Safe Speed Forums

As is expected at this time of year it's very dark and a bit foggy and the visabilty is generally not too good, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. I've washed my car again today so the glass is good and clean and my eyesight is quite good, but I still can't see the road markings. A lot are worn away and the ones that arn't might as well be as dull as they are. And I can't remember the last white cats eye that I saw.

Other drivers get ever so cross if I drive about on main beam because I can't see where the road is going or what lane I'm ment to be in. Would it be out of the question for just a teeny weeny bit of all that tax our vehicle generate to be spent of some paint and new cats eyes?

I don't know what part of the country you are in or what the road maintenence standards are like, but I agree standards have slipped in many areas. However, and it's a very big however, you need to consider the following.

1) Night myopia is very common and is not normally picked up by eyesight tests. The first indication that many folk get is from night driving troubles. Given your experience, you should ask your optician.

2) If you feel you can't see far enough, then you are likely to be driving too fast. I would have been happier if you had said the the road markings were forcing you to drive too slowly, rather than what you did say. (Apologies if I've read between your lines wrongly.)

3) Driving on mainbeams when other road users are in your path is out of the question except in an emergency. (Very occasionally I'll flick on my mainbeams irrespective of the position of other road users if I think there may be a very specific danger ahead that I can't see well enough to avoid.)

4) Headlight bulbs lose output over the years, and reflectors become duller. Maybe your headlights aren't as good as you think they are?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

LOL Paul - are you saying he's going blind........ .


I do agree with the original post - cats eyes form an essential part of the infromation we use to judge the bend etc - I think that councils should rate the maintenace of these things as a priority.

Rich

I would also agree with this especially in a rural zone. This causes a good many accidents- and I speak from the experience of investigations....

I'll second SafeSpeed's question about where you live, I personally find the UK roads to be generally well painted, and I LOVE cat's eye's. Fantastic invention, and I really appreciate them when I'm driving in the UK. And I see them on almost all major roads. Here in the Netherlands they hardly use them, and when I discussed this with a Dutch work colleague he said that they were "apparently" dangerous for motorbikes, and that's why they never encouraged them here.
Hmmm, well I rode quite a few motorbikes in the UK for about 4 years, and I never had a problem (though I agree that in an extreme situation when negotiating a bend at high speed on a bike a wobble caused by sliding off a cat's eye could be disconcerting).

So, three cheers for cat's eyes, I say.

We have a couple of sections of road which among others have been identified as high risk, the A590 at Low/High Newton, and the A590 at Bouth. These stretches of road now sport the cats eyes which retain luminescence, ie they are not simply reflective. they are lovely and bright, and you can see them in your rear mirror, but they can be a real hazard.
March last year, one of our boy racers - 5 up in a Nova bought that day for his 18th birthday tried the 'lights off through the cat's eyes' trick one Saturday morning at 3am at Bouth. He blasted through the road which is slightly tortuous at speeds over 80 mph with lights out. He lost it on a rise in the road which masks a left hander and the car left the road hitting a tree killing three of the five. A nightmare to deal with, especially now with mobile phones, the families were at the scene almost before we got there.
The secret is to drive within your own abilities to the prevailing conditions of the road.
But do as we do. If there is a section of road which is defective or could benefit from upgrading, mention it to Highways. We do via our road traffic management officer. Suggest the possibility of liability if an RTC should occur due to defective road markings. It may speed things up a bit.

_________________
Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

On certain sections of the Woodhead Pass, mainly on the sharp bends, they have a new type of cats eyes, they flicker instead of a staedy light, I found them particularly good, really help me round the bends, and you can't help but see them. 10/10

_________________
Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

Of course not - but night myopia is a common condition that should be considered.

See this google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2B%22ni ... driving%22

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Excellent plan.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I am also getting concerned about the more and more elaborate artwork that is being applied to our roads

Red or green surfaces on the tarmac, white lines in ever more increasingly bizarre patterns.

As if we haven’t got enough information to absorb when driving we have this to contend with. Some of it I cannot even find in the highway code. We even have weird cycle lanes zigzagging across the road and marked as “experimental” !

This is all great but in low sunlight, fog, rain or snow they may just a well not exist.

Also the maintenance is virtually non-existent. After a couple of years the surface is worn off and it becomes impossible work out what they are supposed to mean.

As a motorcyclist as well I find these surfaces to be treacherous in the wet.

Where is this all going

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

One member of this family (you know him as Andreas (Beagle) Tiger ... That particular bunch are plain crazy ) - well he had a rant on the Cumbrian site over cats' eyes being non-existent at the A6 slip from the A591.



Exactly. Speed cams do not achieve this though.


Boy racers are a serious problem. We've all done fool things as "lads" .. I blew my entire grant on a sports car - and got seriously in debt as a result. My wife and her eldest cousin both bought motorbikes against their repsective parents' wishes. Like my parents - they refused to bail us out and we all starved! My wife also disguised herself as a boy and went riding the bob-sleigh

But there was a difference - my parents and my wife's family were insistent that we took advanced courses and we have drummed into our eldest new driver (pass Plus and now gaining valuable experience before looking at an IAM) that every drive is a learning experience. But ... it is difficult to get the message across - as you already know. One of the reasons why each family member posting to any on-line forum or other media voice need for constant training, information adverts regarding good practice.

But ...as for night myopia ... certainly get your eyes checked by an optician. There are special lens' films you can get to cut glare and any luminescence.

And I like cats' eyes anyway - especially my wife's!

We have a lot of locations which are substandard, cash and lack of organisation seems to be the main drawback at the minute, South Lakeland District Council can't even get it together to get the Christmas lights up in town this year! What chance a cohesive policy on road markings!



Got the T-Shirt


I entirely agree, I see Paul has started a discussion on this very point on another thread. I hope to make my view known on there when time permits.

_________________
Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

His profile says Essex, which narrows it down a touch I'm a bit further west in the Berks/Bucks bit of the Thames valley, and I see the same as Adam - cats eyes missing or damaged/so dirty that they reflect next to nothing, and essential white lines (i.e. road edge, centreline and junction markings) getting increasingly worn out and indistinct. It's a moment of pure joy when, driving at night, you get to one of the rare stretches of road which has been properly maintained or recently resurfaced, and it seems as if the entire route home has just been lit up - white paint that positively gleams and catseyes that make you understand why they're called that. But all too quickly that joy ends as you reach the next stretch of unmaintained road and, as if someone has switched off all your headlights, the road all but disappears into the blackness of the night.

Meanwhile the local authorities seem to have plenty of cash to spend on daubing the roads with ever larger expanses of green and red, with plenty of that precious white paint being expended on markings advertising the fact that yet another bit of the carriageway has been deemed off-limits for private motor vehicles...

Perhaps it's just a south-east thing, but it definitely IS the reality of driving down here, so if the road markings in your part of the country are all well maintained then consider yourself fortunate.

I suspect I may suffer from this. At my next eye test I'll ask my optician. I normally drive fairly briskly, but at night on unlit roads with a lot of traffic coming the other way I'm reduced to a crawling ninny, and at times have incurred the ire of following drivers for going slowly

I have noticed a lot of non-trunk roads having cats eyes removed when resurfaced. I find cats eyes extremely useful and in my view it should be a requirement for all A and B roads to have centre-line cats eyes.


Yes, this is an absolute no-no and one of the most obnoxious and inconsiderate behaviours you can see on the roads.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

My eye sight is actually quite good (everything else is falling appart) and I've no problem in the dark, I was joking too about the main beam thing, just making a point . I'm in Southend and much of the road paint is worn away. There is just odd specs here and there. It's no better in the day. If I go to a part of town I'm not familiar with it's hard to tell what lane I'm supposed to be in by looking at what's left of the road markings.

Yesterday I went for a drive and made a point of looking at the raod marking and cats eyes an it was noticable that work needed to be done.

It's not so much on roads like A127 and A130 but the smaller roads really are quite poor.

They did the cats eyes on the b road bast work a couple of yeasr ago and it was like driving in the day light, for a few weeks then once they all got worn out it's back to mornal. They were just cheap stick on reflectors, not the cats eyes that are in rubber and get wiped when you drive over them.

Thinking about it I'll get me eyes checked anyway, it free isn't it and it couldn't hurt.

Where I stay the roads are in a disgraceful mess (Inverclyde) and i'm not kidding! The council tax is the 2nd highest in Scotland yet we have the bumpiest roads with the most worn out lines, I have only managed to stop at some junctions because I know the area, some poor sod from another area (daft enough to come here!) would have went right through it.

Why is this happening? Well in an attempt to be politically correct and keep all the single mothers wai ten weans and the poor unfortunate junkies in taxis and benefits someone has to pay, Who? Oh! the ordinary hard working bloke will pay as usual. They (council) seem to have plenty of money for all the other PC traffic 'pet' projects such as one way systems, build-outs (what an apt word ), chicanes, speed reference markers, crossings, lights and SPEED BUMPS .

Rant over!

Andrew

_________________
It's a scam........or possibly a scamola


Homer Simpson

In Australia we do not use "cats eyes" on the road itself. We have posts with reflectors on both sides, white reflectors on the left side and red on the right. If you see a line of red reflectors across your path you know the road turns left and visa-versa.

The centre of the road only has painted lines so the bikers are not at risk.

_________________
Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

Same here but only on dodgy bends. However they are never cleaned and only rarely replaced, usually every ten years or so and rarely when damaged by an errant car or brainless grass cutter.

On road markings the main problem is that the current road paint is a different composition to the older rubber based stuff which didn't wear out as quick. The old stuff was obviously dangerous to bikers but not renewing it as often must be on balance just as dangerous.

The new LED cats eyes are EXCELLENT and I hope they are rolled out soon, I have seen them at two test sites in Hampshire (Fleet and Sparsholt). The only snag is that they are pulsed and the effect is that they flicker when approx 10ft from the car - this produces a somewhat distracting effect in your peripheral vision.

Gareth

You would be far better studying the length of the white lines, which dictate how severe the approaching hazard is

_________________
Steve

Yes they do. But that's all they do. They don't tell us that the hazard up ahead is a bend - on an unfamiliar road, the longer dashes (or solid line) could just as easily mark the junction with a side road, or a stretch of narrow road. And even when we're aware that the hazard is a bend, the length of the dashes can only provide very coarse feedback as to the nature of the bend. Cats eyes show you exactly where the bend is going.

So yes, being aware of the changes in the white lines is important, but not to the point of ignoring the far more detailed information being provided by the cats eyes.