Bizarre/Illegal things on motorways

road_high

Anyone see or meet that idiot on the m9 southbound about an hour ago between Kilcullen and Carlow? In a 2003 grey 5 door corsa. Blonde girl, early 20s I'd say. Holding up everybody in the overtaking lane for miles. Laughing to her mates as people undertook and flashed her. People like you shouldn't be let out on the roads. What's worse is that's she's young which does not offer much hope for the future standards here. Lucky a major accident wasn't caused.

yer man!

They have flashing wrong way signs on the M18 outside Ennis on the LILO exits.

Hotblack Desiato

This evening, approaching the Red Cow N7 outbound outer lane, a car ahead of me braked suddenly almost to a stop just before the M50 northbound diverge, the road ahead of them was clear and the slip road was clear.
They continued slowly onto the slip road, I went a short distance forward to the red traffic light on the N7 from where I could observe their confusion.
They went up the slip road slowly until almost parallel with me, then stopped. They waited for a while, then reversed very very slowly about one metre, then stopped agian. Their reverie was interrupted by a car entering the slip road, stopping behind them and honking them out of it, on what is after all a motorway slip road.
They reluctantly drove on, slowly.

What the hell is wrong with people? There is more than ample signage approaching this junction, but even so if you make the wrong choice and enter a slip road you have to be some eejit to even think about reversing back onto the outer lane of the N7. Even if it takes you miles out of your way, when you enter a motorway slip road you're committed to the next exit, same as if you miss your motorway exit you're committed to the next one.

Moronic behaviour.

Meteoric

ninja900 wrote: »

What the hell is wrong with people? There is more than ample signage approaching this junction, but even so if you make the wrong choice and enter a slip road you have to be some eejit to even think about reversing back onto the outer lane of the N7. Even if it takes you miles out of your way, when you enter a motorway slip road you're committed to the next exit, same as if you miss your motorway exit you're committed to the next one.

Moronic behaviour.

Most of the time if you take a slip road in error you can just get straight back on the motorway, the junctions make that so possible. Where you can get off a motorway you can get onto a motorway if you navigate a roundabout (usually). One thing I saw that gave me nightmares was someone reversing on the M50 because they had missed the Airport exit, when the hard shoulder was closed because of roadworks so they were in the motorway. Driving on for less than 2 mins would have got them to a junction that would have brought them back to the Airport and not put many people in danger.

n0brain3r

ninja900 wrote: »

This evening, approaching the Red Cow N7 outbound outer lane, a car ahead of me braked suddenly almost to a stop just before the M50 northbound diverge, the road ahead of them was clear and the slip road was clear.
They continued slowly onto the slip road, I went a short distance forward to the red traffic light on the N7 from where I could observe their confusion.
They went up the slip road slowly until almost parallel with me, then stopped. They waited for a while, then reversed very very slowly about one metre, then stopped agian. Their reverie was interrupted by a car entering the slip road, stopping behind them and honking them out of it, on what is after all a motorway slip road.
They reluctantly drove on, slowly.

What the hell is wrong with people? There is more than ample signage approaching this junction, but even so if you make the wrong choice and enter a slip road you have to be some eejit to even think about reversing back onto the outer lane of the N7. Even if it takes you miles out of your way, when you enter a motorway slip road you're committed to the next exit, same as if you miss your motorway exit you're committed to the next one.

Moronic behaviour.

I've seen this several times people seem to confuse the red light you where stopped at as controlling the slip onto the M50 too

niloc1951

source wrote: »

But you're not taking into account the purpose of slip roads, they're designed need to get traffic up to motorway speed.

So the speed you will be traveling would, have you over the spike strip in less than a second. Also we're taking about people who obviously haven't a clue what they're doing on the road, I wouldn't be to confident they would stop even if they were traveling slow enough to react.

Two ways to deal with these issues. Use spikes which can be temporarily locked down by authorised personnel or winch the stranded vehicle back to the recovery truck.
Lets face, it any delay, inconvenience and costs suffered by the moron would be inconsequential compared to the potential death and/or injury prevented.

Hotblack Desiato

Meteoric wrote: »

Most of the time if you take a slip road in error you can just get straight back on the motorway, the junctions make that so possible.

On an exit slip, yeah. Once you go down an entry slip road though, you're committed until the next exit.

n0brain3r wrote: »

I've seen this several times people seem to confuse the red light you where stopped at as controlling the slip onto the M50 too

Yeah that seemed to be the case, they stopped almost in line with me (I was first at the N7 red light.)
Presumably this person had a full licence, they were joining a motorway after all and had no L-plates, but you couldn't call them competent.

n0brain3r

Yeah they're the sort of competent that when turning left or right on a green light stop at the red for the straight through traffic

Frank Black

Incident last week on M4 which combined 2 of my personal bugbears into a potentially very serious incident.

I was in the overtaking lane, there was a line of traffic in the inside lane. The car at the front of the line was maybe doing 110kph, but I noticed that he was drifting quite a bit within his lane.
A few hundred yards ahead I could see a car parked in the hard shoulder (this is very common, illegal and potentially very dangerous).
The car at the top of the line starts drifting into the hard shoulder, both of his wheels are inside solid yellow line as he approaches the parked car. I'm looking at this wondering wtf is going on. I start slowing down just in case. The guy flies past the parked car with inside wheels in the h/s and what seems like bare inches between the 2 cars. I flinch at how close he has come to crashing into the parked car.

I overtake him a few hundred yards later and he has his phone propped up on the steering wheel in landscape mode and is merrily tapping away on the keyboard. He's obviously completely oblivious at how close he has come to crashing into a parked car. A bare quarter on on inch turn on his steering wheel as he approached that car and he would have slammed into him at well over 100kph. There was also a fair bit of traffic in the vicinity which would have got caught up in any crash.

I was a bit too shocked at the time to note his reg, but in retrospect I really should have called the Guards.

niloc1951

Frank Black wrote: »

Incident last week on M4 which combined 2 of my personal bugbears into a potentially very serious incident.

I was in the overtaking lane, there was a line of traffic in the inside lane. The car at the front of the line was maybe doing 110kph, but I noticed that he was drifting quite a bit within his lane.
A few hundred yards ahead I could see a car parked in the hard shoulder (this is very common, illegal and potentially very dangerous).
The car at the top of the line starts drifting into the hard shoulder, both of his wheels are inside solid yellow line as he approaches the parked car. I'm looking at this wondering wtf is going on. I start slowing down just in case. The guy flies past the parked car with inside wheels in the h/s and what seems like bare inches between the 2 cars. I flinch at how close he has come to crashing into the parked car.

I overtake him a few hundred yards later and he has his phone propped up on the steering wheel in landscape mode and is merrily tapping away on the keyboard. He's obviously completely oblivious at how close he has come to crashing into a parked car. A bare quarter on on inch turn on his steering wheel as he approached that car and he would have slammed into him at well over 100kph. There was also a fair bit of traffic in the vicinity which would have got caught up in any crash.

I was a bit too shocked at the time to note his reg, but in retrospect I really should have called the Guards.

I bet you will never park on the hard shoulder, if you ever did in the past.

It never ceases to amaze me to see people parked up on the hard shoulder and that includes Gardaí doing speed checks and anyone pulled in by them. It is recognised internationally as being one of the most dangerous places to be stopped on the road.

TheChizler

niloc1951 wrote: »

It is recognised internationally as being one of the most dangerous places to be stopped on the road.

The first being in the oncoming lane and second your own lane? Just to be pedantic as I can't think of anywhere else on the road so I'm going to say it's also the safest place to stop on an actual main road itself. Still dangerous though.

Frank Black

niloc1951 wrote: »

I bet you will never park on the hard shoulder, if you ever did in the past.

It never ceases to amaze me to see people parked up on the hard shoulder and that includes Gardaí doing speed checks and anyone pulled in by them. It is recognised internationally as being one of the most dangerous places to be stopped on the road.

I've never stopped on the hard shoulder unless I've broken down or had a puncture and then I'm out with my triangle and try to get going as quick as possible.
I'm well aware of the dangers of stopping there and it drives me mad the amount of people who seem to think it's fine to stop on the h/s of a motorway to take a phone call/piss or stretch their legs.

Other than the dangers of being hit while stopped, there's also the issue of re-joining 120kph traffic without the benefit of a dedicated merge lane.

I've no idea why this issue isn't policed in Ireland - every day on my 80k drive on the M4 I see I reckon on average 4 cars stopped on the h/s - most of the time it's obvious that mechanical breakdown is not the issue.

ongarboy

I think an added problem is the lack of perceived danger that offenders of parking on the hard shoulder see themselves in. They possibly feel that "they're in off the road" so they're safe. It's the combination of their dangerous actions by parking there and the dangerous actions of stupidly distracted drivers (ie playing with their smartphones/texting etc) that makes for a lethal combination (as told in the frightening near miss in the post above).

Another problem is drivers actually knowing what they are doing is wrong or against the law but because they don't feel it's dangerous, will do it anyway. This behaviour can have tragic consequences on motorways when average speeds will generally be over 100kph.

Chris_5339762

Having more service stations would stop the legions of weeing men that I often see at the side of the road on the M8. At least use the parking areas. Although the stench of piss at those must be unbelievable.

corktina

there's a service area with a McDonalds at Cashel and a proper services on the cards near Mitchelstown. Also there is Midway at the start of the M8. That would be sufficient for 100 miles of motorway surely

NedNew2

corktina wrote: »

there's a service area with a McDonalds at Cashel and a proper services on the cards near Mitchelstown. Also there is Midway at the start of the M8. That would be sufficient for 100 miles of motorway surely

M8 is 153 km long. That's long enough without any services.

Iwannahurl

Especially with kids on board.

veryangryman

NedNew2 wrote: »

M8 is 153 km long. That's long enough without any services.

What's your point? There is a services at cashel that covers baby changing toilet and food needs. You could also pull in at urlingford. More being built.

L1011

Cashel is utterly insufficient. Urlingford is far offline

munchkin_utd

veryangryman wrote: »

What's your point? There is a services at cashel that covers baby changing toilet and food needs. You could also pull in at urlingford. More being built.

theres toliet, restaurant etc etc etc IF YOU CAN PARK in the first place.
Well, even if there is a parking space among the couple of dozen available (half permanently occupied by staff no doubt), the completely misleading idiotic signage will fail to guide to to the spaces and you'll end up on a loop back to the motorway.

As far as irish planning goes, its up there with the school that was built with an ESB pole jutting through it or an entrance to an estate with a telecom pole 1/3 of the way across the road. It is abysmal.

veryangryman

munchkin_utd wrote: »

theres toliet, restaurant etc etc etc IF YOU CAN PARK in the first place.
Well, even if there is a parking space among the couple of dozen available (half permanently occupied by staff no doubt), the completely misleading idiotic signage will fail to guide to to the spaces and you'll end up on a loop back to the motorway.

As far as irish planning goes, its up there with the school that was built with an ESB pole jutting through it or an entrance to an estate with a telecom pole 1/3 of the way across the road. It is abysmal.

Never had a problem with it personally. Parking etc seems fine... Maybe I got lucky or maybe I am some sort of super man. But I doubt it. I think its fine for the average motorist

niloc1951

veryangryman wrote: »

Never had a problem with it personally. Parking etc seems fine... Maybe I got lucky or maybe I am some sort of super man. But I doubt it. I think its fine for the average motorist

Cashel is not a 'motorway services' by any standard.

It has only limited parking for cars, long vehicles (HGV's, car caravan combinations, motorhomes, etc) are similarly denied adequate parking and there is no rest area parking to facilitate a driver needing to recover from driving fatigue.

Personally, I have driven through there without stopping off many times due to lack of suitable parking.

n0brain3r

Wow

Thoie

n0brain3r wrote: »

Wow

Bloody hell. How was he holding on? Did you let the driver know he was there?

n0brain3r

Thoie wrote: »

Bloody hell. How was he holding on? Did you let the driver know he was there?

Its not my video I saw it on FB its on the journal now too