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Not so smart M/ways -


Observer II

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All the systems are centrally controlled, presumably to maintain traffic flows - think we have one at the Battersby Lane Island with it's CCTV and periodic traffic lights.  The danger of "smart" M/Ways is the lack of a "safe" lane for breakdowns or for alternate use by the Emergency Services -  clearly a stupid idea from the start,  no doubt designed to save money on widening schemes.

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Milkey. America doesn’t have anywhere near as many heavy goods vehicles as we do so road repairs are less common but where they differ dramatically is in their safety restrictions.

I reckon we go well over the top, with safety measures taking longer than the actual repairs. US roadworks tend to be a few hundred yards with only a slight reduction in speed so I don’t see why we couldn’t do the same and keep the traffic moving.

 

Bill :)

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12 hours ago, Bill said:

Milkey. America doesn’t have anywhere near as many heavy goods vehicles as we do so road repairs are less common but where they differ dramatically is in their safety restrictions.

I reckon we go well over the top, with safety measures taking longer than the actual repairs. US roadworks tend to be a few hundred yards with only a slight reduction in speed so I don’t see why we couldn’t do the same and keep the traffic moving.

 

Bill :)

How do the Americans get their goods to the destination?

I agree with the safety and road works, other countries do it far better and quicker,

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14 hours ago, Observer II said:

All the systems are centrally controlled, presumably to maintain traffic flows - think we have one at the Battersby Lane Island with it's CCTV and periodic traffic lights.  The danger of "smart" M/Ways is the lack of a "safe" lane for breakdowns or for alternate use by the Emergency Services -  clearly a stupid idea from the start,  no doubt designed to save money on widening schemes.

So what should happen to duel carriageways like the A55 where there is no safety lane or smart signs?

Smart motorways are controlled by computers and sensors, they are over looked by seven control centers. 

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imo there should be lay-bys on such dual carriageways.  On "smart" M/ways, if the controller sees a break down on a live lane, they initiate a close signal for that lane; BUT in the time between spotting the breakdown and activating the signal (assuming all drivers take notice), several vehicles will be speeding into the rear of the broken down vehicle.

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Obs, Yep that could easily happen but begs the question would the technology or person have spotted my car the other week when it was only just making 20 mph? 

Milky Goods are moved long distances by rail and it's quite impressive to see the trains with three or more engines and about a mile or so long. This is why the main Interstate roads don't have anything like the volume of heavy goods vehicles that we have. Once you get nearer large areas of population though, somewhat smaller trucks do the local moving about. 

 

Bill :)

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14 hours ago, Bill said:

Obs, Yep that could easily happen but begs the question would the technology or person have spotted my car the other week when it was only just making 20 mph? 

Milky Goods are moved long distances by rail and it's quite impressive to see the trains with three or more engines and about a mile or so long. This is why the main Interstate roads don't have anything like the volume of heavy goods vehicles that we have. Once you get nearer large areas of population though, somewhat smaller trucks do the local moving about. 

 

Bill :)

YOu do realize America is much larger then the UK?

I believe 70% of goods are  moved by trucks in the USA while in the UK the figure is 76%. there are 3.5 million trucks in the USA while in the UK there are 500,000.

Putting goods on trains or boats does not actually reduce freight road millage by much as you still need to get the goods to Walmart from were the train unloads.

 

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Of course they have trucks just the same as we do for the local movement of goods but for longer distances, a lot of their stuff is moved by rail. Without the heavy trucks, the main motorways don’t need repairing anything like as much as ours, so there’s infinitely less traffic disruption. Over the years, I’ve lived and worked in the states and driven the length and breadth of the place and other than in the cities and suburbs, driving over there is a real pleasure compared to the UK.

 

Bill :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/8/2020 at 7:18 PM, Bill said:

Of course they have trucks just the same as we do for the local movement of goods but for longer distances, a lot of their stuff is moved by rail. Without the heavy trucks, the main motorways don’t need repairing anything like as much as ours, so there’s infinitely less traffic disruption. Over the years, I’ve lived and worked in the states and driven the length and breadth of the place and other than in the cities and suburbs, driving over there is a real pleasure compared to the UK.

 

Bill :)

Again the USA is a lot bigger then the UK, but find it hard to believe goods are shifted by train that are reasonably local that is within 200 miles or so, so although I do not know anything about logistics in the USA I bet trucks do venture out beyond cities and suburbs. Ships often take the place of trains in Europe shifting large shipments. 

Still that is not what I came to write. Went to Oldham today and a rare trip on the M62. Still surprised the roadworks on the smart motorway are not finished even though I heard on the TV they were about to end a few weeks ago and the sat nav said the road was roadworks clear. 

However there are lots of places one can pull off the carriageway be it on to grass or soil. There seemed to be a lot more places were run off could be created as there os room although there are grassy slopes so they would need to be excavated and probably a retaining wall built. I know thjis would cost extra but it is a government contract after all.

As it is I did not see any safe run of areas were one can pull over in case of emergency.

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  • 3 years later...

Should be more than just sacked Obs. 😊

Why they didn’t just build one section to see how things worked out over time before spending a fortune and causing years of disruption beggars’ belief.  The idea was ok, but even if the technology worked perfectly, because the safe stopping areas were so far apart, accidents were bound to happen. They could have simply put a bit of hard shoulder every couple of hundred yards or so and that would have been a lot better than the costly over engineered areas they created.

 

Bill 😊

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smart motor ways but dumb drivers.

the idea of smart motorways was to reduce traffic congestion at peak times. the smart bit being that in the event of somebody breaking down then a section before an dafter would be closed to "live" traffic to effect recovery. this would be done automatically.

the problem lies in educating the motorists that the MUST obey the signage at all times rather than when they could be bothered or thinking that it does not apply to them.

so if they are abandoning the smart motorways will the "smart" stretches revert to a hard shoulder?

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From what I’ve heard Sid it’s only that they’re not going to be making any more of them. Reverting them back to just a hard shoulder would mean it’d be back to where we were at the start of all this and a 100% waste of money, so I reckon they’ll keep what we have for now and maybe find some way of making them better.

Long term, it’ll be the vehicles that are smart, not the road. This is already happening with most modern cars where auto braking makes it near impossible to have a head on collision.

 

Bill 😊

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Well, it seems they've arrived at the ultimate answer with the net zero philosophy - just drive the peasants off the roads altogether, thus reducing congestion altogether and leaving these m/ways to the rich, while the rest of us walk or cycle within our 15mimute zones.    😉

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Net zero and smart motorways don’t have a lot in common and I wouldn’t have thought smart motorways would have anything to do with keeping us peasants off the road. I’ve been thinking though about what I said about the cars getting smarter and that might be a possible solution to the current problem.

In many countries around the world, including some areas here in the UK, we’ve seen the inside lanes being reserved for the likes of high occupancy vehicles. So, if restricting access to certain types of vehicles works, then we could keep things as they are now but limit its use to modern vehicles fitted with anti-collision systems.

 

Bill 😊

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Come on Bill, this is all being driven by the eco-lobby, who want us all out of our cars, and onto e/buses and bikes, or our shoes.  Up and down the Country you've got Councils pushing traffic onto main roads to avoid LTE zones, thus increasing congestion on those main roads and consequent pollution caused by queuing.  The smart M/WAYS were an attempt to get more out of less, less building of new roads.   :rolleyes:

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Think you’re muddling two very different issues there Obs. I completely agree that councils are and always have been dead against private car ownership and much of what they’re doing now is little more than a money grabbing opportunity, but as far as I know, councils have nothing to do with smart motorways.

Of course, with smart motorways it’s trying to expand capacity on the cheap and had it been done differently it could well have worked out. I doubt the eco-lobby had anything to do the idea though and why would they, since they’re more concerned with getting cars off the road rather than making life easier for the motorist.

The current system is clearly over reliant on the technology but ultimately, technology will solve the problems. There’s no instant solution, but given time to fully evolve, the likes of head on collisions and low emission zones will become meaningless along with Rod King’s 20mph areas.

 

Bill 😊

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2 hours ago, Bill said:

..

Of course, with smart motorways it’s trying to expand capacity on the cheap and had it been done differently it could well have worked out. I doubt the eco-lobby had anything to do the idea though and why would they, since they’re more concerned with getting cars off the road rather than making life easier for the motorist.

The current system is clearly over reliant on the technology but ultimately, technology will solve the problems. There’s no instant solution, but given time to fully evolve, the likes of head on collisions and low emission zones will become meaningless along with Rod King’s 20mph areas.

 

Bill 😊

The eco-loons did make noise about the loss of land by adding lanes to Motorways but the DoT used that pressure to make it seem acceptable to squeeze more cars on to the same land area. The real clincher here will have been that every over bridge will have had to be made bitter and all the approach roads altered.

The problem isn't so much the technology as the police who operate it. Everyone I talk to has had the experience of the signs giving misleading information. So a recent journey on the M6 resulted in at least ten cases where I was given a sign telling me the speed limit was 50 by another a minute later saying National Limit applies. Added to the obstruction signs that just disappear with no incident ever appearing the public trust in the signs is non-existent. So they don't trust the obstruction warning about a broken down car - it doesn't say a code for broken down in Lane 1 - so people ignore it and there is a crash. The technology is just not up to the job of informing the public reliably and in a trusted way. It will be decades before there is enough collision avoidance in the car fleet to really prevent accidents.

Low emission zones are little more than a fraud already, the levels are set at UN values for which there is no actual evidence of harm in real life studies. They are just another Local Government scam.

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So, what your saying is that the smart motorway isn’t so smart after and relies instead on someone being permanently on watch. I was under the impression that most of the system was automated, and that the human was only needed to keep an eye on things. Either way the system isn’t working as well as we’d expect but where do we go from here?

We could just write it all off as a bad idea or continue with what we have now and try to make it better, but I seriously doubt though that it’ll ever be perfect or even close to perfect while people are involved. But, if people are taken out of the decision making, it should be possible to get a lot closer to what’s needed.

For sure it’ll take time for all cars to have collision avoidance but it’s getting there. All the major manufactures offer it and by all accounts it’s not a deal breaker. I’ve driven several cars in recent years with this option and even the little Toyota I’ve just ordered comes with it as standard, i.e., you can’t not have it. Other manufacturers should take a leaf out of Toyota’s book and do the same and that way, eventually we wouldn’t even need smart motorways.

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It will be decades before there is enough collision avoidance in the car fleet to really prevent accidents.

I think you’d be surprised just how many cars out there already have anti-collision and apparently from this year it’s even going to be mandatory for all new cars. It would take decades if we waited for all cars to become compliant, but we don’t need to do that as those without it have got three other lanes to use.

 

Bill 😊

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