To be contentious the problem is all the people who merge before they have to - if they want to form their own queue they can, why should they object to someone legally overtaking them!
Speeds shoud be reduced early to a level that can be supported by the reduced number of lanes - enforced by cameras (or it will be ignored) with zip merging at the cones.
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I never encountered this till recently when I got stuck directly behind two trucks. I didn?t realise what they were doing, I just assumed they were running side by side so they could have a natter. But I could see through the gap, miles and miles of clear tarmac in one lane. I was behind them for 30 minutes.
The mild irritation of someone cutting in at the front was nothing compared to the state I was in when they finally merged. If I could have prised them out of their trucks, I would have buried them in the roadworks.
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I always travel in lanes 2 or 3 to within a couple of hundred metres of the cones, and then attempt to get over. It saves the embarassment of being blocked at the last minute, and is also a bit more courteous.
I don't do it because I think that I am more important than anyone else. I do it because there is no law that says that I can't. I'm not as stupid as the numpties who form a queue 1 mile before the cones.
Before now I've come across signs warning of a reduction from 3 lanes to 1, and have sailed through to me destination, past people queueing for miles, without seeing the reduction because the signes were put out before the cones.
I've witnessed several lorries perform blocking manouvres, but it's a sinch to mount the verge and still pass them, slowly. Better still, undertake them, as it annoys them even more.
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There has been the odd one done for obstruction round here for sitting in the outer lane when it is clear in front of them but they want to play "you're not getting past me".
I've seen 5 mile stretches of the A1 with all the lemmings sat in the inside lane for roadworks that ended an hour ago.
ISTR a trial on a DC where both the innner and outer lane were paritially coned off so that drivers in both lanes thought things were equal.
The most effective road usage I've seen is the "zip in turn" often enforced by a cop or uniform of some sort. The tailbacks were much reduced and little or no stationary traffic occured.
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Martin's mention of a man in uniform reminds me of the slip road from the A4 up onto the M4 elevated section, which used to be part of my daily commute. There is a clearly marked and well signed left hand lane for those wishing to join the motorway. Of course at night this used to queue back for ages. So people would use the inside lane of the A4 then cut in at the last minute.
However occassionally the police used to be there to wave these people on up the A4, and sometimes they stopped them (dunno if they got booked - if so, what for?).
Agreed that is a different scenario, but what a waste of valuable police resource... although I know that this was a "filler" - they'd do it, but as soon as they got a proper job they'd leave it.
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Just what we need.... more roadsigns to compete with all the over signs that now cover our verges and road surfaces.
If there are 2 lanes that have to merge then use 2 lanes and merge zipper style at the appropriate point.
The slamming on of brakes and bunching up is caused by the almost exclusively British preserve of "I'm not letting you in" that so many drivers employ these days.
This is no different to the way people drive on 3 lane motorways in such a way as to effectively turning them into 2 lane motorways.
People who pull out to "block" another road user who is perfectly entitled to use the lane is the one who should be in trouble and should be the object of your collective contempt. They are willfully and deliberately adding to congestion.
JaB
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Totally agree that the blocking is wrong (agressive & self righteous) however i get equally annoyed with those who glide past a stationary queue of vehicles and push in at the last minute, especially when they try to justify it with a claim that they are doing it to "use the road most efficiently" when the real reason is also agression.
Bewfore anyone shouts at me I don't mean the line a mile before the roadworks which is just starting to fill up and get slower, I mean the last few hundred yards when anyone with any sense or manners is already in the queue taking their turn.
I do believe if merge in turn was signed and both lanes were equally used then that would probably be the best compromise but that's NOT what the Highway Code currently advocates.
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Everyone seems to be agreeing that people barging in at the last minute causes a jam, everyone seems to agree that merging in turn is an ideal but that it doesn't really happen in real life, everyone seems to agree that forming a sngle line miles before the start of the cones is pointless and also makes life easy for those barging in.
What are the constructive suggestions?
Whenever I have very progressively slowed down in the outside lane, eventually matching the speed of the inside lane before finally joining it a few hundred yards before the cones, the effect seems to be calming on the cars in my mirror, they too slow down progressively and having got the picture zip merge over a distance of several hundred yards. That seems to be a constructive thing to do and avoids most of the problems of squeezing the whole thing into the last couple of hundred yards.
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re: Nsar - Whenever I have very progressively.........before the cones
I kind of bristle at anybody other than the police policing, but I guess your approach has a level of common sense to it. However, how does one equate that to the truck who goes side by side with his mate from 2 miles before the issue? Or, as on the A34 last year, 5 miles before the loss of lane. And it is typically vans and trucks - not because they are any better or worse than anyone else, simply because cars that try it tend to get swept to one side.
I think of my 3 suggestions above we should retain hhe following;
"Self-important, self-appointed vigilantes to be shot. Repeatedly."
and add;
"arrogant, myopic gits who try to crash the queue 50 ft before the cones should be dragged form their cars and beaten. And then shot. Repeatedly."
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Of course, although the lorries are blocking the outside lane for a long time, they eventually reach the obstruction and then zipping can commence properly.
However there will still be drivers in the inside lane who will stick like the proverbial to the car in front and who will manage to upset the zipping process.
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who will manage to upset the zipping process.
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unfortunately, as this thread demonstrates, there are so many drivers who are ill-informed about merging and zipping. in a society driven by politeness and the queueing culture, you will never convince people that the correct legal procedure is to merge just before the cones.
you can have countless discussions and campaigns on how merging and zipping should be done, but like the middle lane hoggers, you will never educate them once the bad queueing habits have formed.
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>>in a society driven by politeness
England may have had, in the distant past, a polite society or even a society driven by politeness. I see no evidence of that these days.
Its an aggressive society inhabited by largely nosey, interfering, pedantic, jealous, selfish, self-important do-gooders who are determined to inflict their views of acceptable past-time and behaviour on the remainder of the world.
And nowhere more does that show than oon our roads. I drive on the M40 more or less every day. Given the direction I travel traffic is virtually never an issue. I pretty much never slows at all and if it does it only slows as it goes past a couple of trucks. It is about as stressfree as a motorway can be with the possible exception of the M45.
And yet there is pushing, shoving, gesturing, waving, malicious braking, tailgating, lane-hogging and generally unpleasant behaviour every 10 yards or so. Women are no better then men, and frequently more aggressive. Big, expensive cars are usually nto the issue - but the mid-range Vectra/astra/renault wotsit/fiat-thing are a nightmare.
There is a little prat in a Clio who has tailgated the Landcruiser so often that one of these days I am going to follow him off at his junction and park ontop of his car before inquiring as to why he tail gates me.
I find it a real effort to prevent myself descending to the level of the average inadequate oik out of annoyance.
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Its an aggressive society inhabited by largely nosey, interfering, pedantic, jealous, selfish,
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i.m.o. that is certainly true when it comes to most issues related to motoring, especially once they get inside their car. ( politics of envy -or should that ***** envy specially to be noted the anti 4x4 or x5 or anti any-bmw or merc brigade ).
however, if this agressive behaviour was to be evident when they slowed down or stationary, surely then the above mentioned zip-merging queueing problem would disappear - because then everyone would be trying to jump the queue !
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So what were the results of the trial in DC where lanes 1 and 2 merged into lane 1.5?
Sounds like a reasonable idea.
Neither lane owns the subsequent lane so there is ambiguity about which lane is the queue. On reaching lane 1.5, it would be difficult not to merge in turn.
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I always think that the process works better if the nearside lane(s) is coned off rather than the offside lane(s), drivers then seem to merge in turn.......And so often the offside lane(s) is coned off then it swaps to the nearside that is closed...WHY????????????????
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One of the dual carriageways near to me is under going resurfacing work and the contractors have used a contraflow on one carrageway while the other is out of action. when they started the queues were terrible, so later in the week the traffic police in charge of the area said.
" to use both lanes until 200yds before the single carrageway, then to prepare for merging and allow at least one car to merge "
this seems to have reduced the cues, Like most I stick to the left lane to watch some one shoot along in the right hand lane usually a 4x4,
But locally it is more lorries that perform the Policing task but they generally sit inbetween the two lanes so they still have a space but nothing can get round them.
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Zip merging works. I experienced it working on the A1. They put the signs up zip in xxx yards with a piccy for the brain dead to explain.
It worked - two lanes zipping in turn 40 yards before the pinch at 35 mph.
--
RF - currently 1 Renault short of a family
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Zip merging works. I experienced it working on the A1. They put the signs up zip in xxx yards with a piccy for the brain dead to explain. It worked - two lanes zipping in turn 40 yards before the pinch at 35 mph. -- RF - currently 1 Renault short of a family
There is a 'merge in turn' (or something similar) on the Bracknell by-pass and it works well.
If all drivers are happy to have two lines merging without any antagonism, then there isn't a problem. It is only when the vigilantes are active, that there is a problem.
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I always think that the process works better if the nearside lane(s) is coned off rather than the offside lane(s), drivers then seem to merge in turn.......And so often the offside lane(s) is coned off then it swaps to the nearside that is closed...WHY????????????????
It can be risky to force traffic to merge from a "slower" to a "faster" lane, which is why the end of a crawler lane is often effected by merging lane 4 into lane 3.
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