Driving standards

[boxbrownie]

9 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Even the (so called) professionals get it wrong.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63290908?at_custom1=[post+type]&at_campaign=64&at_custom3=bbc_wales_news&at_custom4=1F574B6C-4E4E-11ED-8375-1FB6923C408C&at_medium=custom7&at_custom2=facebook_page&fbclid=IwAR1MgedbJWs8MijAcn0L75ZcKDmdUDyu8UazQKCimXW8-bSZpqd1D3kseCs

Not so sure they got it wrong as thought they would get away with it!

[kevinlms]

42 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Not so sure they got it wrong as thought they would get away with it!

Smaller trucks are cheaper - well that was the idea. By the time they transfer the load to a bigger vehicle and pay all the fines and perhaps a late delivery penalty, it's going to cost them a bucket load.

[TheQ]

Saw a lorry yesterday with an illuminated LED sign the usual red circle and bar with a cyclist in it.. it was mounted on the rear left hand corner of the lorry..

Pity the lorry was parked on the right hand side of the road facing into the traffic..

[leopardml2341]

7 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Saw a lorry yesterday with an illuminated LED sign the usual red circle and bar with a cyclist in it.. it was mounted on the rear left hand corner of the lorry..

Pity the lorry was parked on the right hand side of the road facing into the traffic..

Which just goes to prove that technology cannot prevent stupidity! 

[boxbrownie]

59 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Saw a lorry yesterday with an illuminated LED sign the usual red circle and bar with a cyclist in it.. it was mounted on the rear left hand corner of the lorry..

Pity the lorry was parked on the right hand side of the road facing into the traffic..

Still the correct place for the sign with most of the Lycra pilots I see 🤣

[leopardml2341]

18 hours ago, TheQ said:

Saw a lorry yesterday with an illuminated LED sign the usual red circle and bar with a cyclist in it.. it was mounted on the rear left hand corner of the lorry..

Pity the lorry was parked on the right hand side of the road facing into the traffic..

 

17 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Still the correct place for the sign with most of the Lycra pilots I see 🤣

 

Presumably parked half on the pavement then too?

[PhilJ W]

More bad driving including someone who thought he was Bullitt (from 1:32).

 

Edited October 21, 2022 by PhilJ W

[melmerby]

On 18/10/2022 at 08:56, PhilJ W said:

The local council has replaced most of the street lights with LED lights. For all their advantages one problem is that they cast deep shadows.

Shouldn't do if they are correctly designed. They should have diffused light, not spot beams.

Never seen a problem with the ones I've encountered (Mainly Birmingham)

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Shouldn't do if they are correctly designed. They should have diffused light, not spot beams.

Never seen a problem with the ones I've encountered (Mainly Birmingham)

 

A sharp cutoff isn't a problem if it's in the right place, so it's not shining light in to places where it's not needed.

 

I assume the spotlight-type is down to the housing rather more than the light source.

 

For all that LEDs are a good technology they're often not used terribly well.

[Pete the Elaner]

5 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Shouldn't do if they are correctly designed. They should have diffused light, not spot beams.

Never seen a problem with the ones I've encountered (Mainly Birmingham)

Birmingham? I was there yesterday & saw something rather puzzling.

I was heading to somewhere around the area of Glover St, which is about 1/3m east from New St station. There were fairly wide pavements with marked parking areas in the street but virtually every car was parked with 2 wheels on the pavement.

It seemed silly to have pavements this wide but equally silly for people to park on the pavements when there were bays clearly marked on the road.

Then I came across the inevitable: a van parked wholly on the pavement. 🙄

[melmerby]

6 minutes ago, Reorte said:

I assume the spotlight-type is down to the housing rather more than the light source.

Using a diffuser but with light baffles to stop light spilling into people's rooms is easy enough to do.

On an urban main road they should be able to cover most of the road with no bad patches between lights.

 

I live in Worcestershire, who are a bit behind on light technology, I'm sure they have only just moved over from gas..................🙂

My road has enough street lights to illuminate about 20% of it, the bits between are totally dark, although I do have one right outside which keeps the front of the house nicely illuminated at no extra cost, no dark corners for burglars to exploit.👍🏻

Many of the other properties have their own outside lighting on overnight.

[Enterprisingwestern]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

Using a diffuser but with light baffles to stop light spilling into people's rooms is easy enough to do.

On an urban main road they should be able to cover most of the road with no bad patches between lights.

 

I live in Worcestershire, who are a bit behind on light technology, I'm sure they have only just moved over from gas..................🙂

My road has enough street lights to illuminate about 20% of it, the bits between are totally dark, although I do have one right outside which keeps the front of the house nicely illuminated at no extra cost, no dark corners for burglars to exploit.👍🏻

Many of the other properties have their own outside lighting on overnight.

 

Is that swamp gas, town gas or natural gas, then we know how futuristic you are in the land of sauce and artichokes!

 

Mike.

[kevinlms]

9 hours ago, melmerby said:

Using a diffuser but with light baffles to stop light spilling into people's rooms is easy enough to do.

On an urban main road they should be able to cover most of the road with no bad patches between lights.

 

I live in Worcestershire, who are a bit behind on light technology, I'm sure they have only just moved over from gas..................🙂

My road has enough street lights to illuminate about 20% of it, the bits between are totally dark, although I do have one right outside which keeps the front of the house nicely illuminated at no extra cost, no dark corners for burglars to exploit.👍🏻

Many of the other properties have their own outside lighting on overnight.

As long as not like Victor Mildew, who of course had the street light knocked into the bedroom window!

[PhilJ W]

https://www.facebook.com/Les.depanneuses/videos/452438786879197

[Il Grifone]

On 25/10/2022 at 01:30, PhilJ W said:

https://www.facebook.com/Les.depanneuses/videos/452438786879197

 

The lorry was coming too fast, but it looks like the trailer broke away as a result of the driver's reaction to seeing the stopped police car.

 

I find it surprising in these crash videos how often the camera car is the cause of the accident, or at least aggravates it through travelling too fast in the first place or lack of avoiding action. I would have thought one would want keep it quiet (or is it just that they are so arrogant as to not consider themselves at fault?)

 

Our house has a street light in front, so no need for any external illumination.

[fulton]

Couple of moans about modern road "improvements", did a long drive Sunday, back to Kent from the NMRA convention at Crewe, driving standards reasonably good, heavy traffic, dark and raining, a number of broken down vehicles on the inside lane of the "smart" motorways, talk about an accident waiting to happen! who ever came up with such an idea.

Today walking back from the shops, witnessed a very near miss, made my hair stand up, in my area the high level pedestrian red/green lights are being replaced with low level ones which I find less obvious, I think that contributed to this near miss, opposite to me were two people waiting to cross, a man on a scooter and a women looking at her phone, a bit of a gap in the traffic, scooter man goes, women follows right in front of a car, luckily no one hurt, I know scooter man and being on the phone also contributed, but the low level lights did not help.

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, fulton said:

Today walking back from the shops, witnessed a very near miss, made my hair stand up, in my area the high level pedestrian red/green lights are being replaced with low level ones which I find less obvious

 

I've grumbled about only having them on the side you're crossing from for quite a while, looking down at the light instead of across the road really takes my attention away from the road. I can easily understand it would be an improvement for some people, but seems to be a case of giving with one hand and taking away with the other, when both should be doable.

[Coldgunner]

Had a late night drive the other night to give the car a good run, thick fog, maybe 100m vision at most. Still got pratts going at 90mph.

[boxbrownie]

57 minutes ago, Coldgunner said:

Had a late night drive the other night to give the car a good run, thick fog, maybe 100m vision at most. Still got pratts going at 90mph.

They couldn’t catch you then? 😁

[Coldgunner]

I was in the space between space! Neither existing nor not existing! I was the trinity!

[Il Grifone]

Fog always seems to bring out the idiots!

It seems obvious that one should drive at such a speed as to be able to stop within the space one can see.

I thought 'smart' motorways were a cretinous idea fom day one. the whole idea was to have a lane to stop safely away from the traffic. Breakdowns are much less common these days but still occur. A career in electronics taught me not to depend on them too much.

[Compound2632]

39 minutes ago, Il Grifone said:

I thought 'smart' motorways were a cretinous idea fom day one. the whole idea was to have a lane to stop safely away from the traffic. Breakdowns are much less common these days but still occur. A career in electronics taught me not to depend on them too much.

 

The thing that seems to be too often overlooked in criticism of smart motorways is that there are many miles of dual carriageway trunk road that see similar traffic densities (pro rata) at similar speeds but do not offer the protection of a hard shoulder. A breakdown on one of these is as dangerous as, and more disruptive than, one on a smart motorway.

 

Which is not to say that having a hard shoulder isn't a significant safety improvement over not having one. A smart motorway is, after all, simply a fudge to increase capacity at minimum expenditure.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Compound2632

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, Il Grifone said:

I thought 'smart' motorways were a cretinous idea fom day one.

I feel that way about anything with "smart" in its name. Apart from perhaps Smarties.

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The thing that seems to be too often overlooked in criticism of smart motorways is that there are many miles of dual carriageway trunk road that see similar traffic densities (pro rata) at similar speeds but do not offer the protection of a hard shoulder. A breakdown on one of these is as dangerous as, and more disruptive than, one on a smart motorway.

 

Which is not to say that having a hard shoulder isn't a significant safety improvement over not having one. A smart motorway is, after all, simply a fudge to increase capacity at minimum expenditure.

But usually, almost always as I recall dual carriageways have a kerb/pavement or grass verge (even cycle lane, shock horror) space one can use in an emergency, where as Motorways have an Armco barrier two feet from the smart/1st lane, which IMO makes the Smart Motorway design flawed.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

I thought 'smart' motorways were a cretinous idea fom day one. the whole idea was to have a lane to stop safely away from the traffic. Breakdowns are much less common these days but still occur.

 

Coming down past Sheffield last time I went there were a series of those refuge laybys in a row that one or more cars stopped in them so there's definitely still a need for somewhere to stop.