Incredible Motoring Loopholes |

Dig This!

I have written many email to various departments about the fact that thousands are wasted each year on resurfacing roads which to be truthful desperately need the work but then within days are dug up by some contractor or other. I have since found out that the local councils hold the power to fine these companies for the repair of the road at a rate of £1000.

I am also aware of a campaign by motoring organisations and peers to introduce a bill of contractors having to pay a rental type charge for the road they are digging up. This apparently is based on the class of road, the percentage of the road included in the work program and the level of traffic that would normally use that road (ie side road or commuter route or motorway).

This bill as far as I understand was to be debated about 18 months ago but I have heard no more about it since. I started raising questions about this as I live in Fareham and a local road which is a commuter route and very busy is dug up on a weekly basis by one company or another.

It was resurfaced at great expense and hey presto the next day dug up by the water company. The road in question is called Kiln road and is a constant source of work for the engineers apparantly. As far as I am aware virtually no councils fine these companies for wasting our money and their time in resurfacing these roads for them to be destroyed by work which has probably been planned for months.

I understand the Canadians have a system that works very well. The utility companies do not dig up the road on a whim they wait until one of them has a serious problem and then they call each other up and arrange for the road to be closed for the day/ night. They all go in strip the road surface off do all the jobs in one go and completely resurface the road from one end to the other and then reopen it.

This minimises disruption and gives great surfaces to drive on. Sound good, maybe I am not the only one to feel the system we have is wasteful and disruptive and fed up with being sat in a traffic queue at the mercy of the man with the stick/ the dreaded traffic lights or the endless motorway cones with no workers in sight. If so maybe you can include this in your campaigns.

I know the petrol companies will not like it but your artical about bio-diesel is extremely interesting. With the cries of fossil fuels are running out, we are polluting the atmosphere, reducing the ozone layer etc... and their so called commitment to green sustainable power why are the government not introducing bio-diesel on a ready made option at the pumps.

Simple answer the would lose revenue and the petrol companies would put the squeeze on them. Yet again a clear show of large enterprises having a large influence on policy. One last comment, I am a great believer that road tax should be abolished in favour of collection through fuel duty as we would all pay for the road we use.

The little old lady who goes to the shops once a week would benefit and those who clock huge mileages would pay for what they use. This could be extended to law that all visitors from the continent must arrive with less than 1/4 of a tank of fuel or pay duty on every litre over that 1/4 tank.

Afterall we pay tolls to use their roads and their are masses of European lorries damaging our roads on a daily basis. I hope some of my comments have proved to be of interest to you and may even provoke a campaign or two.

The motorist as you say on your site is an easy victim and it is time we stood up to be counted as the government seems not to listen on many issues and positively ignores motorists complaints.

After allsuccess

D. Owen (UK)

Unfair Justice!!

To whom this may concern...

We live in Ontario, Canada and the traffic laws are really a sad thing here.

Five years ago my husband got a "seatbelt" fine.

He doesn't believe that an "adult" should HAVE to wear one if they don't want to because my brother was in a very serious car accident & would have been killed if he HAD his seatbelt on.

Canada is a "free country" right....we have the freedom to make decisions as adults, etc..etc...etc...not even close to being free!!!

Anyway he didn't pay the fine. About 1 1/2 years later I was checking out cheaper insurance rates & found out by shear accident that my husband's license had been suspended for about a year...because of this seat belt ticket!

My husband drives about 45 miles a day to & from work & he had NO INSURANCE! If he had an accident we could have lost our house & numerous other things...a real scarey thought. What ever happened to a "registered letter" to notify a person of a suspention?

And furthermore...what does a seatbelt ticket have to do with anything..it's not even a moving violation!

Thanks for listening...this still really upsets me!

P Boyd
Canada

A. This is the problem with authorities Æ do you think any of those civil servants care if you were not insured?

Problem is, the lawÍs the law no matter how crap it is. Here in the UK we have crazy laws dating back to the 12th Century (not motoring laws!) and you can still get imprisoned for breaking them.

Conversly, it's actually legal, according to ancient duelling laws to kill someone on a certain day so long as you shoot then in a certain place, at a specific time in the year with a bow and arrow!!!

Unfortunately thereÍs no loophole for getting away with not wearing a seatbelt and itÍs just sheer luck in the accident as to whether they save or extinguish your life Æ but I do agree that it should be your choice as an adult to wear one or not.

Breaking The 'Slow' Limit!

I am not going to disagree with you about speeding, it is dangerous and illegal, but there is also the reverse-: people who drive aroung at fifteen to thirty miles an hour below the speed limit on clear roads in good conditions totally oblivious to the ever growing queue of other vehicles behind them who just want to get on and make reasonable progress within the speed limit. My experience also tends to be that if you catch up on these people on a nice out of town, national speed limit road and get stuck behind them at 45mph or so, should you happen to enter a thirty limit for a village or town, they will happily continue at exactly the same speed and leave you behind when you slow to the limit. Of course you'll catch up again once back to the national limit! Add to that the people who do not grasp that the idea of a motorway slip road is to (a) Use the mirrors and turn ones head inorder to observe the traffic speed and density, and (b) accelerate to a speed at which it is possible to safely merge with the moving traffic by easing into a suitable gap in the inside lane traffic without causing other drivers to have to break to avoid them, and instead drive at a steady thirty to the top of the slip road (usually in the right hand lane if there are two) before taking their first look at the traffic they wish to join and slaming the brakes on because-guess what- it's going faster than them! Or of course they will just pull straight out into 70mph traffic at 40 forcing an entire motorway lane to brake to avoid them. Few people out their haven't got the message that speeding is bad (whether they take any notice of it is admittedly a different question in some cases), but this has lead to a perception that so long as you are under the speed limit and sober you are driving well, this is not automatically the case, my own subjective experience is that these slow drivers are more likely to be paying insufficient attention and as a result indicate late, if at all, break suddenly for things they should have seen coming and pull out without looking properly. Speeders are easy to spot, a machine can do it, hence the bumper crop of speed cameras sprouting beside any road which doesn't host a perminant gridlock, personally I would sooner see more Police on the roads stopping all bad drivers, whatever speed they are doing!

P.J. Denyer
UK