Don’t know if anyone was on the M6 on Thursday, 6pm ish, going NB past J10. Probably not.
60 mph speed limit in place. I was looking to move onto the hard shoulder to get onto the M54. I look in my left mirror, I look forwards. The removals van in front of me (with a british racing green MG on a trailer, nice example) is close to sharing the cab. Bugger. I weng it left and don’t hit him. Overhead gantries say 30mph. 
Only seen that once and that was a 20m wide bit of standing water. “SLOW DOWN Obstruction”. Okay. Trundling along at about 40. Get to the M54, left lane closed, right lane open. The rest of the M6 had NSL. So all the traffic moves left. Get around the bend. There’s a womblesque 4x4, ablaze with red and orange lights (sadly not with fire). A car with the boot open, and a van up on a jack. Van was pulled hard left, not in the way at all. The idiotmobile, sorry Highways Agency Enforcement Vehicle was pretty much in the bloody roadway. All that for a flat tire… 
And I hurt my thumb.
Hope your thumb heals quick and your not in to much discomfort. 
Colin_scottish:
Hope your thumb heals quick and your not in to much discomfort.
Thanks for your concern mate 
Flat tyre on nearside or off side? From the comment about van position I would guess off side so the person changing the tyre would be between the van and the live carriageway.
TBH I’m struggling to see why the “Wombles” could be thought of as idiots from what you’ve outlined. Better to spend some time on proactive prevention than reactive clean up, a clean up that would have created even greater inconvenience.
Wiretwister:
Flat tyre on nearside or off side? From the comment about van position I would guess off side so the person changing the tyre would be between the van and the live carriageway.
TBH I’m struggling to see why the “Wombles” could be thought of as idiots from what you’ve outlined. Better to spend some time on proactive prevention than reactive clean up, a clean up that would have created even greater inconvenience.
Think I agree with you there mate, these guys are only doing a job and doing as they are told, if any of my family were stuck in hard shoulder, I would be happy they were getting some kind of protection from these guys, even if only to make them more visible to the real idiots on the Mway.
Never understood the hostility towards them from a lot of drivers.
Yep, if i’m changing a tyre i’ll gladly have the help of a couple of eagle eyed wombles every time, plus their bloody great 4x4 lit up like Christmas, at least you have a chance of survival if some bugger’s watching out for the idiots who can’t keep the bloody vehicle in one lane.
Was surprised to see a large Merc car broke down in the roadworks between jcts 5 and 4 M5 yesterdays morning (no hard shoulder 50 mph limit), just hazards on and the driver still sitting in the car, dunno if the driver or any possible passenger was disabled but i suspect all of us would have been out of it like a shot and over the bloody barrier.
Hey Dude, they are just doing their job as per Government guidelines on health and safety, no reason to slate the Wombles .
The ■■■ would hit the fan if didn’t do what they are trained to do.
Interesting that the California Highway Patrol did a study and found ideas safer to have less lights in emergency and recovery vehicles stopped on the shoulder.
Apparently drivers attention is drawn to the lights and they then tend to steer towards where they’re looking.
This was told to me when I trained as a tow truck driver for the AAA here.
Having worked as a paramedic I preferred have the response car lit up as much as possible.
W.
PilotWolf:
Interesting that the California Highway Patrol did a study and found ideas safer to have less lights in emergency and recovery vehicles stopped on the shoulder.
Apparently drivers attention is drawn to the lights and they then tend to steer towards where they’re looking.
This was told to me when I trained as a tow truck driver for the AAA here.
.
Don’t agree mate, If I see an abundance of blue/yellow/red lights in hard shoulder, it prompts me to pull in lane2.
robroy:
PilotWolf:
Interesting that the California Highway Patrol did a study and found ideas safer to have less lights in emergency and recovery vehicles stopped on the shoulder.
Apparently drivers attention is drawn to the lights and they then tend to steer towards where they’re looking.
This was told to me when I trained as a tow truck driver for the AAA here.
.
Don’t agree mate, If I see an abundance of blue/yellow/red lights in hard shoulder, it prompts me to pull in lane2.
I get the impression that PilotWolf also finds this to be counter intuitive based on his last sentence.
PilotWolf:
Having worked as a paramedic I preferred have the response car lit up as much as possible.
Some of you make good points The tyre was on the offside yes. I agree with closing lane 1 on the M54 and maybe a 50/60mph speed limit he M54. 30mph across all 4 lanes of an extremely busy motorway at the tail end of rush hour? Errr…
If you set the signals to close a lane, the system automatically sets speeds over the other lanes, depending on location (you mentioned a bend) or number of lanes closed, these would alter the speed that is automatically set over the running lanes.
robroy:
PilotWolf:
Interesting that the California Highway Patrol did a study and found ideas safer to have less lights in emergency and recovery vehicles stopped on the shoulder.
Apparently drivers attention is drawn to the lights and they then tend to steer towards where they’re looking.
This was told to me when I trained as a tow truck driver for the AAA here.
.
Don’t agree mate, If I see an abundance of blue/yellow/red lights in hard shoulder, it prompts me to pull in lane2.
Indeed, as wiretwister says, I don’t agree and got shot down when I pointed out my reasons in the class. 15 years as an operational paramedic didn’t seem to count for much…
Here the freeways (motorways) are 4 - 8 lanes wide in places but don’t really equate to UK roads and speed limit is generally 65mph. I worked in Sussex and Surrey so A23/A25/A27/M23/M3/M25 as well as the other busy local roads so had a fairly good experience level with high speed traffic.
It also worth noting that hi-viz isn’t really ‘done’ here. The police cars have little or no reflective markings, likewise the ambulances. Motorcycle cops don’t wear hi-viz and you rarely see a cop unless they are on point duty directing traffic, (think CHiPs TV show if you’re old enough). I wasn’t issued one when I worked for the AAA contract company either.
W.