Hatched markings

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poppasmurf_bewdley wrote: »

I cannot for the life of me see why any council would build a dual carriageway and then single it, which they seem to have been doing all over Worcestershire in the last few years. Particularly the A449 and A456.

Apart from what we all believe, their anti-car bias , I think the real reason is our culture of "Never good enough" and "Continually improve through raising targets"

Councils have to continually improve their road accident statistics.

At first it is dead easy, like when The Government made seatbelt wearing compulsory, but year after year they are chasing vanishingly smaller and smaller percentage changes, so they end up continually reducing speed limits, and doing all they can to prevent anything remotely "dangerous" like overtaking.

I notice round here a deliberate policy of siting new "Keep Left" bollards alongside bus stops to prevent anyone overtaking the stationary 'bus as it slowly disgorges passengers, because some drivers are too witless to stay far enough back to see round it and overtake it safely, and some passengers are too witless to cross the road at a crossing, or even behind the 'bus :mad:

stator

poppasmurf_bewdley wrote: »

We have near us a section of dual carriageway which has been singled with these hatched white lines edged by a broken white line. I have used that area several times to overtake slower moving traffic. Some drivers don't seem to like me doing so and give a toot or flash their lights. I think they like to have a procession behind them!

I cannot for the life of me see why any council would build a dual carriageway and then single it, which they seem to have been doing all over Worcestershire in the last few years. Particularly the A449 and A456.

Making the roads less convenient for drivers is their #1 priority.

poppasmurf_bewdley

stator wrote: »

Making the roads less convenient for drivers is their #1 priority.

Here in Worcesreshire they have been singling dual carriageways for years. The A456 and A449 have been done in reaction to death crashes. In one of these crashes, which killed three people, the cause of the accident was the poor state of the road combined with the almost none existence of road markings which had been worn away. Oh, and the siting of huge oak trees alongside the roadway which make fantastic immovable objects to crash into. But never mind, the Highways Agency and county council can spend millions (yes literally) in singling both side of the carriageway for a few miles and reducing the speed limits to below that of narrow country lanes to keep them all in jobs. Apparently, using parts of the very wide central reservation to create safe right turn refuges never entered their minds.

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Today's policy is to make drivers safer by having "more dangerous" roads

When a road layout looks like you might die negotiating it, drivers actually think about what they are doing, slow down and pass through safely.
If you get a "good" stretch of road they tend to drive at 80 on autopilot and sometimes crash spectacularly.

jase1

Councils have no money left -- they've borne the full brunt of the cuts over the last decade.

Perhaps it's time they stopped bothering with unnecessary nonsense like this and spent the money on the community. If the Government doesn't like it, invite them to swivel, they don't pay enough.

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Yes, it would be nice if my council would prioritise emptying the bins and filling in potholes rather than building speed humps, but I suppose we need an epidemic of cholera to get the bins emptied every week like in Proper Countries..

Strider590

stator wrote: »

Making the roads less convenient for drivers is their #1 priority.

In Worcestershire they top it all off by very carefully planning road works in such a way as to make sure there is NO way to bypass them.
So if there are two routes to a given location, they'll make sure the road works are on both of those routes AND close off any country lanes to make sure no one can cheat.

It's a nightmare at the best of times, but then some muppet crashes on the M5 and all that traffic joins the queues, causing complete and utter gridlock where a 1 hour drive is going to take 2-3 hours.

It happens every single time, it's so predictable that it can't even be a planning accident. Someone is actively trying screw up the roads.