Essential Motorway Gear

A crowbar. A hacksaw. Possibly a battery power angle grinder.

I was attempting to reach Doncaster airport on Friday when I happened upon a
feckin girt queue of cars, at which point the radio chirped up "avoid the
A1M J40 at all costs". TVFM you tardy cunts, it had been blocked for 40
minutes already and I had just passed the M62 junction. The road was
destined to be blocked for several hours.

Being in a 4 wheeled contraption myself (yes, serves me fucking well right)
I sat there for a while, calling flybe, who surprised me by cancelling my
flight, checking the Tom Tom in a "why didn't you warn me" sort of way. OK
so I have renewed the Sub now, duh. All of a sudden the monotony of A&E
vehicles using the hard shoulder was broken by a silver Avensis having it
away, ignoring a thousand silent chants of You ****. But he disappeared
rather suddenly... left turn. Uh Huh. Few moments and another cager comes by
and does same. Penny drops, Saab starts, off I go. Motorway service road.
Handy A645. Escape at hand. Right here:
http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=53.70101,-1.275342&spn=0.002261,0.006968&z=18
Ah just the steel 5-bar gate and padlock problem to deal with.

A short discussion ensued with the conclusion that said gate was too sturdy
to be rammed at which point chappy in van joins the queue. Eureka, white
van man is "impressively equipped". A matter of moments and we were free. I
stopped to call Flybe again and book a Manc alternative and within minutes
the A1M was disgorging its load onto said decent A road.

So the moral of the tale might be when stuck in an extended piece of
motorway madness get your laptop/modem out and scour google maps for escape
routes in the knowledge that your boot contains appropriate engineering
appliances. Which of course mine now once again does.

There was a time when Plod et all made it a priority to clear roads and by
all available means get traffic moving, off the road if required or back up
the opposite carriageway. It appears current policy is to leave the stranded
traffic for as long as possible with no consideration for the problems that
may arise. Not helped by the removal of all gates and open overlaps in
central reservations.

 

There are a couple on the M5 just sourth of Gloucester but the gates
are directly off the hard shoulder so you'd be angle grinding the
locks in full view of everyone.

I presume the minimal chance of someone hitting the gap in the central
reservation has caused the H&S wallahs to close them off.

 

What the motorway system needed was gates. Locked gates that the Patrols or
Plod could open. Every couple of miles. Then they could use cones to stream
lane 3 into the reverse traffic flow and disperse traffic when they know the
road will be blocked for hours. That and immediately closing the motorway at
preceding junctions and taking traffic off before it reaches the blockage.

Considering the central barriers have been replaced in the past few years it
was a complete fuckup.

 

I did add a Mea Culpa you cantankerous old cnut.

I haven't ridden a bike since shattering my arm but it's on the way and this
reminded me that one should never *drive* to catch a flight, even if I did
leave 30mins extra for travel hiccups.

 

So who owned the gate & padlock and who's going to cough up to criminal
damage?

 

We the public do and we were coping with the failure of our public servants
so FRO you ;o)

 

Why does anybody need to "cough"? It's all on video...

 

None!

 

Fine until someone with an battery powered AG turns up


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www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

a couple of years ago I was stuck on the M1 for about 4 hours after a
truck crossed the central reservation and piled into oncoming cars. The
fire brigade cut a large section out of the central barrier and let us
all through[0] to ease the jam. Very handy it was, until I realised I
still had to make my way north, with no local knowledge of the roads.
Reading a map in the dark while driving[1] is 'challenging'

[0] Both carriageways were closed
[1] I had left my satnav at home

 

As the reservation is now a cast concrete structure they won't be doing that
any more.
It does look kinder for motorcyclists sliding on their arse however.

 

Which is more than can be said for the wire crash barriers I'm
disappointed to see more of.

Kevin

 

All new stuff appears to be concrete. The wire stuff looks lethal. I'm
surprised there hasn't been a legal challenge.