Just returned from a week long business trip to Spain, and cannot believe what awful road conditions we put up with, along with the ridiculous Speed Gestapo.
Drove across From Zaragoza to Madrid, sometimes travlling at 200 Kph, along beautifully maintained and arrow straight roads, when the roads passed through villages and towns, obviously we had to slow down, but instead of finding a Speed camera or a craftily hidden copper, they have a system which will turn a set of traffic lights to red if you approach the well marked sensor at over 50 Kph.
Spain obviously hasn't caught on to the use of the motorist as a revenue "Cash Cow" - the fuel is much cheaper too - Diesel approx 45p / litre.
I want to go and live there !!
Why do we continue to put up with the shoddy tratment by this Cynical and dishonest regime ?
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marcus,
Couldn't agree more with you. My wife and I drive most years to Lagos in Portugal after crossing the channel from Portsmouth to St Malo.
We could go by plane of course but we enjoy the drive.
As you say the roads are superb with nothing like the traffic we have to put up with. Through France and Spain you can cruise at 80mph for hours at a time without being surrounded by hundreds of other vehicles.
Spain is a drivers paradise with hundreds of miles of dual carriageway with little traffic compared to ours. You may have noticed another clever idea.
These roads are generally designed to avoid towns and villages and in most cases you can see them several miles away and you have to take a slip road to leave the main road to get to them and the same when you get back on to the main road.
I must admit to feeling threatened on our roads today with the huge volume of traffic, maybe this is advancing years, but I feel far more relaxed and safer on these continental roads with so much more space around you. They even have lovely picnic areas off the road complete with toilets. All this is probably paid for by ourselves for the privllege of being in the EU.
In contrast our designers have built a link from Derby through the Potteries to provide a link between the M1 and M6. When it passes Uttoxeter they have retained islands which provide a constant bottleneck for the main highway and has made it a nightmare for the town residents to gain access to this road.
And we always used to imagine the Europeans were a little behind us. If only the revenues from road users had been put to the use of what it was origionally intended.
Alvin Booth
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Apart from the fact that our island is more densely populated, IMHO one of the major design faults with our motorway system is that there are too many junctions in the vicinity of each town/city, so local traffic uses the motorway to avoid the congested local roads.
On the continent the junctions are fewer and often a little way from the population centres so that it is not worth local traffic doing three or four times the mileage to get from one side of town to the other.
The M25 around London could be vastly improved by closing up to a third of the junctions, thereby returning it to its prime purpose as a long-distance artery which keeps through traffic away from the capital.
Local authorities are responsible for the local road network. For too long they have copped out of their responsibility by transferring the problem of lack of local capacity onto the motorways where possible.
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Whilst I agree and sympathise with some of the comments about driving being more pleasurable in some areas of these countries, I think we should not forget that Portugal has one of the highest accident rates in Europe, Spain is also high but proper figures are not available.
(its not just UK Govt that keeps secret how many biscuits its civil servants eat-if you get my drift!)
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Re the comments on Town traffic on Motorways : The French make toll motorways non toll through some cities (Nimes & Montpellier are examples). The result is that they can resemble the M25 in rush hour!
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If you want to see how congested/terrifying the M25 really isn't, try the "Periferique" to the East of Paris. Scary speeds, huge numbers of lanes to cross and recross and distances between vehicles measured in microns. I learned to drive in South East England and I thought I was pretty sharp in traffic until I went there.
Chris
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Chris,
The Periferique was your advanced driving test. Congratulations. You passed. We know that because you are here!
I wish people could drive properly on English motorways without hogging the fast lane.
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