I'm sure the white lines will very quickly be reinstated when the accident rate suddenly rockets up.

Seems very similar to the idea of the "Wire" crash barriers, which were introduced several years back. Yes, they probably did contain cars more effectively, and killed motorcyclists in the process!

Accident waiting to happen - normally centre lines are only used on roads wide enough for two LGVs to pass with clearance - the absence of a white line means (or meant) that the road has narrowed but care needed for wider vehicles.

So, either wider vehicles have to crawl along causing congestion or risk getting no indication of narrow road, which isn't good in poor lighting conditions.

SWMBO has just asked if it was a take your kids to work day and some little tot came up with this brainwave

"Yes, they probably did contain cars more effectively, and killed motorcyclists in the process!"

Since when did motorcyclists matter when road layouts and planning considerations are concerned?

I'm sure this is linked to a general reduction in speed limits - to me such action is a direct attack on motorists, journeys take long enough as it is, so anything to reduce speed is a no-no. We need roads to be made safer so that speed limits can be increased, be it through better road engineering or better signage, driver training or filtering of slower traffic off the main roads etc. I do wonder sometimes if road planners actually use the roads they design?

I've always thought that our local road planners are pedestrians/bus users/cyclists or have shares in makers of traffic lights and speed cameras.

Possession of a driving licence has automatically disqualified them from the job.

I'm sure this is linked to a general reduction in speed limits - to me such action is a direct attack on motorists, journeys take long enough as it is, so anything to reduce speed is a no-no. We need roads to be made safer so that speed limits can be increased

We are told that transport decisions are based partly on environmental factors now. However the environmentalists that I've informally discussed such decisions with appeared to have a very weak grasp of real-world cause-and-effect. They think that slowing all traffic down is A Good Thing.

But of course slowing everyone down means that everyone's journeys take more time. And therefore overall traffic density increases. And therefore congestion increases. And so hold-ups and stop-start queues are more frequent (and indeed I suspect it's worse than a linear function linking traffic density to congestion). And what can be more polluting than stop-start queueing?

Edited by dimdip on 04/02/2016 at 20:47