Safe Speed Forums

I went down the A1 on Monday to Doncaster en-route to Dronfield. There was a long section (about 5 miles) of mandatory 50 mph limit around Leeming for night-time roadworks. Unfortunately it was 4 p.m. and the roadworks were nowhere to be seen. When I came back up at 11 p.m. it was a contraflow so, fine. Not surprisingly in the afternoon I (and one other driver) were the only drivers observing the limit. Everyone one else treated it as 70 mph.
Further down from where the M1 turns off down to Fairburn, a new motorway is being constructed and only one carriageway is in use. Again it is a 50 mph limit for about 6 miles with camera warning signs. Virtually everyone was carefully obeying the limit apart from the odd HGV and car driver. As the traffic is segregated from the works by a crash barrier, 60 mph would have been safe enough.
Is it any wonder that drivers ignore speed limits in roadworks?

Can anyone beat this?

A24, West Sussex. Main route in and out of Worthing and environs. Resurfacing on a dual carriageway Northbound reducing it to single lane.
Protected by crash barriers on the offside, there is grass verge and a wooded area on the nearside.

Signs up saying "Convoy system to protect workforce"

Traffic lights at the start of the roadworks holding you up until 'workforce' turn up in a transit van to 'guide' you safely along the single carriageway at the (then) posted limit of... 10 MPH!
Rest of workforce sitting on grass verge, safe distance from traffic watching it all creep past one huge machine redressing the road surface.
The local congestion has been horrendous, what I can't comprehend is...

1 Why such a low speed limit is necessary.
2 Why said speed limit should be lower than the one in force at the gates of local schools?
3 Is no consideration given to the flow of local traffic?

Maybe I'm just a daft old petrolhead?

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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Sometimes - seems that they pitch the tempos too low. However, cones can be a surprisingly nasty hazard if you blat past them - cauisng them to wobble and fall under another car's tyres at highish spped. Hence - we tend to drive at 50- mph at such points - unless instructed otherwise as the "family rule of thumb"


But agree - with night time road works where they place the cones and work overnight - seems daft to impose the lower limit when cones removed. Came across this on A19/A1 as well. Confusion does not help promote a safety led ideal.


But boils back again to education and awareness...

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I've seen the convoy system used in Alaska where we had to follow the works vehicle round a very twisty bit of road, but from what I remember at a normal pace (hacking it round there would have not been a good idea anyway, not the sort of plcae where you want to come off the road). Never heard of a convoy system being used here. What's wrong with the conventinoal single alternate line of traffic? Is there a world shortage of temporary traffic lights or something?

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On the M6, travelling overnight to Portsmouth we encountered 3 lots of roadworks - not coned, but the heavy continuous barrier type, and at 3.30 - 4.30 in the morning there was NOBODY behind the barrier, and the limit was at 50.

Since the argument trotted out is usually "the limit is to protect the workforce" then surely no workforce, no limit!

On Sept. 4th, I noticed in one section of the M25 there were 3 lanes open, and a 40 limit in place - while the overhead said 60! Since there was heavy thunderstorm at the time, with rain so heavy the wipers could'nt cope, it did not make a difference except to the idiot who blindly blasted past at 60 anyhow.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

It depends on the type of resurfacing being undertaken.

With one particular form (called surface dressing - a sort of "tar and chippings" type thing) you need a time of slow vehicle speeds to help to bed the chippings into the surface. This is for two reasons:
(i) it beds the chips well into the surface
(ii) it stops them flying up and damging your paintwork/windscreen and you posting on websites like this about how dangerous it is to have all these loose stones over the surface

Surface dressing generally calls for a very low speeds for an hour or two until the bedding has taken place. This is usually managed using convoy vehicles.

I am aware of no other standards that require 10mph limits to be imposed.

As for the workforce - see the above. It is likely they had just finished the resurfacing and were taking a well earned break. Unless you've been with these crews, you don't know how hard work it is.

(BTW - surface dressing provides no additional remedial life to a road surface, but can help overcome problems of differential settlement in trenches and stuff like that. It is also very very cheap)

Ja .. if you have had driveway resurfaced .. ist same thing. You have to allow it to bed down ... we had this weed free thing done .. looks quite nice - we had it done in fancy so-called "never suffer weeds" again stuff.



Liebchen ... On the roads I travel on - I am thinking they are on a permanent tea break...

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Sorry - I may not have made it clear, the lane that was being resurfaced/dressed was closed off. The lane that was not planed/surfaced/dressed was the one that we were using at 10 MPH. It wasn't to protect the newly laid surface.

Ta for the answers anyway.

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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Is this another "cut back" - and work that used to be done in a more controlled manner witrh a steamroller?

No, and rollers are rarely steam-powered any more

Seriously, there's only so much a roller can do. Over-rolling can result in the stone being crushed or pressed too far into the tar resulting in lower grip on the surface. Much better to allow car tyres to do some of the compaction at low speed. It gets the road open quicker since:

That makes sense - Thanks.

Shouldn't that have been TAR for the answers?

And shouldn't we get a contribution towards the costs of providing this bedding in service - like a free wash to get the tar spots off the paintwork?

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Get you, sailor

Car wash - no the TARif is too high

please direct all your road surfacing queries in my direction

(i know a man who knows something about it)

I am told that half of the problem with this is due to the hassle of going through the bureaucracy of getting the temporary speed limit issued in the first place. It can take weeks and is lots of paperwork, and you are not allowed to deviate from the original plan, therefore.

If a roadworks is planned to be 4 weeks of night-time only, then a couple of days where 24/7 work is needed, you need to apply for 4 weeks of 24/7 temporary speed limit

If the roadworks is working on a 4 mile stretch for 8 weeks, with the work divided into sections of half a mile, each taking a week to complete, then moving up to the next one, you need to apply for a 4-mile long temporary speed limit for 8 weeks.


On this topic, can anyone please explain why if you drive at 3AM, you will randomly find about 1/4 mile of the outside lane coned off, no work going on, no people, no speed limit, just a bit of coned off lane. I did a 200 mile trip at this sort of time, and encountered 5 or 6 of these on the motorway network. Best explanation I can come up with is the Cone Fairy.. if you leave an uncongested bit of motorway under your pillow, she will come and leave you 50 cones.

Not so far off.

The other half of the problem is continually putting out and pulling in cones. If you ever think about setting up a business, you could do worse than establish a TM business!

What's a TM in this context?

Traffic Management?

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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Sorry. Yep, traffic management. Licence to print money IMO.

Theres no doubt that its a lucrative line of work.

can't remember what the rates are but do some sums around this

50p per cone per week...signs vary according to size etc.