Middle lane blocking

[Martin Cassini]

On motorways, you never fail to see drivers who ignore empty inside lanes and treat the middle lane as the default lane. On the M2 the other day, hidden behind bushes, we saw a police car, no doubt waiting to pounce on a "speeder". As Chas Dornsife wrote, "drivers who drive faster than average have the lowest accident rates, yet they are the primary targets of speed enforcement". Have you ever seen a police officer apprehend a middle lane blocker? Nor have I. Yet they halve road capacity and cause bunching which causes stress and accidents. Do they ever face prosecution? Do pigs fly?

[Martin Cassini]

Oh, so trains use no land and have no carbon footprint? Funny, I've just seen some favourite Soho haunts fade into history through compulsory purchase for Crossrail. Now power-hungry politicians want to drive a 100m swathe through the natural beauty of the Chilterns, just to shave an hour off a train journey to Scotland. Meanwhile, outlying districts are starved of public transport links. You can't compare the convenience of personal transport with the inconvenience of public. A firkin train can't do A-B and B-C and C-D in anything like the same timescale! What about all the connections, and the need to get to and from the stations? No contest. Public transport requires you to abdicate responsibility and adapt to someone else's arrangements. On a bike or in a car, you call the shots. Until public transport is equally convenient in all circumstances as personal transport, which it can never be, because it runs on rails that don't go to your home or direct to your destination, it's unacceptable to force it on people who don't want it. As I said, make it inviting and exciting, but don't be totalitairan about it. Through deregulation and restoring choice to road-users, our lights-off trial in Portishead cut journey times by over half with no loss of safety, with matching improvements in air quality. It would be interesting to investigate fully how traffic regulation developed. Don't forget that the priority rule, on which the whole sorry system is based, makes roads dangerous in the first place. By changing the rules to reflect rather than restrict human nature, by phasing in an advanced driving test, through roadway redesign, legal and other reforms, we could make Roads FiT for People. And you can keep your trains. But, young Ian me lad, champion cyclist that you are, may I urge you to live and let live?

[Ian Perry]

Progress? Is it not because of the car and the desire of people to drive at excessive speeds, oblivious to the safety and comfort of others, resulting in fatalities, that led to the rules in the first place? Combining trains and bicycles you can transport people and "stuff" from A to B, C to D and even A to Z if you want to.

The Honda FCX Clarity, or Gordon Murray's T25 are potentially lethal, sill highly environmentally damaging (they just move the environmental damage and pollution further out of sight and mind) and require space...

[Martin Cassini]

Cars too are fast, comfortable, relaxing and safe. And guess what, with a car, you can go from A to B, C to D and even A to Z if you want to, without having to submit to someone else's timetable, other people's coughing, lateness, overcrowding, overcharging, etc, etc. I wouldn't dream of questioning your right to choose to travel by train. I'm all for making public transport irresistible (air-conditioning, delightful attendants, etc) to tempt me out of my car (actually I use my bicycle far more), but I find it intolerable that people should restrict my choice out of dogma. Cars are among the world's greatest inventions. They let you carry stuff and people, go from door to door and in your own time. Environmentally, great things are happening at last, e.g. the hydrogen-powered Honda FCX Clarity, or Gordon Murray's T25. - Of course, driving would be a heap more relaxing if we didn't have to contend with moronic traffic controls blocking progress!

[Ian Perry]

Research has shown that if people used the roads as intended, road capacity would increase significantly. But it must be easier to build extra lanes than ask people to keep to the left!
Rather than discussing motorways, should we not be focusing on alternatives, e.g. trains? Trains are fast, comfortable, relaxing and safe.

[Martin Cassini]

Yes, I remember driving in the States in the 70s - no lane discipline or courtesy at all, no rhyme or reason to which lane people hung out in. That's another point - blockers "make" you "undertake", so they drive you to break the law. They should be hauled up for provocation! A solution is to abolish speed limits. In Germany, apparently, it stimulates lane courtesy, as Chas said happened in Montana when there were no limits.

[Rick Lawrence]

Could be worse. Here in Canada and the US, the outside (fast) lane is the default for a significant majority of drivers. Attempts to have them move over by flashing headlights rarely works, forcing one to overtake on the inside. I believe that no one here has ever been stopped by the police for this behaviour.