Death by Dangerous Driving

The honorable judge presiding .....

I drove up and down that stretch on Tuesday; being a weekday there was very heavy traffic. If ever a road needed a third lane it's the A34, probably all the way from Winchester to the M40 north of Oxford. 

or restrictions on HGVs overtaking other vehicles.

Suzy Wong posted:

I drove up and down that stretch on Tuesday; being a weekday there was very heavy traffic. If ever a road needed a third lane it's the A34, probably all the way from Winchester to the M40 north of Oxford. 

+1 x 100  ...............  its rare for a day to go by without an accident or a breakdown causing a hold up on the A34 & its invariably the Oxford to Newbury stretch.   Its a disgrace that it was not converted to 3 lane years ago,  at the time of the Newbury by-pass would have been ideal.    

And +1 for Derek re "restrictions on HGVs overtaking other vehicles".    It was proposed a while back that trucks over 7.5t be restricted to lane one on the A34 ,  but the last I heard was it was voted down.  I would be 100% in agreement with that, especially so in the hilly section south of Didcot, I was driving on that stretch only last Friday & was stuck behind a two abreast truck "overtake" that lasted from the climb up to from the Harwell area until the flat a few miles from M4,   ~8 miles !!!!      Needless to say that most of the trucks either trying to overtake &those in the unyeilding convoy were mostly not GB reg.      

East/West roads in East Anglia are notoriously over burdened.

The A14 from the M6 to the East coast ports has been promised 3rd lanes for decades, never happened. Any day/every day can be a nightmare. The largely single carriageway A47 and the A605 are just a joke. Huge amounts of traffic and the money seems to go on laughable attempts to slow it down and block it up rather than help free it up and keep things moving.

The A1 used to be similar but they did a proper job of it up to Peterborough some years back and in recent years they've binned all the roundabouts from there up to the North East, huge improvement. It's not perfect, still get the occasional biff in Lincs but compared to the past it's no contest.

People and stuff have to travel. I'm sure in the long term, huge amounts of money, time and lives could be saved by just biting the bullet and having a proper East/West motorway, all the way across, with a two or three City spurs.

There's a stretch of the A14 (west end) which supposedly has restrictions on lorries overtaking during certain hours.  Our eldest lives in Cambridge, so we travel that road fairly often.  You won't be the least surprised that I've often been stuck behind lorries overtaking in that bit during the 'certain times'.

The bit of the A14 from the A1 junction down to the M11 should be 3 lanes as well, BTW.  I've given up joining the outer lane traffic on that section.  What with lorries overtaking, 'mobile traffic jams' (i.e. caravans being towed), clueless holiday traffic heading to Norfolk, Felixstowe  etc, it hardly makes any difference to the journey time down to the Cambridge turn off.

Much like the mythical M27 "South Coast Motorway" from Plymouth to Dover. The reason may well be found in the Yes Minister episode "Doing the Honours" where Hacker questions why there are two good Motorways to Oxford. Bernard explains that nearly all of the Permanent Secretaries were at Oxford and the colleges give good dinners. Hacker asks whether the Cabinet accepted this. Bernard says, "No they put their foot down. They said there'd be no motorway to Oxford, unless there was a motorway to take Cabinet Ministers hunting in the Shires. That's why the M1 was built in the fifties it stopped in the middle of Leicestershire."

 for the Yes Minister logic.  If only 

The reality is the A34 is a section of European highway E05 that runs from Scotland to Spain & the A34 in UK is the only section of dual carriageway along its length;  but hey, thats not a bother is it,  we're not in Europe since Brixit !!!  The fact that it's the main road route from Southampton (docks - exports - 2nd largest dry bulk & 2nd largest container port in UK) to the West Midlands & North West conurbations means it's a seriously important road for the whole UK,  not just the y locals. 

Maybe it is now time to consider fitting dash cams as standard - this serving a twofold purpose  - by making everyone think whether they would be happy for the footage to be viewed and also as evidence in case the worst should happen rather than roads being closed for hours on end for "investigations".  After seeing some of the footage posted online I am still incredulous by the stupidity of the minority.

Mike-B posted:

   Needless to say that most of the trucks either trying to overtake &those in the unyielding convoy were mostly not GB reg.      

Well, the Brexit has fixed that for the future!

???   err I don't think so,  why would it.  Commercial transport has always been international & a slightly different border protocol will be the same as travelling to & through Switzerland & Norway.

The reason why all European roads are so heavily populated by east european trucks is their rates are so much cheaper than west  european cmpy's.  Also european cmpy's register trucks in the east so it might be the polish reg truck is actually a brit cmpy.   East european low taxes & wages are the cause.

IMHO we should invest in high quality infrastructure.

The A34 (Southampton to the M40) and the A14 (Birmingham to Felixstow would be a good start - and I don't mean a bit of meddling here and there, three-lane dual throughout). As well as being major transport links they are dangerous death-traps. Other roads, such as the A9 in Scotland might also benefit from investment.

And while i'm on the subject of investment.............

A new runway (at least) for London (Gatwick) would do for a start.

And three or four new nuclear power stations plus the first tranche of SMRs.

And the Water Companies need to get of their Butt (sorry for the pun) and make sure we have enough storage capacity and transfer capacity.

Network Rail already get £35Bn every 5 year Control Period and something like 1/3 of this is for "Enhancements" ie expansion as opposed to Operations, Maintenance and Renewals, so they should simply be "made" to be more effective in what they deliver (ie more for our money)

And I wouldn't rely on foreign investment for the capital funding - Hinkley being a prime example of where this road leads to.

Of course we should divert the £350m per week into these new schemes (yes I know ! but that's how much the bloody Brexit people said we would have so they can f***ing well stump it up !) but a modest increase in taxation now, plus "in-house" development, design and construction would pay dividends in the future.