British Roads

Nasher · 15 Dec 2017 at 18:19

The quality of the tarmac they are laying down now feels crap too. Loads of road noise, poor grip, starts crumbling after only a few months.

I've also seem potholes lazily filled with tarmac they seemingly didn't bother to level with the rest of the road. So it's like hitting a small speedbump at 60mph. Then of course a week later there's a hole there again.

Must be a real gravy train for the contractors doing the work. Obviously if they did it to a high standard, they wouldn't get paid to come back and do it again next year lol

neocon · 16 Dec 2017 at 15:16

What's that crap thing they do where the road is scrapped, but they don't lay new tarmac?

To make matters worse, Stones are left on the road afterwards and I got a cracked windscreen from one that was flicked up by a jeep driving past.

Jokester · 16 Dec 2017 at 15:21

This last week of snow and ice has destroyed the roads around here.

Ah well, can look forward to more surface re-dressing to "fix" it next spring.

Orionaut · 16 Dec 2017 at 15:56

neocon said:
What's that crap thing they do where the road is scrapped, but they don't lay new tarmac?.

This...

Jokester said:
Ah well, can look forward to more surface re-dressing to "fix" it next spring.

Now, to be fair, under the right circumstances, re-dressing isn't a bad method for repairing the surface of a road as long as the existing substrate is in good condition.

Part of the problem is that an essential part of the process is to have people drive over it to bed it down.

Those 20MPH speed recommendation signs are important. When people drive too fast they rip the gravel away from the still sticky tar which results in vehicle damage and potentially lethal bald patches on the road.

I drive Slowwwwly over freshly chipped roads, I also drive off line as a deliberate strategy to help to bed in the gravel that is off the main "Tramlines" (If you get what I mean)

adam cool dude · 16 Dec 2017 at 16:31

Lincolnshire is pretty good to be honest. A16 is a lovely stretch of road and have been driving it for ten years. I guess it helps when you live in the second largest county which is also one of the least populated compared to its size.

stopper · 16 Dec 2017 at 16:52

explicit4u said:
Bet he doesn't even pay road tax!

Everyone pays for roads, the council tax covers it.

SexyGreyFox · 16 Dec 2017 at 18:01

Gigabit said:
Why the massive disparity? Why are our roads still worse than other European countries

Perhaps because they are mostly paid out of Council Tax and they can't even empty peoples bins properly.
I think it would be a good idea to go back to 1936 and have a Road Tax where all the money goes back on our roads.
It could be calculated on the weight of the vehicle and how much damage they are likely to cause.

Kaeo · 16 Dec 2017 at 18:34

What makes me truly despair is this - my village is probably the speed bump capital of the U.K. To get 6 streets out of my wee village I have to go over 26 speed bumps, so I average 50ish a day in my daily commute. RIP my suspension. Anyway, these same roads are so full of potholes that the speed bumps aren't even necessary, an have been there since before Edinburgh went full stupid with the 20mph zone. Utterly mental.

jpaul · 16 Dec 2017 at 20:37

Kaeo said:
RIP my suspension. Anyway, these same roads are so full of potholes

many people do not seem to care about their suspension -
- Thursday night everyone had to detour through degraded fendland backroads, people want to do 60 regardless ... maybe they all have leased cars
- You watch people who drive the same road everyday they do not know where the potholes (&already marked for repair sections) are, and avoid them
- saw a nice section from a suspension coil spring laying in the road this afternoon ... they didn't realise it had broken ?

TallPaul_S · 16 Dec 2017 at 20:50

Depends which European country you go to. Our motorways are generally pretty smooth and well maintained. Ever driven (or worse, ridden!) on a motorway in Belgium? :eek:

Potholes the size of small countries!!

However most of Europe has lovely roads, the French autoroutes in particular - you can actually see where the money goes to.

Orionaut · 16 Dec 2017 at 20:53

jpaul said:
- saw a nice section from a suspension coil spring laying in the road this afternoon ... they didn't realise it had broken ?

That happens all the time, back in the day broken springs were unheard of,. Now they are routine. Manufacturers seem to make them out of glass nowadays, but hey ho, If shaving a couple of hundred grams off the springs knocks a fraction of a gram off the CO2/Mile figure than its all for the general good supposedly...

Broken springs are potentially very nasty. Busted springs can puncture the tyre and/or allow the wheel so far up the front wheel arch that you can no longer turn them. Imagine that happening on L3 of the M25 in the middle of the rush hour.

But hey, what is risk of death compared with cutting CO2 emissions just a little bit...

Mr Jack · 16 Dec 2017 at 21:58

Gigabit said:
Why are our roads still worse than other European countries - assuming tolls must have something to do with it. How well maintained is the M6 Toll?

They're not. British roads are great. Traffic lights duplicated on the other side, completely separated car/pedestrian flow on change sequences, wide, 3+1 lane motorways, cats eyes. There's a reason ours are among the very safest in Europe.

British are much better than German roads. I thought getting used to driving on the wrong side would be the hard bit but it's actually the poorer road quality that gets me. Still, at least they're much better than France!

Kenai · 17 Dec 2017 at 09:30

Orionaut said:
Broken springs are potentially very nasty. Busted springs can puncture the tyre and/or allow the wheel so far up the front wheel arch that you can no longer turn them. Imagine that happening on L3 of the M25 in the middle of the rush hour.

Wouldn't be that bad, you'd be at a standstill anyway

Orionaut · 17 Dec 2017 at 09:41

Kenai said:
Wouldn't be that bad, you'd be at a standstill anyway

Lol Point well made... (Well, you certainly would be afterwards anyway, as would everybody else)

Having said that, a car I came across recently with the non-steering issue due to broken spring was a BMW, the owner had to destroy the wing to get the car off the road. Fortunately it only happened at a low speed on a normal SC road. Had he been driving fast on a motorway it could easily have been fatal, and not just for him.

neocon · 17 Dec 2017 at 18:17

You should see Japanese roads, they're amazing and the men that fix them at night.

Nasher · 17 Dec 2017 at 18:28

Hitting a pothole and getting a blowout is the biggest risk. Or just causing you to lose grip in the wet. I guess they can be lethal to bikers.

There's been the same handful of holes on my commute for years now. They fill them in and a week later it's a hole again. I don't know why they can't just fix it properly. One of them is a drain where the surrounding road slowly starts to fall in to it.

You can tell who uses the same route daily by the way they position their car to evade those same pothole spots.

shauncr91 · 17 Dec 2017 at 18:49

I've yet to go anywhere in the UK which has roads quite as poor as those around Sheffield.

Amp34 · 18 Dec 2017 at 01:34

Mr Jack said:
They're not. British roads are great. Traffic lights duplicated on the other side, completely separated car/pedestrian flow on change sequences, wide, 3+1 lane motorways, cats eyes. There's a reason ours are among the very safest in Europe.

British are much better than German roads. I thought getting used to driving on the wrong side would be the hard bit but it's actually the poorer road quality that gets me. Still, at least they're much better than France!

I miss cats eyes. Whoever invented them needs a medal.

Outside of a few random roads British roads are actually pretty good compared to most of the rest of the world. The lack of more extreme temperature changes seen in much of Europe and North America means there’s less (frost) heave, cracking and hot weather damage that needs constantly fixing, on top of the actual road use.

Mr Jack · 18 Dec 2017 at 07:45

Amp34 said:
I miss cats eyes. Whoever invented them needs a medal.

Percy Shaw. He got an OBE.

jpaul · 18 Dec 2017 at 10:56

Nasher said:
You can tell who uses the same route daily by the way they position their car to evade those same pothole spots

you should be able to add pot-hole location like speed-zones to the navigation system to give (unobservant) others an alert.

Mr Jack said:
They're not. British roads are great. Traffic lights duplicated on the other side, completely separated car/pedestrian flow on change sequences, wide, 3+1 lane motorways, cats eyes. There's a reason ours are among the very safest in Europe.

Interesting - I believe alcohol, despite lower limits, is one of the reasons Europe roads are less safe ,
it is surprising if we genuinely have better driver education, but, all to the benefit of soft drinks/coffee manufacturers ?