^^^ agreed.
On dual carriageways established as such since they were first opened, one expects slow moving, agricultural, even horse drawn traffic one in a while, likelihood of pedestrians crossing the road plus junctions of varying quality along the route, and one is also aware of the possibility of stationary vehicles following breakdown.
Motorways were never like this, the usually 3 live lanes were designed for constant moving traffic moving at a sensible suitable speed, junctions usually designed with adequate slip roads to enable slowing and acceleration once off the lanes, in the event of breakdown the normal motorist dropped onto the hard shoulder and then slowed up, and once the breakdown was fixed could et up to normal speed before attempting to merge again.
Unsmart motorways ave taken away almost all of this, it wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d at least lit the bloody things, but in the dark in gloomy weather particularly, too few and too short refuges, even those difficult to see as you approach until you’re almost on them, a dangerous place indeed to break down especially in a small vehicle, doubly dangerous if you have full electrical failure so are unlit.
As Buckstones mentions, it would be so bad if they’d allowed a decent amount of grass verge where possible to give the switched on motorist a fair chance of getting their vehicle off the live lane as the vehicle rolled to a halt, but with miles of armco to the left the chances of this are much reduced.
Its OK for those of us in lorries to be so blase about the dangers, chances are if we were hit up the back by even the biggest artic we’d come off fairly unscathed (unlike the bod who ran you up the arse) but now put you and you wife and children in a car and what is a grave possibility of extreme danger for them in an unlit section on a wet filthy night, if she’s on her own how’s your wife supposed to extract herself and a couple of terrified just woken up nippers from their car seats into the freezing cold rain, get them safely over the armco (for elevated sections presumably you pack parachutes) and into some warm clothing, all while vehicles are pounding past merely a car’s length from the vehicle they are tailgating.
We as regular road users covering multi thousands of miles a month might be well switched on about such dangers and some of us will already have taken steps by various means to minimise the dangers to our loved ones when they travel without us, but what about the average motorist, who may not be as experienced as us, may not be fit enough to leap over that armco and they have not so able passengers with them, old or young makes no difference when another vehicles cleans them up.
This is not a think of the cheeldren scare story, this was a stupid half baked idea that as usual no one ever thought to ask experienced road users for input before deciding on the cheapest method of all of putting a plaster on the needs of the country’s infrastructure now it’s servicing millions more people than it was ever designed to, with numbers still rising ever day.
I for one am concentrating a hell of lot more on these roads, particularly in the dark, and making doubly sure i am fare enough back to have an adequate field of vision past the vehicle in front, so should the chap in front suddenly swerve to avoid that unlit car, if i am unable to change lanes also i can stop in time, but one wonders if the many clowns now in our industry are doing the same.
so do they just use lane 2 on a 4 lane dual carriageway going by that concept.