Safe Speed Forums

Without sounding like I'm picking holes in your theories Cooler, two questions.

Did you check to see that there was nothing under the bridge? Personally if there is room to do so, I prefer not to be in L1 when passing something on the hard shoulder.

Also, where abouts on the bridge were you stood (in relation to the motorway lanes). Sadly there are several incidences every year of drivers being killed by heavy items being dropped from bridges. It's all very quantum, but the fact that you were there may well have influenced the behaviours of some of the more observant drivers.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

A very good point Sixy, and one I can confirm to be true.
If I ever notice someone stood on a motorway bridge looking in my direction, I always change lanes to avoid travelling directly below them in case they throw either themselves or a missile over the edge.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

Sixy,

Fair points.

1. Yes, nothing under the bridge.

2. It wasn't one of those little pedestrian/farm bridges but a big roundabout/bridge. I was on the South side of the roundabout/bridge looking South, so there was no way that traffic coming from the North would see me standing on the opposite side to them. My car was parked away from the intersection and there were no parked vehicles on the roundabout.

I agree about observers influencing experiments, and will be careful in my next observation which will be on the M4 East of Bristol. There is a roundabout/bridge with a great view Westwards on a downhill slope so I guess there is a mile of viewing easy.

If I can be bothered I might increase the sample, although I don't want this to become too obsessive.

C.

PS - Gixer - I'll be careful not to throw myself over the edge!

Oh, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the drivers you observed were genuine MLMs, but equally I'd be surprised if all of them were. Over a certain period of time on a certain day, you've shown that a certain number of drivers used L2 when L1 alongside them was empty. However, in the absence of any further information, trying to infer anything about the MLM-ness of those drivers is then a bit of a non-starter.

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Chris

Schrödinger's MLM's, both selfish and not-selfish simultaneously!

I just had another thought...



So, can we assume that you were situated on a motorway junction? If so then your observations are surely affected by traffic staying in L2 to allow room for joining traffic?

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Ah, you mean M4 junction 18.

I can guarantee you'll see a lot of people not moving to lane 1 there if you look West at the Westbound traffic-anyone with sense will be out in L2 at the point where it merges with the sliproad as it's a fast sliproad with limited visibility.

Looking West at the Eatbound traffic will prove very little as trucks are slow up that hill and will be overtaking in L2. There's regularly a tailback to the junction too as vehicles tuck in behind slow lorries to exit the motorway.

You WILL however see some very interesting examples of how to attempt suicide by Eastbound car drivers trying to exit the motorway.
(oh, and there's no 'middle lane' Eastbound either. :p There's 4 lanes.)

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

Folks,

Excellent points, both Sixy and Nos. I think that the presence of the slipway from the roundabout may have affected my observations.

OK, start again from scratch. There are a couple of bridges further down the M5 from my original observation point which are far away from any slip roads and over three lanes.

Now, the point about the observer affecting the results. This is a good one. The only way that I can see to avoid that is to secrete myself in the bushes at the edge of a bridge on the side of the bridge facing the rear of the passing vehicles. I don't think that drivers would spot me at all, especially if my clothing is inconspicuous. The M5 is straight and flat all through the Somerset levels so maybe I can see further than half a mile. Anyway, we'll see.

I have a few days off, so maybe I can redo my experiment early next week, if the weather is not too bad.

C.

What is it you hope to gain from hiding in bushes on your day off?

Yes, you are right about what you have seen, so why waste more effort?
Drivers get nothing in return for switching back to the slug lane; instead, they
take on the risk of a lane change (which is when collisions happen) and the
chance of getting trapped in the slow lane. It's all downside, you see! Nothing
at all on the upside, except the approval of people they don't give a hoot
about! It's a no brainer to stick in lane, so that's what happens.

If you must go through with this mad plan, wear a cardboard box ... there's so much trash at the road side nowadays, you'd be totally invisible.

My experience has taught me to believe that the drivers who fear or are inexperienced at lane changing avoid the 'slow' lane if it also tends to be the lane that on- / off-ramps merge into /out of.

A small number of states specifically require vacating the 'slow' lane prior to an on-ramp. (That number is slowly growing). If the on-ramp isn't long enough, or the car on the on-ramp doesn't want to or fails to accelerate sufficiently, having no one in the 'slow' lane would make merging easier.

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The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

That represents an additional penalty (as well as the switching danger and the risk of being trapped), i.e. the risk from people who barge-in from the side ramp. Small wonder that people "cruise" for a while in the middle lane - it would be very surprising if they didn't, given that the only "advantage" is a warm glow for doing someone behind a good turn. That's especially true these days, when boneheads are rewarded for exploiting altruism (greed is good … no such thing as society.. etc).

Valle,

Well, of course I agree with you completely. What you describe was confirmed in my experiment, but it is also plainly obvious from regular motorway driving.

I guess I was utterly amazed that some posters wanted to question what happens on motorways every day of the week, and I was willing to provide some more detailed evidence of this reality.

Maybe some posters here have been having a laugh at my expense?

C.

That’s a vital part of the Pavlovian culture - it was parodied in Monty
Python as "nailing the corpse of the parrot in the upright position", i.e.
everyone knows the truth, but argue anyway.



The parrot is dead.


But, back to motorways, how do you address it? One idea, much
discussed, is to change the “label” of the middle lane, in the hope that
“middle-of-the-roaders” will see the error of their ways. I think that is
doomed to failure, myself.


I actually don’t think the world would end if we accept what the lane is
used for, i.e. progressing at a fair clip, avoiding the slugs, minimising lane
changes. Pavlov’s dogs are forewarned.

I suppose people who don't know how to merge in properly from an onramp would be a different problem for a different thread.
So that means that a small group must take on additional brains and abilities in excess to make up for the deficits of those who take too long to change lanes, since it is usually easier to change yourself than to change others.
Not I. The thought of laughing at you or your unique brand of curiosity never crossed my mind.
We need more people to go to the trouble of thinking about and observing these things. Although what you are doing may need to shift its focus to a more quantitative bent (at this time / rate of traffic, % of traffic behaves like so, etc.), not having enough people who were willing to do these kinds of things is the exact reason why we get people who don't know or give a damn about safe driving, traffic management, or road engineering to come up with and allow 'ideas' like cameras and traffic calming to proliferate unchecked.

Lacking the complicated and time-consuming measurements of the type you have been willing to observe from that particular perch, people who don't know any better look at the only quantitative measurement that can easily be checked and recorded - the speedometer.

I'm sure by now most of you don't need your speedometer to avoid accidents, or even incidents, except those involving fines or points. Maybe its time to get other measurements - ones that can be obtained without the risks of fines or points - before the problem takes on the appearance of being insurmountable simply because it appears to have been growing from the perspective the majority are not willing to move from?

The problem we have with ... the ideologies we have a problem with, are that they are rooted ones. The sooner we can get good info from other perspectives, the sooner we can uproot the ideologies that bear ill fruit.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

But surely its all simply a matter of keeping left unless overtaking?

From my observations of the roads over the last few years I have observed that most people do indeed heed the simple keep left rule.....however the number of 'middle lane' daydreamers is definately increasing.

I hypothesise that lane discipline has deteriorated since the advent of aggressive speed limit enforcement.....could it be that the speed kills mantra is making us stupid?

Or since the rise in popularity of sat-navs? Maybe it should be built into the software that the machine chants 'keep left unless overtaking' and 'only a fool breaks the two second rule' constantly unless giving directions!

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I'm with The Rush on this, perhaps if a few more of us conducted observations...

Mind you when I suggested something similar there was little interest. There would be a large amount of work in setting up a data collection exercise that would stand up to 'peer review' however I think less rigorous approach would still provide some useful data towards answering any number of questions.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Perhaps it's time to add the following links:

Lane Hog

www.middlelanemorons.com