General Chat

....our local council invited older drivers to attend a special driving course and one of the freebies.............was a new Highway code with all the answers..............jl

Sylvia,
in spite of being native Brits, we are STILL likely to be in trouble, because lotts of this stuff is not published to the public, and we are often as ignorant or naive as a visitor to the UK........and only find out when that pair of flashing blue lights appear in the rear view mirror.....
( I dont watch road wars , police, camera action for nuffin! you know.......)

regarding our speed limits there must be thousands of drivers that dont know the limit for the road that they are on.........so they cruise along 10 Mph slower.......just to be on the safe side( of getting done for speeding)

I wonder, how many drivers know and under stand the rules for using the extra lights on their cars, ie are they driving lights or fog lights?
and when to use them correctly.......

Bob

BUT, Bob


you know that

possibly all Brits know that



but as visitors, we don't know that, nor are we told that!



The little map that comes with a rental car has no such information on it.


Every other country in the world that we have driven in, posts the actual maximum speed




sylvia

re: distances,
UK mileages indicated on road signs, are in MILES, not Km's but the emergency numbered posts ARE in Km's

the "derestricted sign"
means that it is a national(UK) speed limit for that type of road, (and vehicle) on motorways it is 70 Mph

(Nb vans and buses have their own restrictions.....)
on dual carriageway(unless indicated otherwise, ) it is 70Mph.
single carriageways it is 60Mph.
generally, in built up areas ,street lighting and NO repeaters mean 30 Mph


however some villages might have 30Mph repeaters but these are special cases......
residential areas will have signposts indicating a special limit.......usually 20 Mph..

sometimes (ie for tunnels, etc)a limit will be indicated in Blue, ie 20Mph.. this is a minmum speed, if your vehicle can't achieve it.....it is not allowed....

Motorways and dual carriage ways: 112km/h / 70mph
Unrestricted single carriageway roads: 96km/h / 60mph
Built up areas e.g. towns and villages: 48km/h / 30mph
Residential areas: 35km/h / 20mph


Bob

Sylvia -that is a valid point .Along with speed restrictions showing a camera but no speed limit attached to it.Whilst it may be all right for the locals I find it annoying to have to crawl at 30....just in case before a sign appears. There is so much signage nowadays for locals and visitors but there doesn't seem to be much clarity. Signs to another town....which disappear, just at a critical junction.......

.........Its a pity that all Emergency Controls responsible for attending incidents on our motorways shouldn't just rely on the location code but they should have the facility to accept all video recordings from mobile phones at the scene of an accident .That way Controls would be motivated to get the right vehicle to the right scene if they could be fully aware of the incident in real time.Passing motorists are so often patronisingly called'rubber neckers' and condemned for taking videos but this action could be turned into a positive thing. The Fire service has started requesting if anyone has videoed an incident in order to help with their investigations. ... perhaps in another 20 years..... jl

on a slightly different but related topic



as visitors to the UK in 2001, we noticed that there is no actual speed limit shown on the motorways

There are just the "unrestricted" signs



but nothing that says exactly what speed is allowed.



Nor do the car rental agencies tell you anything when you pick up the car at the airport



North American Highways have the maximum speed posted (eg 100 km)



We were very lucky in that we were not caught by any cameras in the first 3 days of our visit ..............'cos we discovered on the 4th day that there actually is a maximum speed on the motorway



and OH had exceeded it almost every time we drove along it




sylvia

Interesting information there Janet, a piece of history. Thank you.

Regarding the motorways measured in *kilometres' nowadays', this I believe started when the M62 was opened back in 1970.
Working for the emergency service we were taken to look at the motorway prior to its opening. The telephones had the code which consisted of the letter A representing Eastbound (B was Westbound)and the *number on the phones represented the mileage in kilometres...(.I think from Liverpool).
In Control there was a map of the section of motorway covered by our area and all calls had to be pinpointed before the caller started their message. Without that code, the wrong vehicle would have been sent , something that wouldn't have happened in days gone by. Boundaries were rarely crossed.
The first time I took an emergency call from a guy with a mobile phone was horrendous. He didn't know where he was, what road he was on, and fortunately for me the operator had forwarded his call to the wrong
Control and took the call off me. Phew.-jl
Edit - just something else that was expected 40 years ago...if a RTA was on the opposite carriageway, there were gaps between the carriageways allowing a member of the emergency service to cross the road to the accident while their 'mate' drove to the next junction in order to return to the other side of the carriageway. Imagine that happening now!!!!!

getting there, Ann, My devious mind suggests that the loops are either traffic counting loops, or even more sinister, recalling the plans to put vehicle Id chips in numberplates, as a method of tracking vehicles, etc. the loops could be used as ID sensors....and possibly,also as speed monitors........
they dont do all that work for nothing!

Bob

I always assumed the pole was some sort of traffic monitor but haven't a clue really.

another thing that you may, or may not have noticed every Km ,on motorways/ main roads is the overlapped rectangles in the roadway, and at the same location on the left hand verge is a pole with a solar panel on top.....any ideas what THEY might be for?
I have my own thoughts, but you might think otherwise...... any ideas?

Bob

New Zealand is not even on some maps - I think even our own airline left them off a map brochure that they had on board the planes.

I certainly have come across a lot of Americans that don't know where we are. Got told "oh you are Canadian live near Newfoundland." Yup that's us New Foundland and New Zealand both joined Canada March 31st 1949.

Sori Ann really off the beaten track now will be heading up to the Yukon next. Which exit was that again?

Persie

on a different(slightly) note.....re gps positions

...microsoft (I think it was)used to have a map of the world, with red dots where a user said was his location

surprising the amount of people that lived in the middle of the atlantic!!

reason was that they didnt use the correct latitude number.......east or west of the greenwich meridian......

Bob

Off track a bit (pun intended). Used to love Thora Hird and Wesley Perse.

We have some weird and wonderful road signs here exits that do not give you enough information etc. The Kiwis get lost in amongst it all so goodness only knows how the poor overseas traveller gets on.
There are so many changes that keep happening as new bits etc are being constructed all the time and where you once went has gone and another one has an around the houses exit etc.
We always say " I wish Wesley would stop changing the roads around" as in Wesley who Thora Hird kept insisting that he swapped gears etc around in her car in " Last of the Summer Wine."

Persie

Thanks Bob, you learn something new every day. But I am surprised that it was not advertised more as, if drivers are not aware of the signs they still wouldn't be able to give an accurate location.

took this from a site named wapedia......

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Driver_location_signs



2. Driver location signs
The location denoted by location marker posts was encoded into the numbers associated with motorway emergency roadside telephones. In this way the motorway control centre staff can quickly and accurately identify the location of the telephone from which the caller was reporting an incident. [3] [7] [8] However the analysis of an exercise run by the Highways Agency (Exercise Hermes) in which a serious traffic accident was simulated reported that "Call handlers in Control Rooms, including the Regional Control Centre, should request marker post locations when taking the initial reports from members of the public". [9] The need for this was shown in 2007, in an incident on a motorway section before driver location signs had been erected. The Devon and Somerset Fire & Rescue Service reported that after a serious collision on the M5, their control centre was inundated with mobile phone calls from drivers. Callers gave the operators locations stretching over 40 miles of road. As a result, four emergecy service centres were mobilised instead of just one. [10]

Research on trial sections of motorways showed that emergency service organisations responded 10 percent more quickly when a motorway had driver location signs than when it did not. Driver locations signs are more visible than the distance marker posts; this enables motorists to identify their location more quickly and accurately. Therefore emergency services can get to emergencies more quickly. [2]

By the early 2000s mobile phones were being used as the primary means of reporting accidents . [11] This required the government to rethink marker posts. By early 2007, after experiments from 2003 onwards on parts of the M25 and M6 which showed a 10% improvement in emergency service response times, [2] a programme to erect driver location signs was commenced in England (but at the time of writing, (July 2009) not in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland), [1] [12] at 500 intervals on many motorways. If obstacles prevent signs from being spaced at 500 m intervals, then the interval must be reduced to either 400 m or 300 m By April 2009 financial year, 80 percent of England's motorway network had been fitted with 16,000 driver location signs at a cost of £5.9 million. It was expected that the remaining 20% of the motorway network would be covered by April 2010 at a cost of £1.6 million. [2]

Driver location signs have three pieces of information:

The road identifier
The carriageway identifier
The location
The location is identical to the location given on marker posts. The most commonly used carriageway identifiers are the letters “A”, “B”, “J”, “K”, “L” and “M”. [13] The letter “A” normally denotes the carriageways leaving London (or clockwise in the case of the M25) and "B" is used for the opposite carriageway. Location numbers usually (but not always) [14] increase in the direction of travel of the "A" carriageway, and decrease in the direction of travel of the "B" the carriageway. The letters "J", "K", "L" and "M" denote junction slip roads. This is illustrated below.

Letters "C" and "D" have been allocated for service roads adjacent to the "A" and "B" carriageways. [13] The regulations require that each driver location sign be unique within the United Kingdom. [1]






well I never knew all that!!!.......


Bob

Not sure about the letter, Ann, but I think that the posts on the M25 going anti clockwise Towards HEATHROW are also prefixed with a B

Bob

Not realy relevent but while travelling to Italy by coach we passed through Germany. I was running my camcorder for the grand kids to see what the journey by coach was like. Being on the motorway we kept getting the exit signs the kids loved it as they said Ausfart.just the kind of thing kiddies love Elaine.

Whata bout the letter Bob?