N40 - Cork South Ring Bandon & Sarsfield Flyovers

hoodwinked · 08-05-2014 10:46am

and the accident we all thought was going to happen....did.

i really hope everyone is ok and this will act as a deterrent to those drivers who in the middle lane on a 100km/h road thought it was ok to stop dead and indicate left to queue jump the queue of traffic taking the wilton sliproad.

and those who tear down the left lane at 100km/h and have to slam on the breaks by the bridge because traffic is queueing as the big sign they ignored indicated it would!

Ambush Rebel 2010 · 08-05-2014 10:49am

hoodwinked wrote: »

and the accident we all thought was going to happen....did.

i really hope everyone is ok and this will act as a deterrent to those drivers who in the middle lane on a 100km/h road thought it was ok to stop dead and indicate left to queue jump the queue of traffic taking the wilton sliproad.

and those who tear down the left lane at 100km/h and have to slam on the breaks by the bridge because traffic is queueing as the big sign they ignored indicated it would!

Was there an accident this morning?

hoodwinked · 08-05-2014 10:55am

Ambush Rebel 2010 wrote: »

Was there an accident this morning?

yeah a 3 car RTC photos from Garda checkpoints fb page and twitter:

Ambush Rebel 2010 · 08-05-2014 11:02am

hoodwinked wrote: »

yeah a 3 car RTC photos from Garda checkpoints fb page and twitter:

Thats a nasty looking smash.

AugustusMinimus · 08-05-2014 11:36am

Could be wrong but it looks like the Green Ford tried to move from the middle lane to the left most lane and hit the car which is on its roof. Its amazing how many drivers wait until the last minute to switch lanes to take an exit.

hoodwinked · 08-05-2014 12:17pm

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

Could be wrong but it looks like the Green Ford tried to move from the middle lane to the left most lane and hit the car which is on its roof. Its amazing how many drivers wait until the last minute to switch lanes to take an exit.

according to the garda checkpoint page,

Garda Checkpoints Cork In my opinion, from the hiace back were stopped in traffic and the Astra wasn't paying attention, swerved inside to avoid a crash, clipped the back of the Focus and that flipped him

alaimacerc · 08-05-2014 4:07pm

hoodwinked wrote: »

i really hope everyone is ok and this will act as a deterrent to those drivers who in the middle lane on a 100km/h road thought it was ok to stop dead and indicate left to queue jump the queue of traffic taking the wilton sliproad.

I'd at least remotely hope that too. Cynical experience suggests otherwise, mind.

Truckermal · 13-05-2014 8:09pm

hoodwinked wrote: »

and the accident we all thought was going to happen....did.

i really hope everyone is ok and this will act as a deterrent to those drivers who in the middle lane on a 100km/h road thought it was ok to stop dead and indicate left to queue jump the queue of traffic taking the wilton sliproad.

and those who tear down the left lane at 100km/h and have to slam on the breaks by the bridge because traffic is queueing as the big sign they ignored indicated it would!

I travel this road a few times everday and this crap happens all the time a guy overtook me earlier even though I was in the middle lane then slammed on the brakes so he could jump the que, someone else tried to undertake me earlier and nearly rear ended the cars queuing to go down the slip road.

SpaceTime · 14-05-2014 1:49am

I had to swirve into the left side of the slip lane exiting Mahon point towards the tunnel earlier today.

A car decided to undertake at speed cutting into the slipway just as I was coming down.

He's very lucky I spotted him in the mirror and moved in tight. Nearly clipped my right wing mirror.

Some absolute idiots on the N40 who don't seem to have a clue how to use multiple lanes and have no issue doing dangerous undertaking manoeuvres.

I'm not even sure what he was trying to do as both lanes into the tunnel were moving quite slowly.

AugustusMinimus · 14-05-2014 8:22am

SpaceTime wrote: »

I had to swirve into the left side of the slip lane exiting Mahon point towards the tunnel earlier today.

A car decided to undertake at speed cutting into the slipway just as I was coming down.

He's very lucky I spotted him in the mirror and moved in tight. Nearly clipped my right wing mirror.

Some absolute idiots on the N40 who don't seem to have a clue how to use multiple lanes and have no issue doing dangerous undertaking manoeuvres.

I'm not even sure what he was trying to do as both lanes into the tunnel were moving quite slowly.

I've seen a few idiots after the Mahon Interchange, go left into the Mahon off slip, drive about 300m and then try to remerge to skip a tiny bit of traffic.

Crazy thing to do and an incredibly selfish thing to do as well.

Truckermal · 14-05-2014 2:13pm

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

I've seen a few idiots after the Mahon Interchange, go left into the Mahon off slip, drive about 300m and then try to remerge to skip a tiny bit of traffic.

Crazy thing to do and an incredibly selfish thing to do as well.

Only this morning I heading for the tunnel and I seen a tractor in the driving lane so I pulled out to the overtaking lane however this idiot behind me undertook the tractor using the mahon lane and I almost hit her as I returned to lane 1..:rolleyes:

grogi · 14-05-2014 3:39pm

Truckermal wrote: »

Only this morning I heading for the tunnel and I seen a tractor in the driving lane so I pulled out to the overtaking lane however this idiot behind me undertook the tractor using the mahon lane and I almost hit her as I returned to lane 1..:rolleyes:

I'll be a little sarcastic - but are we switching lanes without checking the mirrors?

SpaceTime · 14-05-2014 5:00pm

The problem with undertaking in a 3-lane situation is that a car coming from lane 3 into lane 2 cannot see around the vehicle in lane 2 to pick up undertaking traffic in lane 1.

So, effectively you're in lane 3 and decide to move to lane 2 again. You check your mirrors and everything looks fine then someone from lane 1 undertakes and is suddenly in the position in lane 2 that you're about to move into.

That's part of the reason why undertaking's generally not legal, and even in queuing traffic it should only be done with extreme caution and really in low speed situations only.

It's even worse where it's 2-lane situation and someone's treating a slipway as if it's another driving lane, as you're really not expecting someone to undertake using a slipway or the hard shoulder.

That's just downright dangerous driving.

grogi · 14-05-2014 8:56pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

The problem with undertaking in a 3-lane situation is that a car coming from lane 3 into lane 2 cannot see around the vehicle in lane 2 to pick up undertaking traffic in lane 1.

So, effectively you're in lane 3 and decide to move to lane 2 again. You check your mirrors and everything looks fine then someone from lane 1 undertakes and is suddenly in the position in lane 2 that you're about to move into.

That's part of the reason why undertaking's generally not legal, and even in queuing traffic it should only be done with extreme caution and really in low speed situations only.

What you've described is a generic problem on a 3+ lane motorway, regardless of undertaking. What you've experienced is caused solely by lack of experience among Irish drivers in using such roads. Extreme cautiousness is needed when getting into one of the middle lanes...

There are countries that have undertaking legal on motorways - US or Poland to name a few - and nothing really bad happens just because of that.

SpaceTime wrote: »

It's even worse where it's 2-lane situation and someone's treating a slipway as if it's another driving lane, as you're really not expecting someone to undertake using a slipway or the hard shoulder.

Trust no-one...

SpaceTime wrote: »

That's just downright dangerous driving.

Yes, it is.

Using hard shoulder to undertake is pure stupid and it is difficult to imagine how small brain you need to do it. Hard shoulder is usually full of debris that greatly affects the grip. The three leter acronyms help to keep the car in the road, but there are limits to what they can do.

Equally bad is not using the hard shoulder in dangerous situations, when merging into busy traffic for instance. On numerous occasions I witness slow traffic forcefully merging into the main lanes 3 meters after the junction, without getting speed...

Again - lack of proper training and experience.

SpaceTime · 14-05-2014 9:45pm

You still get a significant number of drivers who don't know how to merge and try to enter a lane moving at 100 or 120km/h at about 50 and slam on the brakes as they get to the end of the slipway treating it like a junction with a yield.

Truckermal · 15-05-2014 7:12am

grogi wrote: »

I'll be a little sarcastic - but are we switching lanes without checking the mirrors?

No!!!!! The woman used the Mahon slip to undertake the tractor while I used the overtaking lane she then went back to the lane 1(towards the tunnel).

SpaceTime · 15-05-2014 5:12pm

grogi wrote: »

What you've described is a generic problem on a 3+ lane motorway, regardless of undertaking. What you've experienced is caused solely by lack of experience among Irish drivers in using such roads. Extreme cautiousness is needed when getting into one of the middle lanes...

There are countries that have undertaking legal on motorways - US or Poland to name a few - and nothing really bad happens just because of that.
.

Again - lack of proper training and experience.

Irish drivers don't seem to do too badly in terms of statistical performance.

Road deaths per 1 billion km driven:

Ireland 4.9
Poland 13.5
United States 8.5

For a flavour of other Western European countries:
UK 3.6
France 6.3
Belgium 10.8 (Born out by my experience. They're awful drivers! Really unbelievably bad for a Western European country)
Netherlands 5.6

So, basically Irish drivers are statically very significantly safer than either of the countries mentioned that have legal undertaking.

alaimacerc · 15-05-2014 5:31pm

grogi wrote: »

There are countries that have undertaking legal on motorways - US or Poland to name a few - and nothing really bad happens just because of that.

That's fewer than a few. In this part of the world, it's on the low end for a couple, indeed.

Wikipedia sez this about Polish undertaking:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertaking_(driving) wrote:

Undertaking is legal on 4-lane roads in built-up areas, 6-lane roads outside built-up areas and on one-way roads with marked lanes (this definition includes motorways). (article 24 of Law on Road Traffic) However, similar to the UK it is considered a dangerous practice and is discouraged.

In the US, the road etiquette seems to be much more one of "pick a lane and stick with it". Quick pull in, undertake, and pull back in front manoeuvres would be frowned on there too, albeit on a somewhat different basis. (Clearly if you can be both undertaken and overtaken, you kinda have to take it handy with either.)

grogi · 15-05-2014 8:28pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

Irish drivers don't seem to do too badly in terms of statistical performance.

/.../

So, basically Irish drivers are statically very significantly safer than either of the countries mentioned that have legal undertaking.

How one cannot love statistics? Properly presented can prove whatever one wants...

What you're showing is the sole indicator of safety on the road, not the quality of the drivers, or impact of the legal undertaking on the safety.

For instance, the statistics you've presented don't not take into consideration density of the population. 10 people driving 500km on an almost empty motorway will be much safer driver than 1000 of them driving 5km the same time.

Quality of roads has a huge impact as well. Irish road network, with the exception of motorways, does not really allow for overtaking. You would rather find line of cars going 70kmh behind a lorry than overtaking it - because there are no places to do so; N-roads are curly, narrow and visibility is limited, so nobody takes the very high risk. That massively reduces chances of fatal frontal collisions, which is main cause of deaths on the roads.

To sum up - I agree that Irish roads are rather safe. But it does not mean it is because Irish are good drivers.

At end let me share my view on drivers from different nationalities I had pleasure to deal for at least a year on daily basis (a huge generalization of course):

Irish: extremely awkward on the road, don't really know what is happening around and don't think behind the wheel. Usually drive slowly and cautiously.

Polish: aggressive and frustrated... Taking unnecessary risks, driving "slowly but safely". Sales reps in Fabias and Octavias are the worst...

Italians: incredible skills and feeling of the car, but even more aggressive. Ever nuns drive like Formula 1 driver.

Dutch: sooo many of them - the roads are really full and they don't get any change to speed. And if they do, speed cameras etc. are there to make sure it does not stay unseen. Well organized, following rules and etiquette too. But their roads are masterpiece - the markings, signs etc. are light years ahead of Irish...

Drive safely everyone

grogi · 15-05-2014 8:29pm

alaimacerc wrote: »

That's fewer than a few. In this part of the world, it's on the low end for a couple, indeed.

What I believe is that undertaking is not dangerous in itself, but only if others assume it won't happen...

But in that case: change to the left lane if it is free...

SpaceTime · 16-05-2014 12:17pm

grogi wrote: »

Dutch: sooo many of them - the roads are really full and they don't get any change to speed. And if they do, speed cameras etc. are there to make sure it does not stay unseen. Well organized, following rules and etiquette too. But their roads are masterpiece - the markings, signs etc. are light years ahead of Irish...

You should try Belgium! It's like Holland in terms of layout and density but with bad roads, poorly laid out junctions (some nearly lethal ones) and drivers who don't obey rules and are really erratic sometimes and it comes across in those stats. The Netherlands is pretty safe and Belgium is way out of line with all Northern and Western European counterparts. I'd expect it to be at least in line with France, but it's way off.

There are parts of Brussels where I've seen people parallel park by 'feel'. Reverse until you hear a slight crunch then drive forward until you hear a slight crunch and so on.

I'm not sure what's going on there as they've really long and expensive driver education programmes. You've a minimum of 20 hours at about 60 Euro / hour!!

Maybe it's down to all the chaos around the two regions constantly fighting with each other over just about everything to do with language. You have lovely situation where signs monolingually change abruptly on the language border and people get lost!

I was really quite surprised as you'd expect Belgium (seat of the EU institutions and all that) to be a model of sensibility, but it's far from it!

Ludo · 16-05-2014 12:56pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

There are parts of Brussels where I've seen people parallel park by 'feel'. Reverse until you hear a slight crunch then drive forward until you hear a slight crunch and so on.

That is a very common thing to do in France also. Nothing to do with bad driving. People deliberately leave their handbrakes off to make it easier.

SpaceTime · 16-05-2014 1:34pm

Ludo wrote: »

That is a very common thing to do in France also. Nothing to do with bad driving. People deliberately leave their handbrakes off to make it easier.

In Brussels they definitely had their handbrakes on ... there were bits of tail lights left :P

spacetweek · 16-05-2014 2:19pm

Ludo wrote: »

That is a very common thing to do in France also. Nothing to do with bad driving. People deliberately leave their handbrakes off to make it easier.

In Spain in Valencia, they were triple-parking on our street but with handbrakes off. If you needed to get your car and it's blocked, roll the other car out of the way.

marmurr1916 · 16-05-2014 2:58pm

grogi wrote: »

How one cannot love statistics? Properly presented can prove whatever one wants... What you're showing is the sole indicator of safety on the road, not the quality of the drivers, or impact of the legal undertaking on the safety.

For instance, the statistics you've presented don't not take into consideration density of the population. 10 people driving 500km on an almost empty motorway will be much safer driver than 1000 of them driving 5km the same time.

Quality of roads has a huge impact as well. Irish road network, with the exception of motorways, does not really allow for overtaking. You would rather find line of cars going 70kmh behind a lorry than overtaking it - because there are no places to do so; N-roads are curly, narrow and visibility is limited, so nobody takes the very high risk. That massively reduces chances of fatal frontal collisions, which is main cause of deaths on the roads.

To sum up - I agree that Irish roads are rather safe. But it does not mean it is because Irish are good drivers.

At end let me share my view on drivers from different nationalities I had pleasure to deal for at least a year on daily basis (a huge generalization of course):

Irish: extremely awkward on the road, don't really know what is happening around and don't think behind the wheel. Usually drive slowly and cautiously.

Polish: aggressive and frustrated... Taking unnecessary risks, driving "slowly but safely". Sales reps in Fabias and Octavias are the worst...

Italians: incredible skills and feeling of the car, but even more aggressive. Ever nuns drive like Formula 1 driver.

Dutch: sooo many of them - the roads are really full and they don't get any change to speed. And if they do, speed cameras etc. are there to make sure it does not stay unseen. Well organized, following rules and etiquette too. But their roads are masterpiece - the markings, signs etc. are light years ahead of Irish...

Drive safely everyone

I'm not sure which National roads you drive on, perhaps it's mainly national secondary routes, but there are plenty of sections of National primary roads which are wide, straight and with good sightlines to allow easy overtaking. Assuming the driver is confident enough to overtake...

alaimacerc · 19-08-2014 12:09am

Apparently tonight's the night... we're going back (more or less) to the old alignment of the southern exit from the SRR, and the corresponding arc of the roundabout. There's a fellow working with some sort of cutting torch or burny thing (technical term, there) which is making an amazing amount of smoke and stink.

Only with several kilotonnes of prestressed concrete piles, rebar, more concrete, precast culvert sections, more concrete, etc, etc, down there. Think that'll do the trick, this time?

stiimpreza1984 · 19-08-2014 11:38am

Lets hope so. Theres a nice dip where you join the N40 going eastbound from the BRR exit and only seems to be getting deeper. Its a fantastic road but all the flaws hopefully will be corrected. There's quite some ground work to be finished on the SRR but it will be nice to see it fully complete. Anyone seen which it seems to be a dedicated NRA motorway response unit transit vans which they put cones out etc when a car is broke down?

AugustusMinimus · 19-08-2014 12:51pm

stiimpreza1984 wrote: »

Lets hope so. Theres a nice dip where you join the N40 going eastbound from the BRR exit and only seems to be getting deeper. Its a fantastic road but all the flaws hopefully will be corrected. There's quite some ground work to be finished on the SRR but it will be nice to see it fully complete. Anyone seen which it seems to be a dedicated NRA motorway response unit transit vans which they put cones out etc when a car is broke down?

I think its time to seriously considering putting motorway restrictions on the N40. Time and again I'm seeing cyclists, tractors and heavy machinery using the road and causing traffic chaos at peak times.

stiimpreza1984 · 19-08-2014 5:04pm

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

I think its time to seriously considering putting motorway restrictions on the N40. Time and again I'm seeing cyclists, tractors and heavy machinery using the road and causing traffic chaos at peak times.

Regarding cyclists I think the only time something will be done will be when an accident will happen and I certainly hope that won't be the case. Preventative measures should be put in place now as especially between the SRR and Junction 5 the Togher/ Ballyphehane slip as there is no hard shoulder there. I witnessed a near miss when I was in the far inside lane (lane 1) a truck was in front of me and he swirved last minute as there was a cyclist in front now I don't know whether the truck driver simply didn't see the cyclist or whatever. But I'd hate to have seen the outcome if they were another car adjacent to the truck in lane 2.

stiimpreza1984 · 19-08-2014 5:08pm

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

I think its time to seriously considering putting motorway restrictions on the N40. Time and again I'm seeing cyclists, tractors and heavy machinery using the road and causing traffic chaos at peak times.

Regarding cyclists I think the only time something will be done will be when an accident will happen and I certainly hope that won't be the case. Preventative measures should be put in place now as especially between the SRR and Junction 5 the Togher/ Ballyphehane slip as there is no hard shoulder there. I witnessed a near miss when I was in the far inside lane (lane 1) a truck was in front of me and he swirved last minute as there was a cyclist in front now I don't know whether the truck driver simply didn't see the cyclist or whatever. But I'd hate to have seen the outcome if they were another car adjacent to the truck in lane 2.

N40 - Cork South Ring Bandon & Sarsfield Flyovers

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