Kent Crash

viv1969

viv1969

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I really wasn't surprised by this this morning.

I joined the A249 (as I do every morning) at the next junction along from this at 7.15am, in immensely thick fog and a) wondered why there was no London bound traffic, and shortly thereafter b) what kind of total b*****d does 80mph in dense fog with no lights on? I was amazed at how many were. :cuckoo:
 
It's unbelievable!

I too was confronted with very thick fog on the last mile or so into work (I'd say visibility was less than 30 yards) but I managed to avoid a collision by employing a radical driving technique.

The technique is called "Drive slower"..... simple really!
 
Yip. Inappropriate speed for the prevailing conditions, and general lack of thought and anticipation.

I lived in South Africa for about 30 years. Most SA drivers have a pretty cavalier attitude towards the rules of the road, and a strong sense of their own immortality. Heavy mist is common in a few parts of the country, but is generally rare, and the real hazard is incredibly heavy, torrential, rain. I still can't understand people who blast along at + 100 kph, overtaking anyone travelling more slowly, in poor visibility with a high risk of aquaplaning or hitting a major pothole under the flooded road surface.
 
viv1969 said:
b) what kind of total b*****d does 80mph in dense fog with no lights on? I was amazed at how many were. :cuckoo:
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I've known some folks who get up at the last minute to get to work, and not being late relies on them tanking down the motorway at 80+.
When it's foggy or icy though... :shake: :cuckoo:
 
We had very thick fog here in Guernsey today, but like everywhere else its patchy, some places it will just a covering others its so you cannot see a hand in front of you literlly.

The amount of people who either had no lights on or just as bad people who think having their side lights on is ok, I mean come on fog lamps are bright for a reason so why would anyone think that side lights are ok in thick fog, you might as well not have any on at all.

And cyclist who think they are above the law again with no lights on, they keep saying we are vulnerable as hell in great weather, well why not use a bit of common and put some lights on when the weather is not its best.
I was riding to work on my motorbike this morning and it was hell, trying to pull out of a junction with cars approaching with no lights on and not being seen till the last minute. I had one lucky escape, and believe me she got a piece of my mind, her answer was "it was not foggy at my house" oh so that's ok then you do not need to drive to the conditions.

Ahhhh ok rant over ill calm down again lol
 
2 of my 3 brothers have rung me this morning (a rarity!!)....just to make sure :lol: Bless.
 
Russ77 said:
It's unbelievable!

I too was confronted with very thick fog on the last mile or so into work (I'd say visibility was less than 30 yards) but I managed to avoid a collision by employing a radical driving technique.

The technique is called "Drive slower"..... simple really!
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I heard a senior police officer on the radio at lunchtime say "It was the fault of the fog and the drivers" .................... No, it was not the fault of the fog.
 
arclight said:
I heard a senior police officer on the radio at lunchtime say "It was the fault of the fog and the drivers" .................... No, it was not the fault of the fog.
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Precisely..... the drivers didn't react accordingly when face with the fog....... Fog caused the visibility to be seriously reduced and the drivers didn't have the talent to deal with it.... either way the fog can't be blamed :lol:
 
Going to be a whole bunch of fun going home.
I think I might go a different way :D
 
<--- Speaking as The Cloud Master.

I think what had happened is where drivers were travelling along bumper-to-bumper in the rush hour/school run under clear conditions as normal then suddenly ran into a fog bank seconds later and thus caught everyone unawares. doesn't help that most people are getting back to the daily rush hour routine after the summer holiday so they are "out of practice".
These localised dense fog patches are more dangerous than widespread fog, so when you got traffic going from clear skies into thick fog in only matter of seconds, all it'll take is for someone to make a false move and a domino effect kicks in. At least with uniform widespread fog, you could wake up and look out the window and then think about leaving that little bit early and going slow from the off.
Doesn't help when there is that "rush, rush, got ten important stuff I need to do all at the same time yesterday" culture these days.

I did issue a warning for widespread and dense fog in my facebook Cloud Master page last night, and while the fog wasn't as widespread as I thought, the patchy fog that did form in the early hours turned out to be very dense anyway.
I do think the fog risk wil be reduced tonight as a cold front moving in from the north west will have the effect of mixing up the air.
I'm typing this on the iPad in a sunny front garden where I'm soaking up the rays, yet this time in 24 hours the weather is going to be quite different with cool, overcast and wet conditions. It's quite sad to think that this may be the last time I'll be able to sit comfortably in the garden wearing shorts this year.
 
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Looking at the pictures earlier it looked like there was small incident involving a van at the front which span the van and blocked all the lanes and everything just stopped dead right on a bend. To have avoided one another I am betting cars would have needed a bigger stopping distance than the sudden lack of visibility allowed.

A one or two car bump in fog can be blamed on one or two reckless drivers, but that many has to make you think it was just unavoidable to most of them,
 
For the record the fog around the bridge this morning wasn't patchy, and it was dense, and it didn't begin to dissipate untill after the Stockbury roundabout / M2
 
A one or two car bump in fog can be blamed on one or two reckless drivers, but that many has to make you think it was just unavoidable to most of them,
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This was a completely avoidable accident, as most are.
Too fast, too close, and not looking beyond the end of their own bonnet.
 
Bernie174 said:
This was a completely avoidable accident, as most are.
Too fast, too close, and not looking beyond the end of their own bonnet.
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I have to agree.
If there was not enough stopping distance, then they were travelling too fast and close for the conditions. Pretty much all of them.

There is one story emerging though....of a truck driver travelling on the other carriageway who saw what was going on, and when he reached the other side of the bridge he pulled his truck across the carriageway to prevent anyone else from going over the bridge.
 
Listened to the news earlier and the TV presenter asked the highways chap weather having brighter lights on that section of road would have helped :bonk::shake::cuckoo:
Where do they get them from:bang:
 
I am not a fan of that bridge. We played Sheppey a couple of weeks back in that torrential downpour we had. Scary **** going over the bridge and then down Detling with visibility pretty much non existant, road covered in that much water you couldn't see the markings and yet people were still bombing past me :nuts:
 
Bernie174 said:
This was a completely avoidable accident, as most are.
Too fast, too close, and not looking beyond the end of their own bonnet.
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Correct. It doesn't matter how many cars were involved in a pile up. The driver of every single one of them is responsible for driving a safe distance behind the car in front so he/she can stop if necessary.


Steve.
 
kelack said:
I am not a fan of that bridge. We played Sheppey a couple of weeks back in that torrential downpour we had. Scary **** going over the bridge and then down Detling with visibility pretty much non existant, road covered in that much water you couldn't see the markings and yet people were still bombing past me :nuts:
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But not the fault of the road, or the conditions.... just the drivers, surely,
 
Yep completely.
 
Jimmy_Lemon said:
To have avoided one another I am betting cars would have needed a bigger stopping distance than the sudden lack of visibility allowed.
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and in other news, the sun set in the west a couple of hours ago and will pop up in the east tomorrow.

Pretty much the cause of every crash Sherlock (if I were to replace the last few words with bigger stopping distance than the space available to stop for the speed!)
 
Makes a change for people not having lights on, the amount of morons you see with fog lights on when there is no need, as they dont even know how to turn them off. Could have been a very bad day earlier with lots of fatalities.
 
It's simple, if the conditions are rough and you can't see ahead properly then you slow down.

I was going to say that the standard of driving in the UK is generally poor... but actually it's bloody awful.
 
Lynton said:
and in other news, the sun set in the west a couple of hours ago and will pop up in the east tomorrow.

Pretty much the cause of every crash Sherlock (if I were to replace the last few words with bigger stopping distance than the space available to stop for the speed!)
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Throw into that mix, condition of tyres, suspension, ABS, no ABS, drivers reaction times. Someone may well believe they have left more than enough room between them and the car in front (if it's visible) but if a car in front has a much better combination of the above, then a collision is likely to happen.
 
nilagin said:
Throw into that mix, condition of tyres, suspension, ABS, no ABS, drivers reaction times. Someone may well believe they have left more than enough room between them and the car in front (if it's visible) but if a car in front has a much better combination of the above, then a collision is likely to happen.
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Still driver error though ;)
 
Russ77 said:
Still driver error though ;)
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Perhaps we'd all be better off staying in bed then. :shrug:
It doesn't follow that all the drivers were at fault though, they may well have stopped in time, only to be hit from behind and be shunted into the car in front, the car in front gets shunted into another and so on.
 
Interesting one for the insurance companies to sort out!








(For "interesting" read "nightmare")



Heather
 
nilagin said:
Perhaps we'd all be better off staying in bed then. :shrug:
It doesn't follow that all the drivers were at fault though, they may well have stopped in time, only to be hit from behind and be shunted into the car in front, the car in front gets shunted into another and so on.
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Agreed, however the overall cause of the incident as a whole would still be down to someone driving too close and/or too fast and not in accordance with conditions.
 
Perhaps we'd all be better off staying in bed then
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With driver standards as poor as they are in the UK, that might be a good idea! On the other hand, perhaps if people learned or if they know how, did drive properly, the this sort of thing wouldn't happen. But it's easier to blame fog.
 
Bernie174 said:
With driver standards as poor as they are in the UK, that might be a good idea! On the other hand, perhaps if people learned or if they know how, did drive properly, the this sort of thing wouldn't happen. But it's easier to blame fog.
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There are countries with far worse driving standards than in the UK. Mind you we could always blame the foreigners using our roads.:lol:
 
Bernie174 said:
With driver standards as poor as they are in the UK, that might be a good idea! On the other hand, perhaps if people learned or if they know how, did drive properly, the this sort of thing wouldn't happen. But it's easier to blame fog.
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Bernie do you not realise that driving standards in the UK are much higher than in the rest of Europe? The UK's figure for "road fatalities per 100000 inhabitants per year" is incredibly low.
Before you complain about British driving standards you should spend some time out here.
 
I have yet to use the bridge as I don't get down that way much these days but I have to say that I was surprised that the crashes were described by the Police as being caused by the "fog".

As others have said the cause of the mess must lay with driver error (not all) and a disregard for the 'rules' (that which we learn when we learn to drive, the highway code and experience).

IMHO there are a large numbr of dumb drivers, arrogant drivers and downright dangerous drivers. Add into that mix unrealistic expectation employers have within the transport industry, the necessary restrictions on driving hours for commercial van/lorry drivers (Road traffic act defined) and then the stressed drivers pushing to get to work and fearful of losing their jobs, working longer hours..... the list goes on and on in terms of causal factors. I am amazed that something as large in outcome as this has not happened sooner.

I was thinking that though some serious injuries have occurred, that there was not a serious fire on the bridge which would have compromised the survivability of those on the bridge. So a feeling of "there but for the grace of god....."

So yes the fog was a causal factor but the indolence of many drivers was tbe real cause.

I regulsrly use the M4/M5 Almondsbury interchange which is being extended, realigned and upgraded and is a job lasting years as the roads are being kept open as much as possible.

Recently it was reported that over 14,000 drivers had been caught speeding through the roadworks 50mph restricted zone in 6 months wth one clocked at 137mph and many at 100-125mph. So 14,000 drivers who feel so important that their needs outweigh the safety of other drivers and those workers rebuilding the highway.

These morons can be seen every day on the motorways and I have no doubt that some of what happened yesterday was from those types of morons that believe the rules do not apply to them and the "bubble" they occupy will protect them from all dangers!

Maybe lifetime driving bans would offer the rest of us protection from the bell ends. As reference the thread regsrding the driver caught doing 140mph through roadworks on the M74 we recently had on here!

"They drive amongst us"

Steve
 
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nilagin said:
There are countries with far worse driving standards than in the UK. Mind you we could always blame the foreigners using our roads.:lol:
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He ought to try Turkey :lol::lol:Just back from two weeks holiday - taxi rides are "interesting" interesting to say the least :bang:
 
Ricardodaforce

firstly, I have spent 7.5 years of my life in Europe, so I know full well what standards are like in some parts of it.
But thats irrelevant, saying the UK is better than x, doesn't make it all right!
The idea should be to raise the standard not just accept it because its slightly better than utterly appalling.
A better comparison would be against, say Germany, where they are far higher.
 
Bernie174 said:
With driver standards as poor as they are in the UK, that might be a good idea! On the other hand, perhaps if people learned or if they know how, did drive properly, the this sort of thing wouldn't happen. But it's easier to blame fog.
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I daresay that some of the motorists involved in that crash yesterday, may well have been the ones on the A249/M2 back when we had the fog and snow in Winter, who were tailgating me in the inside lane at 40MPH with no lights despite the speed limit signs being visible. Some of them may even have been the idiots driving at 60+MPH in a snow covered outside lane, again without lights.
The fact is that some drivers have no imagination or consideration for those around them.
 
Bernie174 said:
Ricardodaforce

firstly, I have spent 7.5 years of my life in Europe, so I know full well what standards are like in some parts of it.
But thats irrelevant, saying the UK is better than x, doesn't make it all right!
The idea should be to raise the standard not just accept it because its slightly better than utterly appalling.
A better comparison would be against, say Germany, where they are far higher.
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You still are in Europe. According to the WHO report on road traffic injuries, the UK figure (sourced from the DOT in 2012) for ""road fatalities per 100000 inhabitants per year" is 2.75. The corresponding German figure (sourced from the Federal Statistical Office Germany) is over twice as bad a 6.7.
But, as ever, you know best.
 
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