Driving in the hard shoulder when theres a traffic jam!

balsingh

Has anyone noticed that this is becoming very commonplace these days. You're stuck in motorway jam and approaching a junction exit. Suddenly, hoards of cars who want to leave at the exit, bust it straight down the hard shoulder even though the exit is almost half a mile away thinking they are allowed to do that as they are leaving the motorway. When they do arrive at the exit, they in essence cause a queue along the hard shoudler while trying to squeeze into the slip road ... possibly stopping/slowing down emergency vehicles which may need to attend to the accident that caused the jam in the 1st place! I admit I get impaptient in traffic, but driving down the hard shoulder is not clever! What do other think?

rdwarr

It's dangerous driving and they'd be prosecuted like a shot if there WAS an emergency vehicle around!
They may also be "caught on camera" so could have a nasty surprise coming through the post as well;)

heatherw_01

This happened yesterday for me on the motorway. There was an accident so part of the motorway was closed off so we all had to come off at the junction. The hard shoulder was packed full of people trying to get off at the junction even though we all had to come off anyway.

iwanttosave_2

A girl I know has been banned for this last year, she is the girlfriend to an big football star and thought she was above the law :rolleyes:

highguyuk

Don't do it. Seriously, if there are any police officers around in marked OR unmarked cars you could get seriously clobbered.

There is also now CCTV throughout alot of the motorway network.

Bossyboots

There was a programme on tv a little ago (I think it was traffic cops) where they covered just this issue. The police officers were saying that when they catch someone driving on the hard shoulder, they always pull up, jump out of the car and lift their bonnet. When the police officers approach them they claim that there is something wrong with the car. They then showed exactly this, where they followed a driver for a bit on the hard shoulder, he then spotted the police car, jumped out and lifted his bonnet. He had no explanation for how he had been able to drive his "faulty" vehicle so far, only stopping when he realised the police were behind him.

muddled_midget

This happened on the M25 last year when it was closed causing massive jams. A couple of police cars tried to get through but couldn't, they obviously radioed it in cos about 10 mins later 3 more police cars came through and booked every single one of the cars in the hard shoulder, with everyone sitting in the jam looking on and cheering! Never been so pleased to see the traffic cops!

balsingh

muddled_midget wrote:

This happened on the M25 last year when it was closed causing massive jams. A couple of police cars tried to get through but couldn't, they obviously radioed it in cos about 10 mins later 3 more police cars came through and booked every single one of the cars in the hard shoulder, with everyone sitting in the jam looking on and cheering! Never been so pleased to see the traffic cops!

That must have been brilliant. Would loved to have been there (watching of course, not getting booked!!) .