A34 why so many accidents?!?

Man of Honour
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I often see people cutting over the wrong side of the road when negotiating 90 degree junctions.

See a lot more people going for a last minute lunge for motorway or A road slip roads and/or staying in lane 2/3 for as long as possible before turning off (not a reference to the ‘break check’ thread :D).

Annoys me a lot as mostly driving larger vehicles there isn't a huge amount I can do other than make sure to approach corners with caution but that only goes so far. What I find especially frustrating is that if we do collide in most cases they are going to come off worse never mind if it was a lorry they hit.
 
Soldato
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To be fair, since it’s recent update the A14 I find to be a very good route these days, much better now the bottlenecks especially those at Catthorpe and Brampton are gone.

I travelled the A14 from the M11 to the M1 yesterday evening, bank holiday Monday as well and despite the heavy traffic I don’t think I disengaged my cruise control once (sat at 70 gps)

Agree on the A14 but it still has its issues, there are so many trucks from the eastern ports and they can cause plenty of problems without crashes.

I was heading down the A14 up to the M6 and we had two separate incidents of lorries shedded tyres which caused traffic to come to a standstill. One was in the new three lane Huntingdon bypass.

The A11 is much better now they have sorted that last stretch but they could do with taking out the last 4 roundabouts and putting in some proper junctions. Some of the slip roads are also really short, including the new one they just put in at Elveden.

PS. I hope you did actually slow down for the new bridge at the M11 interchange. That bend is pretty tight and I’ve seen lots of people get caught out there and nearly stick it in the barrier.
 
Soldato
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Annoys me a lot as mostly driving larger vehicles there isn't a huge amount I can do other than make sure to approach corners with caution but that only goes so far. What I find especially frustrating is that if we do collide in most cases they are going to come off worse never mind if it was a lorry they hit.

Hitting an SUV on the inside on a bend will likely push it over and in to a ditch, so maybe not :p
 
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Associate
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A34 is undersized for the amount of traffic, lots of hills that cause big speed differentials between lorries & everything else, surface isn't great (e.g. there's a big dip in L2 southbound on the bit north of the M4 that can really throw your car about at 80+mph), no hard shoulder (I've called 999 previously because there's been a car broken down, sitting half way across L1) sliproads are short & there are many lay-bys, services etc that give huge opportunity for merging incompetence.
 
Man of Honour
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Hitting an SUV on the inside on a bend will likely push it over and in to a ditch, so maybe not :p

Depends a bit on the circumstances but I'm generally driving vehicles large and heavy enough that in most cases it probably won't come off like that.
 
Associate
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A34 is undersized for the amount of traffic, lots of hills that cause big speed differentials between lorries & everything else, surface isn't great (e.g. there's a big dip in L2 southbound on the bit north of the M4 that can really throw your car about at 80+mph), no hard shoulder (I've called 999 previously because there's been a car broken down, sitting half way across L1) sliproads are short & there are many lay-bys, services etc that give huge opportunity for merging incompetence.
Very true
It’s great fun just across the border, not helped by moron lorry drivers using both lanes on the crawler section where they are only supposed to use one lane
There we’re suggestions to move to 3 lanes but they have gone quiet….
 
Soldato
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Did you meet them before or after death?

His post was rather M. Night Shyamalan...

I often see people cutting over the wrong side of the road when negotiating 90 degree junctions.

See a lot more people going for a last minute lunge for motorway or A road slip roads and/or staying in lane 2/3 for as long as possible before turning off (not a reference to the ‘break check’ thread :D).

If you enter the slip road with all four wheels on the ground you're doing it wrong.
 
Soldato
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The increasingly **** road layouts don't help.

That rings a bell for me. My town just had a bypass built, and every roundabout on it has markings like this:

https://goo.gl/maps/sWVCKkqQFEzDpdd79

I wish someone would explain what a set of white lines which start randomly on the roundabout and then flow off the roundabout are supposed to achieve.

Because what they actually achieve is people using the left lane for straight on when they join the roundabout - since there's no markings to the contrary - then when they get on to it, suddenly finding that the lane markings suggest they're in a left turn only lane.
 
Man of Honour
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Nice - similar one near me where the left hand lane can be used for straight over or right because there is a walled off lane earlier for left - but most people are used to and/or it is intuitive to use the left hand lane for straight over only and the second lane for straight over into the dual-carriageway exit there so it causes all kind of incidents.
 
Caporegime
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On the road....
A34 is undersized for the amount of traffic, lots of hills that cause big speed differentials between lorries & everything else, surface isn't great (e.g. there's a big dip in L2 southbound on the bit north of the M4 that can really throw your car about at 80+mph), no hard shoulder (I've called 999 previously because there's been a car broken down, sitting half way across L1) sliproads are short & there are many lay-bys, services etc that give huge opportunity for merging incompetence.
The problem there is the lack of a 7.5t weight limit on that section (from memory) such as you see on the A14 around Welford, it doesn’t stop the true morons who ignore such restrictions anyway (of which there are plenty) the vast majority (of truckers) duly obey.

As for the big dip that really throws you about @80+ mph, perhaps don’t try it @ 80 plus?

You describe the limitations of that stretch well, there are few places on our main roads these days that warrant more than the posted limit and this is only going to get worse.

As a truck driver, one of my biggest problems is allowing for cars doing above what speed they should be doing…..
 
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Soldato
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A34 is undersized for the amount of traffic, lots of hills that cause big speed differentials between lorries & everything else, surface isn't great (e.g. there's a big dip in L2 southbound on the bit north of the M4 that can really throw your car about at 80+mph), no hard shoulder (I've called 999 previously because there's been a car broken down, sitting half way across L1) sliproads are short & there are many lay-bys, services etc that give huge opportunity for merging incompetence.
Completely agree. I live near the Winchester end of the A34.
 
Man of Honour
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A34 seems a lot better than it used to be. I remember about 10 years ago, I used to commute from Abingdon to Newbury daily. Did it for 6 months and quit the job as I seemed to be stuck in slow moving traffic on the A34 near enough every day.
 
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Associate
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A34 seems a lot better than it used to be. I remember about 10 years ago, I used to commute from Abingdon to Newbury daily. Did it for 6 months and quite the job as I seemed to be stuck in slow moving traffic on the A34 near enough every day.
The replacing of the bridge at Milton didn’t help I’d imagine
Did the opposite journey and also to Didcot as well tried my best to steer clear of the A34
 
Soldato
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Although i live in Worcestershire, up until 2 years ago my parents lived at Woodbridge in Suffolk. For me to visit them gave me no choice other than the A14. Apart from the years of roadworks around Cambridge the absolute worst part of the journey was the road surface as soon as you enter Suffolk. The entire length of the A14 from the Cambridgeshire/Suffolk boarder is basically bits of tarmac held together by potholes until you get to the Woodbridge exit. Even the road surface on the Orwell Bridge is that bad there is a 60mph speed limit.
 
Soldato
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I personally think a lot of these bad designs are by cyclists who hate car drivers:cry:. There's one near me, just over the humber bridge. I think it's the A15 and it's the only road I've every been on that has signs telling you how many have died. I'm not sure how though as it seems a pretty straight road.
 
Soldato
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Yea many mentions of the A14 and agree, although the bit they bypassed was probably the worst, it's not just the average speed cameras and weight of traffic, but a lot of the slip roads on that stretch are very short.

I used to commute on that bit on a motorcycle, but the average cameras are front facing so I just used to go as fast as I wanted to.

But mostly was filtering at 25 mph between 2 lanes of stationary traffic.
 
Caporegime
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I personally think a lot of these bad designs are by cyclists who hate car drivers:cry:. There's one near me, just over the humber bridge. I think it's the A15 and it's the only road I've every been on that has signs telling you how many have died. I'm not sure how though as it seems a pretty straight road.

Yeah I used to work around there and travel on that road. Was interesting to see how quickly the death numbers went up during the year.

They used to do that on the A66 years ago but stopped for some reason.
 
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