Rant: hatchings and other OTT road mess.

tomstickland

Some local roads have just been "converted", possibly in the misguided belief that they're now safer. What I refer to is the process of painting hatchings over 90% of the road surface and then adding excessive signage and other clutter.

Oddly enough, studies in Holland have shown that removing markings actually makes roads safer because driver's have to think about what's going on rather than just following the lines.

Anyway, my main objection is to the ugliness of the result.

The other thing that makes me laugh is the way that junctions have the corners hatched off so it makes the corner look sharper. But then I and about 75% of other people just drive over the hatchings anyway until they're worn down back to how it was before.

MarkyMarkD

It's tosh. There's a perfectly nice straight road near us with hatchings all the way down the centre of the road - presumably to discourage overtaking. But it's not unsafe, and they're not double white lines. So why confuse everyone?

I suppose that if it stops STUPID people overtaking, but leaves the cogniscenti to overtake at will, that might be ok.