Rubber necks and hold ups
Published: Wed, 08/02/17
In the past 10 days I have driven to East Yorkshire from Somerset three times. Nearly 600 miles in each round trip. People complain about the road network in this country but when it works it really can be very good. On the first trip we were able to drive a heavily laden Luton van from Somerset to East Yorkshire in under 6 hours and that included some stops. The motorway services are clean and efficient these days and there was plenty of room to park and manoeuvre our rather unwieldy vehicle. I had similarly easy journeys in smaller vans on the subsequent trips.
However, a couple of observations. You might think that 0500 hrs would be a good time to drive on a motorway, not really, at pretty much exactly 0530hrs the lorries get turned loose for their early deliveries, huge packs of them, it gets quite intimidating when you are only driving a van.
The other thing is that accidents cause hold ups, well that isn’t surprising as lanes have to be closed for the damaged vehicles to be removed. Except, that hold ups are caused in both directions, including the carriage way which is technically unaffected. I guess people slow down to have a look, it even has a name, ‘rubber necking’ and just the sight of an accident causes hold ups. Maybe that should not be so surprising when you think about it, we all get affected by news or awareness of things that do not actually affect us directly at all. Financial fluctuations are a good example, in 2008 most people still had their jobs and houses but the news of the financial crash changed people’s spending and buying behaviour even though their actual circumstances were unaffected directly.
Anyway, I have real issues to deal with, got to finish loading my van and get out of this house as soon as I can. Hand in the keys and get to the Spirit of Awen camp.
Have a good week and weekend, more on Monday.
regards
Graham