Crazy on the roads today!

tarmac_chaser

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Carl
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Never seen the roads as icy in Devon before as I did today. Seven miles of the North Devon link road (dual carraigeway) was closed as more than 15 cars had been involved in accidents. This created major gridlock on all the surrounding roads as people tried to find alternative routes.

On another smaller road we slid down the hill on the ice and narrowly missed a Highways van, before realising there was a gritter truck upside down over the Armco barrier at the bottom of a bank. Must've literally just happened as we saw three emergency vehicles responding.

On another road five cars had crashed into eachother after the first one left the road and crashed into a house taking all the render off

The torrential rain and freezing temperatures have made the conditions scarier than I've ever seen here before, walking or driving its been a nightmare
 
Stop moaning it`s CHRISTMAS!!! :D
 
England is terrible in this weather as it doesnt happen often enough to invest enough money into precautions/road clearing stuff.

It took me about 4 hours to get from Newcastle to York which is usually an hour and a half journey.

The whole of the A19 was white and icy. People driving too fast for the conditions and people driving right up my arse!!

It's awful
 
I went to carlisle today from warrington, it's straight up the M6, it had been gritted but the outside lane was a no go area, on the way back I saw 3 cars up the banking about 5 miles apart, no idea how they managed to do that as the inside lanes were fine
 
The road I live on is just wide enough for two cars to pass each other with about 6 inches or so to spare either side, & as you go down the road it starts a gradually steepening decent with a left hand bend at the bottom. Because of this, & that it's not a major road, the gritting lorry can't get access. However, we used to have a grit box at the bottom on the bend, but it was removed a few years ago when it was resurfaced. So even if we wanted to grit the road ourselves we can't :bang:
Interestingly there doesn't appear to be any in the town at all :eek:
 
You could buy a couple of kilos of salt,,,
True, but why should I/we? Surely this is something that should be provided by the local aurthority/council?
.......in fact it used to until recently!!!
 
Yeah, why should anyone have any concern for the street they live in, and a bag of salt is so expensive after all.
 
Yeah, why should anyone have any concern for the street they live in, and a bag of salt is so expensive after all.
That's nothing to do with the point I was making which was that we already pay for gritting. Surely the local aurthority has a duty of care to the people......it's customers.
If I/we are to have to start paying for everything in the street then there's going to have to be a reducion in taxes.
 
Biggest problem with the bad road conditions ..... IS THE BAD DRIVING end of ,no one in this day in age has the first idea of how to drive to the conditions ,car drivers,lorry drivers ,bus drivers ... the lot .It's as simple as that ,roads icy/snowy = slow down keep your distance and look further than your bonnet
 
That's nothing to do with the point I was making which was that we already pay for gritting.

so you'd be very happy indeed to increase the amount you pay in road/council tax to cover the additional costs of gritting the roads in the past few years as councils have started stockpiling more and more of the stuff to deal with the 24/7 gritting (plus the additional man hrs required to man the gritters and ploughs) they have had to do in the past week.
 
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so you'd be very happy indeed to increase the amount you pay in road/council tax to cover the additional costs of gritting the roads in the past few years as councils have started stockpiling more and more of the stuff to deal with the 24/7 gritting (plus the additional man hrs required to man the gritters and ploughs) they have had to do in the past week.
I think you've taken my point out of context. The problem we have here isn't that the council don't grit the roads, they do. But our road is a minor one that a gritting lorry would be unable to navigate. As I said, we Did have a grit bin in the road, but when the road was resurfaced it was removed & not replaced. Had we still have the grit bin then I, or anyone else living in the road could (& would) have taken a spade & spread some grit over said icy road.
It's obviously not possible to treat every road in the UK, but to remove something that people can use to treat their road is just stupid :cuckoo:

As for paying more, nope, we already pay enough in road/council taxes & these days councils/government seem to want to increase taxes while reducing services.......but that's a different discussion altogether ;)

Anyway, Christmas isn't a time for arguing, so I'll wish you all a merry Christmas & a prosperous new year :D :beer:
 
Never seen the roads as icy in Devon before as I did today. Seven miles of the North Devon link road (dual carraigeway) was closed as more than 15 cars had been involved in accidents. This created major gridlock on all the surrounding roads as people tried to find alternative routes.

We had no buses running for most of the day in our area - they couldn't get out of Pottington - cars could get in but buses couldn't get out ???? I just thought perhaps they just wanted some mince pies
 
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