M50 Congestion

Irish Steve wrote: »

Spent an hour on the side of the M50 this afternoon as a result of an injector failure, and it was eye opening. The number of people who don't indicate, or use the correct lane was significant, but the number of people that really should not be allowed near a motorway is insane. We were about 400 metres short of Junction 9 southbound (Red Cow), and I'd pulled off because even in limp mode, it was dangerous to continue at the speed I was able to get, and there was no hard shoulder just in front of me, and stopping in the carriageway wasn't an option.

The absolute insane moment was while I was sitting in the cab of the AA recovery truck while the car was loaded, a Dacia Duster in the second lane out stopped next to the truck with a left turn indication flashing, and basically brought 2 lanes of the motorway to a standstill until someone in Lane 1 let it in to the lane, and at that point, it crossed lane 1, and pulled up on the left, 50 meters in front of the breakdown truck, with the hazard warnings on, not really off the lane, as there was not a full hard shoulder at that point, a bridge, what was the hard shoulder had been lost when it was used as the widening lane during the most recent upgrade of that section.

It sat there for a good 10 minutes, and eventually pulled out again, almost causing another crash, due to the lack of space, so it fully joined Lane 1 (the Naas Road exit lane) at a standstill pace. We don't know what the reason for stopping was, the most likely is that the driver was lost, and trying to decide if they needed the next junction or not, or they just had to answer a phone call, so stopped. Either way, it was highly dangerous, and it was only luck that there wasn't a major accident as a result of total stupidity, HGV's were forced to move to their right partially into lane 2 to avoid hitting it.

Then, 15 minutes later, we were northbound at Blanchardstown, and there was an incident there, the northbound lane was almost at a standstill, as was the southbound, and on getting closer, there was nothing wrong on the northbound other than too many people rubbernecking a Garda incident on the hard shoulder of the southbound carriageway. Seeing an incident of that nature makes me think that the central barriers need to be updated to make it impossible for drivers to see what's happening on the other carriageway, there was absolutely no excuse for any sort of delay on the northbound lanes, as there was no incident of any sort on that side of the road.

These are the sort of reasons for the M50 not working as it should, and they are nothing to do with the design of the road, and everything to do with people who don't know how to drive on a motorway.