Mileage, Weekends and Location

Posted: Thu 20 September, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

The last couple of weekends have been (again) pretty high-mileage all told. For once it’s been more about domestic travel and friends than being work-based, although work’s also been in there.

The weekend before last was seeing friends in Middlesbrough, which was a good weekend – even with a vile detour on the way home due to roadworks on the A19. These things are sent to try us, and all that.

Last weekend I went to see other friends in Manchester, and then to a company in Stockport before coming home late on the Monday.

More than anything else, the travelling has reinforced just how central I am in the new place – everywhere’s pretty easy to get to. Indeed, looking at a drive-range of 3 hours, I can cover most of England as well as a fair chunk of Wales.

That 3-hour drive means I can get to our office down in Devon, or up to Middlesbrough. If you look at a map, that’s a huge area.

YPLAC

Posted: Wed 12 September, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Driving, Parking | Tags: | Leave a comment »

From the truly mighty You Park Like A Cunt (YPLAC) comes this absolute gem.

Nothing else needs be said

Driving Time

Posted: Sat 25 August, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Commuting, Driving, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Looking back over the D4D™ archives, I realised that I’ve now been driving for just over seven years – since 11th August 2005, to be precise.

And that means I’ve had the car for 5½ years, too – since March 2007 in fact. In that time I’ve done 121,000 miles, a surprisingly round average of 22,000 miles a year. I’ve had really two years which have exploded that average – the year I was commuting Norfolk->Cambridge on a daily basis, and the last twelve months with the daily Suffolk->London round trips, followed by Suffolk->Luton round trips.  With things being a bit more stable (and nowhere near as distant) I’m hoping the next 12 months will have a much lower average.  After all, my current commute works out as  sub-10,000 miles for the year, which is pretty novel by itself.

Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

Road Runner

Posted: Wed 22 August, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Driving, Travel, Work-related | 4 Comments »

Yesterday was another long day on the road – leave home at 6, pick up a colleague, drive down to the Devon office, four hours of meetings, and then back home for just before 5pm. 460 miles all told, just under seven hours of driving time.

It was worth it – the people we needed to see were much happier for doing things face to face, and things seem more sorted and organised.

But dear Lord, it makes for a long day.

Motorway Signage

Posted: Thu 5 July, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Design, Driving, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

And again, some thoughts about the M1 during the works. This time, it’s about the new electronic signage…

Motorway signage (as well as other road signs) always used to be designed for clarity, so they could be read and understood at distance/speed.  However, this doesn’t seem to apply so much to the latest generation of electronic signs.

There are two in particular that are nearly impossible to differentiate at speed.

Motorway crash sign Motorway queue sign

You can see the problem, I expect – in both cases, the yellow ‘information’ consists of, effectively, a triangle of colour. From a distance, you can’t tell which is which.

It’s probably not massively relevant, I suppose, as both signs indicate “You’re going to be here for a while”. But still, they’re hard to differentiate.

Removing Bridges

Posted: Mon 2 July, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Change, Commuting, Driving, People | 2 Comments »

Over the weekend, the M1 near me (well, my entire commuting route) was closed to facilitate the removal of a bridge that is now un-used.  It’s all part of the works on that stretch of the M1, and I’ve been watching as it all changes.  Luckily I wasn’t going on that road over the weekend, or the detour would’ve been impressive.

The new bridge opened in May, and the last month has been spent removing all the sliproads to the old bridge, leaving it all isolated. By Friday they’d got rid of everything except the span of the bridge crossing the M1.  And this morning, it’s completely gone, including the centre stanchions, and the massive block they stood on. It’s actually pretty impressive, seeing the speed it must have been demolished and removed.

Indeed, if you went past it for the first time today, you’d never really know there’d been a bridge there at all. There are no indicators of its existence at all.

Personally, I think the new junction is currently quite dangerous, although I think that’s also heavily related to the fact that people driving to the 50mph average speed limit turn into complete fuckwits. We’ll see how it works out as time goes on, the roadworks are removed, and normality fights to re-assert itself again.

M1

Posted: Mon 25 June, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, People, Stupidity, Work-related | 3 Comments »

Since moving, pretty much my entire commute now consists of the M1. It’s only two junctions-worth, thankfully, but all the same, it’s the M1.

The worst bit of this – for the next year, anyway – is that those two junctions I travel are in the process of having lots of work done on them, which leads to an ‘average speed limit’ of 50mph along the entire stretch.

Sadly, this “average 50mph” seems to remove driving skills in the massive majority of drivers. It means they sit in their lane, regardless of anything else going on around them. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve seen sat in the outside lane, with two empty lanes beside them.

I don’t know what causes it. It just seems like their brains lock down into “50mph, and don’t change anything”.

Needless to say, it’s infuriating.

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