This news article caught my eye “Talking’ cars could reduce motorway pile-ups” and it made for some interesting reading…

It seems that the boffins interested in automotive technology are making vehicles (or the smart devices that their drivers carry) talk to each other and warn of things such as accidents on the road ahead.

What a fantastic thing to have

Imagine zooming along the road and your car lets you know of a pile-up ahead – allowing you to pull off the motorway and find a better route to your destination.
Marvellous ~ but I don’t think it goes far enough…

Surely it would be better if you didn’t have the option of having an accident in the car in the first place!

I’m of the belief that their will be no significant reduction in the amount of accidents on the roads until we remove the ability to make mistakes from the drivers. Remove the tired/drunk/drugged/visually impaired/slow reacting/stupid/stressed/confused drivers from the roads (that pretty much means everyone the enters a vehicle) and you’ve got a much safer environment for all concerned.

This of course would be met with such a massive amount of derision and rejection that it’s probably not going to happen within the scant span of my terrestrial existence sadly :( but is the best way to stop the tragedy that  ruins lives when something major happens on the British roads.

I remember a fairly recent news article showing the testing of cars communicating with each other whilst driving at high speed, a few centimetres apart ~ Safely
Not a feat I could imagine many drivers accomplishing, despite their best efforts to practise this particular skill behind me on the many journeys around Yorkshire I take, but it does show that the technology is moving in the right direction in my opinion.

One can only hope that this technology matures at a much more rapid pace…

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Glancing into the rear view mirror on the way back from a client meeting this afternoon, I was shocked to see the K.I.T.T. car from the 80′s ‘Knight Rider’ series!

Wow!
I was persued like the ubiquitous bad guy for a few miles before losing them in traffic, thanks to my advanced driving skills
(Actually I guess they were going the same way as myself for a while and turned off somewhere but a boy can dream )

It was indeed a full replica of the car from said series ~ Most impressive!

I couldn’t quite see if ‘The Hoff’ was driving but I’d guess not…

Such a shame…

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Yesterday a friend of mine was ‘installed’ as a lay Cannon at Liverpool Cathedral – a ceremony we (my GF and I) were invited to attend.
Needless to say the local weather had other plans and deposited an amount of snow anyone over the age of 30 will remember from their childhood.

This initially had the effect of destroying my night out with some girlie friends of mine and possibly of the Liverpudlian odyssey.

Come the morn of Sunday – bright and early – we braved the roads of Yorkshire in a valiant attempt to venture in to the unholy lands, west of ‘t Pennines.
Oddly, at some ungodly hour on Sunday (about 9:00 am! ) the traffic was light and we made good time – much fun being had when trying to overtake old people doing 30 mph on major roads – the outside lane was simply a river of ice.

Arrived at the Cathedral in good time and watched my friend being bedecked in an amusingly ecclesiastical cloak (she’s quite short and looked kinda like a Hobbit in a duvet! ). Got fed the second turkey dinner of the festive period. Said hellos to friends long unseen and chatted for a while. Once again braved the roads.

This time things were different…

The old Sat Nav, decided that the traffic on the M62 was going to give us a boring and mundane, slow trip home and rerouted us through Oldham and on to the non-motorway route home. This being over the Pennines through some little known villages.
“Oh what fun it is to ride in an Audi with very little directional control, up and down a bloomin’ big hill, with poor visibility, IN FRONT of a snow plough, with great drops down the side of the car on one side or the other”. (fit that one into the ‘Jingle Bells’ tune if you can )
Oddly enough we actually made it home, in one piece, not missing bits due to frostbite!

Ironically, I watched a nutter in a 4×4 slide off the road into a snow drift today!
Oh how I laughed…

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Leeds council traffic department are stupud.
There is no other reasonable conclusion for the idiocy I received through the post the other day…

During the latter chunk of last year, they carried out a traffic survey – of the “where have you come from…” / “…going to” type, in an attempt to figure out why there are congestion problems.

Good so far :)

What’s not so good are the ridiculous  conclusions they have come up with – bear in mind this is from their OWN letter…

They claim there is too much traffic using our streets as a “rat run”. Not 100% true but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt…
They also claim that  52% AM and 40% PM was ‘through traffic’ – there are 2 good schools here and the council ‘aknowledge’ that the figure MIGHT be skewed by this fact. Erm… OF COURSE THEY WILL!!
This invalidates the surveys figures from the start!

They go on to say that the most effective measure would be to close some roads, but this would have “significant inconvenience” to the residents
REALLY??? CLOSING ROADS WOULD CAUSE ‘INCONVENIENCE’!?!
Call Stephen Hawking – his position is in jepardy, this person’s a genius!!

Then they decide that the only way to ‘reduce’ traffic is to ignore that issue entirely and propose making the entire village a 20MPH zone. These “‘reduce speeds and generally improve road safety” but “such schemes do not significantly reduce traffic levels”.
Wasn’t the point that you said that traffic levels needed reducing?

This next part is the REALLY annoying bit…

The next part of the letter says that, in the last 5 years there have been 5 accidents in the village (all of ‘slight’ severity):

1. A cyclist rode out ‘heedless’ of traffic
   = nothing to do with speed or amount of traffic.
2. Another accident involved a pedestrian and a stationary vehicle
   = nothing to do with speed or amount of traffic.
3. A motor cyclist skidded on some wet leaves
   = nothing to do with speed or amount of traffic.

The council appear to be solving (at GREAT inconvenience to the residents) a problem which DOESN’T EXIST!
This is why I pay my taxes…

WHOEVER IS IN CHARGE OF THIS FIASCO WANTS SACKING!

The only problem with traffic in this village is the idiot parents who park stupidly and will “only be 5 minutes”. These idiots then procede to block the entire road in their 4x4s; or drive on the wrong side of the road to get that extra metre closer to the school door, ‘cos little Johnny legs don’t work properly…

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Absolute chaos on the M62 today ~ an accident involving a lorry, blocked the motorway, causing it to be closed for most of the day!
I feel so sorry for the people involved in the accident AND those stuck in the ensuing traffic jams
I hate to think of the cost to businesses in wasted time (and therefore money).

Let’s play with the maths…

Average car length = 13.5 feet
There are 5280 feet in a mile
30 miles of tailback = 391 effected cars
391 * 3 (lanes on the motorway) * 1.58 (average car occupancy in Leeds)  = 55616 people effected
Average wage (2008) £24,908 ÷ 52 weeks = £479 per week = £12.77 per hour

12.77 x 55616 = £710,401.70 per hour!!!

Ouch!

I had to join the M62 to visit a client in Selby. Luckily I have a Sat Nav with a traffic avoidance thing built in
It took me to the first available junction on the Motorway AFTER the closure ~ there was almost nothing else going my way (it was, without doubt, the BEST trip on the M62 I’d EVER experienced).
I did clock almost 14 miles of standing traffic ~ that was this morning.
I also felt a little sad at the people just before the tailback, zooming up to it; Never realising just what lay ahead

14 issues (all resolved) and a LOT of travelling later (between the client branches), I finally got home @ 18:50
Another late one then…

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