Yet another weekend of road carnage

[WhipLash]

An unbelievable weekend for road deaths, with five people loosing their lives, even worse than some bank-holiday weekends. I don’t think any of these could be the result of bad driving conditions, as the weather wasn’t too bad over the weekend. So what’s contributing to all these deaths? After being away from the Big Smoke recently for a break, I noticed that people’s driving habits on long distance journeys still haven’t changed. On my journey I experienced cars doing well over the tonne on old roads not designed to see such speeds, drivers dangerously passing out long convoys of trucks etc on narrow roads while nearing a bend, drivers not understanding the meaning of a solid white line up the centre of the road. It’s all so reckless :mad:. I’m not saying I’m perfect either, but there’s got to be a fine line between sensible driving and this stupidly. IMHO, until drivers are thought the difference between safe and unsafe driving, such things as speed camera, gatso’s, penalty points systems etc aren’t worth a damn.

[Eirik]

C'mon, Whiplash, tell us how you really feel :)

It's about responsibility and being learned the concequenses, I guess. I don't mind when the tossers kill themselves, but usually it's the innocent who suffer, and that's not good.

[Anders]

I tend to not involve myself in a discussion where someone mentions "road carnage", because that usually means suggestions such as a national speed limit of 40mph, mandatory death sentence for anyone breaking it, all cars should have speed limiters, there shouldn't be any roads at all and tree huggers are great.

But given that I don't see any of that so far, I will add this:

Whatever plonker painted the solid white lines in Ireland should be dragged out and shot against a wall. In fact, I have no problem with people breaking the white lines, I do it myself on occasion. The reason is that in many cases the solid white line should only apply to one side of the road, not both. In every other country I have ever driven they have mastered the difficult task of only making the line solid on the one side of the road where it applies. How can you expect people to follow the road signs when they are wrong in many cases?

[Justin]

I'm not sure that is a big cause, but you could be right. I actually think that the standard of long distance driving has improved over (say) ten years ago, I seem to have fewer "plonker overtaking and forcing me into the verge" near misses on long runs these days. But there are more drivers, and the roads are largely inadequate. I wonder how the graph of money saved on roads as compared to money spent on hospitalisation of victims of bad roads would look?

[Phil]

You've been lookly so far Justin. But watch out I hear that Whiplash will be driving up and down alot more to country now that were coming into the summer months.

Why don't you ask him how he got his name.
Is'nt that right whippy.

[WhipLash]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Whatever plonker painted the solid white lines in Ireland should be dragged out and shot against a wall. In fact, I have no problem with people breaking the white lines, I do it myself on occasion. The reason is that in many cases the solid white line should only apply to one side of the road, not both. In every other country I have ever driven they have mastered the difficult task of only making the line solid on the one side of the road where it applies<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Anders, I do feel you're being a bit unjust here, maybe even a tad foolish? :p. There are plenty of roads in Ireland where the white line apples to one side of the road and not the other, hence certain stretches of road have two parallel white lines, one broken and one continuous. From my experience of Irish roads, the stretches of road that only have one continuous white line are stretches where its simply too dangerous to pass, like dangerous bends, hilly roads or its simply too narrow. I usually find that these stretches of road are indeed marked correctly to suit the danger. OK, so I don’t condemn you for passing the solid white line, as IMO its up to every individual to decide what exactly is a safe manoeuvre, but I do feel like you’re belittling the importance of such road markings. I used to do a lot of work related driving up to a few years ago, and I must say I’ve driven some of the worst back roads in the country (IMHO, west Limerick and Cavan being the worst) so maybe things have changed since then? :confused:


[This message has been edited by WhipLash (edited 04 April 2000).]

[Anders]

I'm afraid you're either wrong or you misunderstood me. Maybe you're not as overtaking happy as I am, because if you were you would notice stupid solid white lines when you're facing a one mile stretch of an empty road ahead of you. The tend to exist when you come around a bend, i.e. the line is actually meant for the other direction. Those solid white lines I ignore on principle. I see them everytime I drive on any major road on Ireland, so they are there alright. Sure they have managed to do it right on occasion, but that's not the point. The point is that a child with half a brain could have gotten it right all the time. You have to practise to achieve the incompetence of these people.

[WhipLash]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I'm afraid you're either wrong or you misunderstood me. Maybe you're not as overtaking happy as I am, because if you were you would notice stupid solid white lines when you're facing a one mile stretch of an empty road ahead of you. The tend to exist when you come around a bend, i.e. the line is actually meant for the other direction. Those solid white lines I ignore on principle. I see them everytime I drive on any major road on Ireland, so they are there alright.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You ignore the solid white line 'on principle' and you say I'm 'either wrong' or I've 'misunderstood' you :rolleyes:? Ha, don't make me laugh! It's people that are 'overtaking happy' like you who cause fatal accidents on our roads in the first place :mad:

[Shirls]

Hmmmmm...surely corners are dangerous for cars approaching them on both sides of the road, hence the need for a continuous white line for both directions?????. At least in my experience the corner doesn't just stick to one particular side...call me weird!!!!

[Sean]

Gotta agree with Anders here; some of the road markings are plain stupid, and, as a result, some people seemingly ignore them all. I admit I ignore many and do what I judge to be best.

Inappropriate white lines example #1: Enfield to the start of the motorway.
What is the point? All the way! That means that if there is some smelly old truck plodding along at 35mph (which there often is) I can't overtake on one of the several straight stretches. Great. There have been a lot of accidents on that stretch of road over the years; it seems many of the victims being pedestrians. What's the solution - separate footpath, widen the road, redraw the road markings properly . Nope! White line all the way. Result: People ignore the lines. I've seen it; seen drivers almost pile into the corners when the straight stretch suddenly disappears.
Okay, so the white line is gone now, replaced by a million road cones and signs stating 20mph max speed. All the way! Can you take this seriously. Just a few days ago a driver (on foreign plates) some cars in front of me obeyed the signs and the queue of traffic that mounted up behind him with other vehicles out in the middle of the road seeing if there was a chance to overtake was plain to see and scary to be ahead of (which I was). So frustrating and dangerous.

I am convinced that inappropriate roadworks signs cause accidents because there are just soooo many left sitting around for months at a time with nary a sight of a lad with a shovel... worth starting a new topic?

So I will say that, in the main, I ignore speed restrictions, and the majority of roadworks signs. So much crap, so little logic.

[WhipLash]

Sean, I agree that the majority of roadwork signs are a waste of time. In fact its given me thought for another thread... :)

[Anders]

Shirls, I'm referring to a solid white line _ahead_ of the bend, which is all fine. But if you drive in the other direction, come out of the bend, you have a straight road with a solid white line meant for the other direction because the idiots painting the white line couldn't be bothered doing it properly. If I need to overtake in that situation, I will.

I haven't driven that Enfield road for a while, but that sounds like a joke.

As far as roadworks signs go, I almost always ignore them. They apply in about 3% of cases so they have basically lost their meaning.