[Article] Overturned oil tanker closes motorway

Victor

Maybe it's me, but such accidents seem to be happening at the rate of 1-2 per week recently (a lorry shed it's load at Kill on Friday).

http://www.thepost.ie/breakingnews/breaking_story.asp?j=140826526&p=y4x8z7z3z&n=140827286

23/04/2005 - 5:03:16 PM

Overturned oil tanker closes motorway

An oil tanker has over turned on the M9 in Co Kildare this afternoon after it was involved in a collision with another vehicle.

There are so far no reports of injuries but an oil spill resulting from the crash, which occurred at about 4pm, has forced the gardaí to close the northbound lanes between Kilcullen and the M7.

Traffic is being diverted through Kilcullen to Naas, or through the Curragh and the close section of motorway may not be opened until tomorrow.

mike65

Indeed. Not too suprising though. More commercial vehicles on the raods with every pasing day, less time per delivery due to companies squeezing every last drop of value out of drivers and thier trucks and vans. More way to get distracted be it road works or mobiles. And finally the media seem to consider such incidents as being more newsworthy just now.

Mike.

Alun

There was a bit on Prime Time last week about trucks, prompted by the recent spate of accidents involving them. They showed some statistics that showed that while around 20-30% of car drivers speeded (or is that sped?) regularly, the precentage for trucks was much higher, around 75-80% depending on the road type IIRC. They also came up with some statistics from the inspection authorities in the UK, who said that Irish trucks were by far the worst offenders on UK roads, with something like 25% of them failing basic roadworthiness checks in some way.

They had some minister on who did the usual duck and dive.

Capt'n Midnight

Remind me again
when is a truck/bus/car with trailer allowed to go above 80Kmph ?
[/sarcasm]

And what is it with the lucan road that one lane gets blocked off one morning per fortnight because of an accident.

Also there is a new 24 hour bus lane on fonthill road northbound starts at Neilstown Garda station, I can count on my thumbs the number of left turning car that DON'T use it. - Unless they enforce some of the existing laws people will just ignore them all. ( AFAIK we are still have 5% of motorists uninsured. )

PandaMania

The main lobby of the trucking industry the Transport Umbrella Group which includes Dr Sean Barrett the man who called the DART a Green elephant and has been on a life long crusade to shut down the rail network have been amazingly silent about the mishaps and misgivings of the truckers. The last I heard of them on the radio TUG was claiming that the Luas was a disaster which would paralyse Dublin for the next 100 years.

What hope railfreight with the Government listening to folks like that.

murphaph

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Also there is a new 24 hour bus lane on fonthill road northbound starts at Neilstown Garda station, I can count on my thumbs the number of left turning car that DON'T use it. - Unless they enforce some of the existing laws people will just ignore them all. ( AFAIK we are still have 5% of motorists uninsured. )

I know where you're talking about. They did that on the cheap as usual as it looks like on much of that orbital QBC. they should and could have extended the left filter lane much further back towards the previous TWO LANE roundabout that narrows to ONE lane then splits 100yds down the road into THREE LANES now (left turning lane, centre straight ahead bus lane and right straight ahead/right turning general traffic lane). As it is, the law states that you can use a bus lane "if you are turning left a short distance ahead" so there's no way anyone could be prosecuted for sitting in it prior to turning left. It's a shame the way it's set up and the way there's no law to stop folk blocking up the lana bus for buses travelling northbound. Sh!thole country.

BrianD3

murphaph wrote:

As it is, the law states that you can use a bus lane "if you are turning left a short distance ahead" .

Are you sure about that? It sounds a bit dubious to me and I've never seen it stated anywhere.

AFAIC, left turning motorists who move into the bus lane before it becomes a left filter lane are morons. What happens is that the law abiding motorist who does wait till he reaches the left turn lane is blocked from moving into it by the queue jumpers who can't be bothereed waiting.

BrianD3

sceptre

PandaMania wrote:

The main lobby of the trucking industry the Transport Umbrella Group

Like you (I'd guess), I couldn't give a fiddler's monkey what the TUGgers have to say (mostly because like many US lobby groups they chose a misleading name that implies that they represent more groups of road users but one) about pretty much anything at all but it's often interesting when there's a series of road events they don't make a statement on, given that they appear to have a machine gun style press release bot.

seamus

BrianD3 wrote:

AFAIC, left turning motorists who move into the bus lane before it becomes a left filter lane are morons. What happens is that the law abiding motorist who does wait till he reaches the left turn lane is blocked from moving into it by the queue jumpers who can't be bothereed waiting.

Personally I don't think it's a black-and-white as that.

Imagine you have a junction with a filter for turning left, and two lanes (the left one being a bus lane until you reach the lights). The green light allows 20 cars to go through (approx), each cycle, whereas the filter is almost always on, save for a few seconds here and there.
Now, there are forty cars in the queue to go straight (light is red), half of whom want to go left, but won't enter the bus lane, even though the filter light to go left is green. The next time the lights go green, only half of the vehicles who want to go straight, get to go straight, ditto for the cars turning left. If the left-turning cars use the bus lane to go, then all of the cars get through the lights (a 100% increase in the traffic flow for going straight ahead), reducing congestion.

On the flipside, there are times when using the bus lane, and queueing in it screws up the traffic flow (N81 inbound at Templeogue Br. for e.g.), increasing congestion.

But it's not black-and-white.

On-topic, I'm getting increasingly afraid of the trucks on the roads. Particularly on dual carraigeways and in the city centre, I've seen forty-footers pulling some ridiculous manouvers at > 50mph, swerving in and out of lanes, tailgating (! How much of a ****ing moron do you have to be to tailgate in a truck?!) and general speeding. Being a bike means that a 10-foot swerve or a 2 second loss of concentration on their part would mean certain death on mine.

Traffic

I think the main lobby group for the trucking industry is the Irish Road Haulage Assocation.

Does anyone know what happened as the two trucks were on a straight part of the mway
I saw the aftermath of the accident on Saturday. About half an hour later came across another overturned artic on the road between Castledermot and Tullow