Instead of a orange flashing light perhaps if trucks carried a mobile battery powered blue light which was deployed in the most serious breakdown or emergency situations i.e. on smart motorways and fast roads it might just spark people out of their unattentive state.
Of course it won’t stop tailgating and driving like a loon but if you were to breakdown and have enough time to deploy it it might just save lives.
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muckles:
Just blaming the drivers rarely leads to an improvement, when they investigate Air Crashes and find it’s pilot error, they often look further into the it and find that making changes to aircraft design or procedures improves the situation making it less likely for other pilots ot make a simlar mistake.yourhavingalaf is talking about human nature, not offering an excuse, good road planning and good vehicle design takes human nature into account. Although most accidents are due to human error, sometimes a change in a road layout can result in a major reduction in incidents on that section, because it changes how people react round it.
Another common factor with these seems to be time of day, often seems to be early morning, as species we have evolved as a day time creature, but the modern economy expects many people to work nights, I know some get used to it, but a lot of reseach says it isn’t good for us and as one sleep researcher said about the BBC night shift “scandal” a few weeks ago, if you work a long night shift, you should get some sleep during the shift, how many drivers can do this?
hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hul … sts-854766
I’ve been keeping up to date with this one. Due to a design flaw which was recognised at the investigation (and which I believe has been corrected in similarly designed ships) where its possible to look out of the wrong window, the pilot became disorientated. This was the major contributing factor to the collision. However, both the pilot and captain were found to be responsible for the collision and both handed suspended jail terms.
What I take from this is, regardless of environment and conditions, the human in charge is ultimately in charge.
EDIT, Just reread both our posts and I am actually agreeing with you. It just doesn’t look like it.
Got to love the smart motorways ay… sit and pray that a wagon doesn’t come hurling into your motor isn’t exactly “smart”
Dillards behind the wheel,plus dillards running the roads,equals carnage.
smart motorway you say, an incongruous meeting of words more like.
There’s nothing smart about them at all, lets stop pretending this is how things were meant to be, as said they are a sticking plaster temporary measure to spread the massive increase in traffic (serving the massive influx in the population) over 4 lanes instead of 3, which is fine because tragedies don’t happen very often and the chances of one of the elite being hurt is minimal, more likely to be one of us lower orders of the proletariat, move along now nothing to see here.
Just like everything else the can is being kicked down the road, sooner or later someone in the house of ill repute will have to say the unthinkable, the truth that is, don’t hold your breath, that the roads are in a crap state, the national health dying on its feet, the education system ruined, and the housing situation dire because, dear reader, there are simply too many people in the country, to the tune at present of about 15 million.
At present immigration rates in another 20 years we’ll make that 25 million.
So by the time they’ve widened every motorway to 4 lanes, or 5 in the case of the M25 by then, the population will have overtaken the bodge up…but not to worry eh, those responsible will be out of office by then so the new incompetents we insist on electing to replace them can…wait for it…learn lessons, make speeches, draw expenses, and then do exactly as their forebears, kick the can down the road.
You could not make it up.
commonrail:
Dillards behind the wheel,plus dillards running the roads,equals carnage.
Most probable combination…humans eh!
Hear Hear, Juddian. Driving is like ■■■ - Everyone thinks they’re good at it, but in truth, everyone merely just tries it, but very few are any good in reality.
There have never been as many satnav users on the roads as there are now.
Add to that the long-term “familiarity breeds contempt” driver that could include a lot of us here, including even me, and a two-stroke disaster is in the making:
Those of us who can and do drive on autopilot as suggested in posts above - don’t get out of the way when another driver just comes straight for us, simply because they didn’t think anyone could or would be daft enough to drive straight into us on a busy, but well-lit road.
I dread to think what’s going to happen to the statistics should our oncoming winter this year is the worst one since 2006.
A distinct possibility, bearing in mind we had a light dusting of snow down here in Kent today, despite there being not one half a snowflake symbol on the weather forecasts… 
Dr Damon:
commonrail:
Dillards behind the wheel,plus dillards running the roads,equals carnage.Most probable combination…humans eh!
Yeah…we just get in the way.
I’ve had the driver or operator error argument thrust at me virtually all my working life.
Mistakes happen, we are all human. There is a difference between a patent & a latent defect, in which category would you place your so called ‘driver error’ ?
Momentary lapses of concentration, sometimes brief anomalies in the often intense levels of concentration required to do the job are all it takes.
I’ve always shrugged them off, often by questioning what qualifies them to criticise me.
After watching the film of the Hudson river airplane crash something that Capt’n Sully said (in real life) really struck home . . . “I never knew in 42 years of flying that there would be 208 seconds on which my entire career would be judged”.
Juddian:
smart motorway you say, an incongruous meeting of words more like.There’s nothing smart about them at all, lets stop pretending this is how things were meant to be
The nation’s motorways ceased to be fit for purpose when the object of having them changed from high speed roads to high capacity roads.While ironically in those better days most drivers drove on the premise that no stopping doesn’t mean that nothing will be stopped ahead.Although the provision of hard shoulders obviously helped in that regard.
Yet again the question needs to be asked…
Was it a red X marked lane, or is there no constant CCTV monitoring on that section? This ‘smart’ motorway ■■■■■■■■ is only as good as the vigilance of the monitoring staff.
Dr Damon:
muckles:
Dr Damon:
yourhavingalarf:
It’s…A sort of/kinda/type of sleeping with your eyes open thing.
Because the route is familiar, the driver may still be tired despite a good nights sleep and the driver is bored witless there is no stimulus for the brain so, it just switches off.
I’m not excusing this but offering a possible explanation for such a familiar scenario.
It’s also starting to look to me that, smart m’ways are downright dangerous. Another stop gap sticking plaster solution from out of touch road planners, governments and councils.
WHAT are you serious? I understand some drivers brains never switch on but I think you are talking about going onto automatic pilot something which can be very dangerous.
Any truck driver finds themselves doing that needs to do something about it and fast. It happen to a lot of drivers but there is a lot you can do to stop it happening.Just blaming the drivers rarely leads to an improvement, when they investigate Air Crashes and find it’s pilot error, they often look further into the it and find that making changes to aircraft design or procedures improves the situation making it less likely for other pilots ot make a simlar mistake.
yourhavingalaf is talking about human nature, not offering an excuse, good road planning and good vehicle design takes human nature into account. Although most accidents are due to human error, sometimes a change in a road layout can result in a major reduction in incidents on that section, because it changes how people react round it.
Another common factor with these seems to be time of day, often seems to be early morning, as species we have evolved as a day time creature, but the modern economy expects many people to work nights, I know some get used to it, but a lot of reseach says it isn’t good for us and as one sleep researcher said about the BBC night shift “scandal” a few weeks ago, if you work a long night shift, you should get some sleep during the shift, how many drivers can do this?
Hang on muckles, I never said he was blaming the drivers. I was referring to the part where he was talking about drivers brains switching off and as I said going into ‘auto pilot’ while driving a truck can be very dangerous.
I agree other factors than the driver need to be looked into but when you look at the way some drive it’s inevitable accidents are going to happen. I do not like the way some on here seem to blame anything else but the driver when in fact as you say it is generally is driver error.
No you didn’t say he was blaming drivers, but he did lay blame on the door of the drivers who are involved in these types of accidents, but he also offered a reason for them being far too common, but you seemed to scoff at the phenomena, even though it’s well known and has been studied for many years.
Basically it seems the brain gets bored of what it’s looking at and stops processing that info. Maybe the answer is to have enhanced reality windscreens, where you have dinosaurs or monsters or mother in law, 
appearing randomly somewhere on the road ahead. That’ll keep the brain awake. 
However I do agree, there are some on here who will try and find an excuse for a drivers actions (unless an EE driver ) regardless of how damming the evidence against the driver might be.
muckles:
Maybe the answer is to have enhanced reality windscreens, where you have dinosaurs or monsters or mother in law,
I remember that ‘trip’.
eagerbeaver:
Yet again the question needs to be asked…Was it a red X marked lane, or is there no constant CCTV monitoring on that section? This ‘smart’ motorway ■■■■■■■■ is only as good as the vigilance of the monitoring staff.
This, if it wasn’t an x marked lane, then technically aren’t dft kinda liable to contributing to the incident? Pretty sure any of the big companies would have an swarm of lawyers all over that tho
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You don’t realise how cr#p smart motorways are until you are stuck ,immobile in lane one or in a haven bay with traffic flying by .
I had it in March on the northern section of the M25 whilst I was having a Cardiac incident.
Smart it certainly wasn’t.
Even when attended by a quick response medic , an Ambulance, the Police , Fire Brigade ,Hato and a lane closure in place it didn’t feel very smart .
Anybody travelling the motorways during busy times especially during the holiday season or bank holidays cannot fail to notice the large numbers of broken down vehicles in lane 1 .
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