this.

so in short no they dont

Where do people find these massive empty stretches of lane 1? Every time I'm on one they're full of HGVs.

Every single day on the M25!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRt6NHa9-lY

Edited by MrGTI6 on Monday 19th August 20:24

[DoubleD]

They allow more vehicles to travel on that road, some people just need educating about their use.

[Cloudy147]

We could have 10 lane motorways, but as long as lorries can use all but the outside lane,we'll still have congestion. 9 lanes of the lorry snail race, 1 lane for everyone else.

[xjay1337]

It's not the fault of Hgv its the problem with peoples inability to drive in general and very poor lane discipline.

[ahenners]

Cloudy147 said:

We could have 10 lane motorways, but as long as lorries can use all but the outside lane,we'll still have congestion. 9 lanes of the lorry snail race, 1 lane for everyone else.

It's rare I find traffic backing up because of lorries overtaking lorries. My commute of the M6 covers a 4 lane stretch and it's usually the lane 2 hoggers now hogging lane 3 instead that is the problem.

[dcb]

xjay1337 said:

It's not the fault of Hgv its the problem with peoples inability to drive in general and very poor lane discipline.

+1

Easiest driving test in Europe doesn't help. The rest of Europe requires
motorway training, even though many countries in Europe are
larger than the UK. UK certainly a back marker in this respect.

Lowest motorway speed limit - and most strictly enforced - doesn't help either.
Higher limits - and less strictly enforced - would enable faster traffic to avoid bunching.

Applying established science like the 85% rule to set limits would help to reduce road deaths.
Using evidence based limit setting would help also.
Again, the UK is a back marker compared to the rest of Europe.

UK drivers are the least well trained and most over controlled in Europe, I find.
A right dog's breakfast, in other words. We would do well to copy the best
bits of what the French or Germans do, to improve and reach European
averages.

[DoubleD]

So why are we always told that we have the safest roads in the world? Is it not true?

[A Winner Is You]

dcb said:

xjay1337 said:

It's not the fault of Hgv its the problem with peoples inability to drive in general and very poor lane discipline.

+1

Easiest driving test in Europe doesn't help. The rest of Europe requires
motorway training, even though many countries in Europe are
larger than the UK. UK certainly a back marker in this respect.

Lowest motorway speed limit - and most strictly enforced - doesn't help either.
Higher limits - and less strictly enforced - would enable faster traffic to avoid bunching.

Applying established science like the 85% rule to set limits would help to reduce road deaths.
Using evidence based limit setting would help also.
Again, the UK is a back marker compared to the rest of Europe.

UK drivers are the least well trained and most over controlled in Europe, I find.
A right dog's breakfast, in other words. We would do well to copy the best
bits of what the French or Germans do, to improve and reach European
averages.

Admittedly I haven't tried taking them, but I can't imagine the Romanian or Albanian driving tests being more difficult than ours.

[lawrencec]

Lane 1 is the new lane 4

Sometimes its like my own private lane

[dcb]

A Winner Is You said:

Admittedly I haven't tried taking them, but I can't imagine the Romanian or Albanian driving tests being more difficult than ours.

I don't know, but I suspect some of the east European driving tests are like
the Egyptian driving test used to be - fifty quid in the hand of the examiner
and job done.

When I said Europe, I meant similar countries to ours, like FR, DE, B, NL, L, A, CH, DK etc
not the former Warsaw pact countries over in the East.

[Pupbelly]

DoubleD said:

So why are we always told that we have the safest roads in the world? Is it not true?

Because the media is always right, yes?

[DoubleD]

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

So why are we always told that we have the safest roads in the world? Is it not true?

Because the media is always right, yes?

So the figures that they publish are wrong?

[RobM77]

I don't know the figures, but if I had to guess I'd say they carry noticeably more traffic than 3 lanes, but not as much as they should if everyone understood the Highway Code! What's an interesting question is whether the downsides of lane hogging compared to everyone driving correctly are greater or lesser with 4 lanes than with 3; I reckon slightly less. I end up undertaking a lot of people, but to me it feels much safer if they're in lane 3 and I'm in lane 1 and we have an empty lane between us.

[Pupbelly]

DoubleD said:

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

So why are we always told that we have the safest roads in the world? Is it not true?

Because the media is always right, yes?

So the figures that they publish are wrong?

The figures they quote will be the ones they want visible to the masses.

[RobM77]

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

So why are we always told that we have the safest roads in the world? Is it not true?

Because the media is always right, yes?

So the figures that they publish are wrong?

The figures they quote will be the ones they want visible to the masses.

I've just done a quick search, and in terms of deaths per 100,000; the UK is second in Europe, just behind Sweden; and third in the world, just behind Sweden and Micronesia. I guess it depends how you measure safe though - are deaths a good way to measure it? Measuring deaths or injuries includes the safety of cars in the figures, and obviously wealthy countries like Sweden and the UK (before Brexit anyway ) will have more modern cars, which have vastly better safety records than the old bangers they drive in less wealthy countries. So I wonder how the figures look when we just examine the probability of having an accident?

[Rich Boy Spanner]

RobM77 said:

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

So why are we always told that we have the safest roads in the world? Is it not true?

Because the media is always right, yes?

So the figures that they publish are wrong?

The figures they quote will be the ones they want visible to the masses.

I've just done a quick search, and in terms of deaths per 100,000; the UK is second in Europe, just behind Sweden; and third in the world, just behind Sweden and Micronesia. I guess it depends how you measure safe though - are deaths a good way to measure it? Measuring deaths or injuries includes the safety of cars in the figures, and obviously wealthy countries like Sweden and the UK (before Brexit anyway ) will have more modern cars, which have vastly better safety records than the old bangers they drive in less wealthy countries. So I wonder how the figures look when we just examine the probability of having an accident?

I read some years ago that the UK's relatively low rate of deaths was due to higher than average use of seat belts and lower drink driving rates. Other the crazy Belgians I don't find UK drivers in any way better than anyone else, and almost every M/Way journey is delayed because of some bizarre crash, on a road where everyone is going in the same direction between white lines.

[JeremyBearimy]

In short no, especially on the M25 where everyone is territorial.
It can work, but people don't move over, people don't keep their safe gap, and when they do keep the safe gap someone moves in it causing the person to have to drop back, which then causes the person behind to undertake.
Ive been on motorways where everyone is doing what they should and its flowing nicely, then you get some berk doing the weave and squeeze and all of a sudden everyones bunched up driving like angry M25ers taking it out on each other, not letting people have their safe gap, not letting people over take.

I would be interested to know if the new 4 lanes are safer, my personal experience is they are slower with more smaller accidents. But thats completely anecdotal.

The lack of hard shoulder does annoy me, on a long journey recently (can't remember which motorway) every refuge was taken up by a lorry (didn't appear broken down), you'd have to have gone a long way as a broken down car to get to an empty one. If you've ever seen a car try to be towed out of one as well, frankly they are dangerous.

[Planet Claire]

lawrencec said:

Lane 1 is the new lane 4

Sometimes its like my own private lane

Also known as 'The VIP lane'.

[RobM77]

Rich Boy Spanner said:

RobM77 said:

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

Pupbelly said:

DoubleD said:

So why are we always told that we have the safest roads in the world? Is it not true?

Because the media is always right, yes?

So the figures that they publish are wrong?

The figures they quote will be the ones they want visible to the masses.

I've just done a quick search, and in terms of deaths per 100,000; the UK is second in Europe, just behind Sweden; and third in the world, just behind Sweden and Micronesia. I guess it depends how you measure safe though - are deaths a good way to measure it? Measuring deaths or injuries includes the safety of cars in the figures, and obviously wealthy countries like Sweden and the UK (before Brexit anyway ) will have more modern cars, which have vastly better safety records than the old bangers they drive in less wealthy countries. So I wonder how the figures look when we just examine the probability of having an accident?

I read some years ago that the UK's relatively low rate of deaths was due to higher than average use of seat belts and lower drink driving rates. Other the crazy Belgians I don't find UK drivers in any way better than anyone else, and almost every M/Way journey is delayed because of some bizarre crash, on a road where everyone is going in the same direction between white lines.

Anecdotally at least, from my experiences driving around Europe I find I get stuck in more queues due to accidents in the UK than anywhere else, and general standards of driving are the worst, certainly the most aggressive anyway. In mainland Europe you can actually overtake people without being flashed and hooted. I've noticed people let me out less in traffic, which is interesting (especially in Belgium), but generally things seem to flow better.

A couple of years ago my wife and I drove 2200 miles through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France and the only queues we had now and then were due to heavy rush hour traffic if we happened to be in or near a big city during rush hour. When we got back to the UK we only had 2.5 hours from Folkestone to home and we got stuck in two massive queues caused by enormous accidents and one small one; we also picked up one road rage plonker in an SUV who was angry about something or other, probably just the fact I was in a BMW (Brits see them as flashy, whereas everyone else just sees them as a normal car). I've driven in Europe on business, on holidays, and on brief trips to see family, and this has consistently been my experience of the UK vs the mainland over 25 years.