Unofficial road widening
Discussion
Some idle thoughts, (well not that idle).
For the last 15 years or so heavy rural traffic seems to have increased massively in volume, speed and all-up weight.
To me this seems to coincide with the move towards larger scale, more industrialised farming and the increasing shift towards contracted services, (silage haulage etc) where the focus seems to be on getting the job done ASAP so the vehicles can move straight on to the next contract.
I travel around a fair bit for work, often in fairly rural areas as well as where I live in the South West, and the situation seems pretty universal now.
Over the last 10 years especially there seems to have been a real shift towards speed and efficiency above everything else, and as far as I can tell this attitude is coming from the top down.
I've personally witnessed countless near misses and 3 fairly serious accidents involving tractors meeting each other on narrow roads, usually because both drivers are working on the assumption there will somehow be enough room to pass at speed. Modern machinery is so large and robust that they can generally make room by crushing verges and hedges out of the way, and after enough repeat performances you end up with roads that have effectively been unofficially widened.
You see roads where the original edge of the tarmac is now several feet away from the remaining verge or hedge, with nothing but churned mud, ruts and collapsed edges in between.
Because I'm boring and sad I've actually been comparing old and new Google Street View images to see if this is just my own bias, or whether there is visible evidence of it happening over time.
Up and down the country it seems to be the same story. Narrow roads gradually widened by repeated overrun from large vehicles and trailers so they can pass each other faster.
The end result seems to be broken road edges, wrecked verges, damaged ditches and culverts, more flooding, more road damage through standing water and hydraulic action, and generally increasing vehicle speeds once roads have effectively been "opened up".
What really prompted me to think about it this week was watching a line of contractors gradually straightening bends by repeatedly cutting across the verge, in some cases actually crossing onto the wrong side of the road to do it.
Authorities seem either powerless to stop it or simply uninterested. I appreciate rural enforcement is difficult and agriculture always gets treated with a bit of a "needs must" attitude, but it does feel like a long term problem that has been ignored and is now contributing to general road infrastructure issues.
I'm not even sure whether any of this is technically unlawful, but it certainly feels antisocial and incredibly short sighted.
For the last 15 years or so heavy rural traffic seems to have increased massively in volume, speed and all-up weight.
To me this seems to coincide with the move towards larger scale, more industrialised farming and the increasing shift towards contracted services, (silage haulage etc) where the focus seems to be on getting the job done ASAP so the vehicles can move straight on to the next contract.
I travel around a fair bit for work, often in fairly rural areas as well as where I live in the South West, and the situation seems pretty universal now.
Over the last 10 years especially there seems to have been a real shift towards speed and efficiency above everything else, and as far as I can tell this attitude is coming from the top down.
I've personally witnessed countless near misses and 3 fairly serious accidents involving tractors meeting each other on narrow roads, usually because both drivers are working on the assumption there will somehow be enough room to pass at speed. Modern machinery is so large and robust that they can generally make room by crushing verges and hedges out of the way, and after enough repeat performances you end up with roads that have effectively been unofficially widened.
You see roads where the original edge of the tarmac is now several feet away from the remaining verge or hedge, with nothing but churned mud, ruts and collapsed edges in between.
Because I'm boring and sad I've actually been comparing old and new Google Street View images to see if this is just my own bias, or whether there is visible evidence of it happening over time.
Up and down the country it seems to be the same story. Narrow roads gradually widened by repeated overrun from large vehicles and trailers so they can pass each other faster.
The end result seems to be broken road edges, wrecked verges, damaged ditches and culverts, more flooding, more road damage through standing water and hydraulic action, and generally increasing vehicle speeds once roads have effectively been "opened up".
What really prompted me to think about it this week was watching a line of contractors gradually straightening bends by repeatedly cutting across the verge, in some cases actually crossing onto the wrong side of the road to do it.
Authorities seem either powerless to stop it or simply uninterested. I appreciate rural enforcement is difficult and agriculture always gets treated with a bit of a "needs must" attitude, but it does feel like a long term problem that has been ignored and is now contributing to general road infrastructure issues.
I'm not even sure whether any of this is technically unlawful, but it certainly feels antisocial and incredibly short sighted.
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