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Euronymous

Euronymous

Senior Jockey
Joined
Jan 6, 2005
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Leyland
I'm listening to the Ryder Cup on Five Live and naturally with it being a Friday afternoon there are travel updates aplenty. Up and down the country all I'm hearing is major tailbacks because of broken down lorries, including a nine mile tailback on the M1 near Doncaster and I'm thinking why don't the Government make it a law that between say 3 and 6pm on a Friday no Lorries should be on the road. There are plenty of lorry parks and service stations they could park at after all.
 
Not a bad idea!
I spent a year working near Bristol travelling down on a Sunday night or very early on Monday morning (up at 4am.) the journey would generally take 2.5 to 2.75 hours. Coming home to Essex on a Friday evening would generally take more than 4 hours and not infrequently 6 or 7 hours.
 
To add to that idea, caravans should also be banned from the roads for the same period - given the choice, I'd ban them from 8am to 6pm every day! The sooner the government levies a £1000/yr road tax on caravans, the better. They're a menace. In their defence, at least lorries are carrying out some form of work, caravans are purely for leisure. In the summer there are broken down/jack-knifed caravans everywhere.
 
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Fridays are just total SH1T for driving anywhere, regardless of broken-down vehicles. It doesn't matter what's broken down, to be honest - I mostly see stranded car drivers far more than caravans (which generally are off the roads from October through to early March) or even lorries. I'd say take all heavy goods off the roads during daylight on Fridays to ease congestion, although for decades I preferred the once common European rule of taking them off during daylight, full stop, having them drive by night, to offload their deliveries early a.m.

We'd still be better off with deregulated motorways (another soapbox of mine), with the left lane up to 70 mph, the middle from 70 mph to infinity, and the right for overtaking the lot, but not hogging. There's this notion that speed kills, but what kills, actually (apart from the sudden stop) is stupidity or inexperience. I like the idea of introducing constraints on newly-licensed drivers (of any age) being put through a probationary period and not carrying passengers for, say, a year after qualifying. That'd help to stop the inane fatalities racked up by young lads showing off their Halfords Specials to their mates.
 
Shadow Leader said:
To add to that idea, caravans should also be banned from the roads for the same period - given the choice, I'd ban them from 8am to 6pm every day! The sooner the government levies a £1000/yr road tax on caravans, the better. They're a menace. In their defence, at least lorries are carrying out some form of work, caravans are purely for leisure. In the summer there are broken down/jack-knifed caravans everywhere.
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Are you Jeremy Clarkson in disguise?
 
Who's talking disguises ? :whistle:

No difference between the average idiot towing a caravan and one towing a horse trailer, in my experience. Neither are usually driven that well. Except one's usually towed by a bloke who can't reverse and t'other by a female who can't, either. If you haven't got a license to tow (as is now the case for the current generation of new drivers), you shouldn't be allowed to do so.

And I'm glad to say I can now tow a caravan, horse trailer and livestock trailer and usually can reverse them quite well, although the horse trailer sometimes gives me problems because it's only a double axle wide wheel base one. Caravan's easier and the livestock trailer's even better, as it's a triple axle.
 
We have a superb network of rivers and canals which are totally suited to moving construction materials, kindling, all kinds of non-perishables which don't need to be from A to B before they begin wilting. There's this mania that everything must be there tomorrow, when 3 or 4 days would be just as good. No reason why the waterways should be so limited to pleasure use only - it's far more 'organic' to have heavy horses pulling the barges, with the fall-out a useful by-product for local gardens along the towpaths. I don't believe a word of all these endless, energy-guzzling, worldwide committees (where the attendees fly, take taxis, and stay in energy-inefficient luxury hotels) on energy and fuel conservation when we have the answer gliding past us serenely.
 
What made it worse yesterday were the conditions and half the people in this country (if not more) haven't a clue how to drive (a) when its raining or (b) when its rained.
I drove down to Barnstaple and back yesterday in dreadful conditions,lights on and wipers going just about all the way and the amount of fools who don't have either main headlights on, or even more amazingly, any lights on at all is incredible. Then they still drive nose to tail at 60-70mph with a cat in hells chance of stopping should anything happen in front of them, it beggars belief!
Of course then what happens is somebody has a minor shunt in the traffic and rather than move the vehicles to the hard shoulder quickly so the flow of traffic can get back to normal ASAP they block the middle/outside lane and wait for emergency services. Crazy!!
 
The weather was certainly appalling down here all day yesterday - friend was on M5 going to Exeter and said 60mph was the absolute max to do safely with a lot of daylight in front. He saw four people, two with pushchairs, walking on the hardshoulder in that rain.... madness!
 
krizon said:
We have a superb network of rivers and canals which are totally suited to moving construction materials, kindling, all kinds of non-perishables which don't need to be from A to B before they begin wilting.QUOTE]

One of the major supermarkets (can't remember which) has started using the waterways for non-perishables. Only caught a fleeting glimpse on the box whilst doing something else, so didn't see the details.
Click to expand...
 
I knew someone who had a job of being on call to put out traffic cones when there was an accident (he wasn't what you would call a high flyer) h egave it up because of drivers shouting cnt at him and sometimes even gobbing at him

Sort of funny really
 
Could be on to something with this canal stuff [I live in a canal village]. When I was a child we used to go to the canal to get the coal for our fire off the boats. I can see people going to canal boats to buy non perishable stuff. Trouble is, they'd have to drive there......[it's been a long hard day and I'm in fantasy land, here...]
 
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