Orange beacons operating in such conditions seems like common-sense to me.
Have used them myself in both situations and will continue to do so.
Tractors use them aswell....isn't there a law regarding slow moving tractors and A roads and use of beacons?
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groups.msn.com/honestjohn - Pictures say a thousand words.....
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"As from 1/1/88 all motor vehicles with four or more wheels having a maximum speed not exceeding 25mph must be fitted with, and use an amber warning beacon when driven on an unrestricted (speed limit over 50mph) dual carriageway. This does not apply if:
Towing a trailer with an amber flashing beacon fitted
The motor vehicle was in use before 1st January 1947
The motor vehicle or any trailer being drawn by it is on the dual carriage-way for the purpose of crossing it in the quickest possible manner"
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I claim my £5 reward for resurrecting a thread from 2004 :-)
A recent journey on the M25 and M3 reminded me of the increase in the amount of "Smart Motorway" being created i.e. no hard shoulder.
There were no incidents and nothing terrible happened BUT I was reminded that if you were unlucky enough to suffer a break-down or get a puncture and did manage to get over to 'lane one' (or a section of hard shoulder being used as a live lane), then you still have to survive the obvious risk of being driven into from behind. It was tipping it down with very heavy rain which increased my awareness of the hazard and decreased everyone's visibility.
I'm not posting to speak about about the number of drivers failing to to use their lights in very poor visibility (although there was no shortage of them)...or about the sheer volume of drivers cruising at a distinctly relaxed speed in lane 2 of a 3 lane M/Way or lane 3 of a 4 lane M/Way or lane 4 of a 5 lane section of M/Way....all when the lanes to their nearside were empty. No, I wish to ask how many here have a BRIGHT amber (or any other colour, legal or otherwise) beacon/mini light bar/other flashing light of one sort or another which they would use if stuck in a hazardous position like the running lane/hard shoulder etc of a motorway.
I ask coz I just forked out £70 (inc VAT and delivery) on the magnetic, amber coloured, Britax A100 LED mini bar which, I imagine, will go just inside the boot, to be plugged into the rear power socket handily provided on the Yeti if needed. Admittedly, for years and years, I've had a magnetic amber rotating beacon with a tungsten bulb which has only been used once....but, for the reasons noted above, I felt the urge for belt and braces.
I'd best not go on to mention the little "Olight S15" flashlight that has a strobe function and which might possibly get used as well if I really was stuck in a live lane with stuff coming up behind me at 70+ mph. But I have seen it said that a strobe light FACING the REAR of the defunct vehicle might reflect various optical effects without causing glare and increase it's presence a bit, especially at night. I'm confident that if I said I was going to face it towards the oncoming traffic I'd get abused here by someone...so I won't offer that as a possibility.
Finally there's also the obligatory warning triangle in the boot but I suspect that might not get much notice taken of it even if I were to risk my life in trying to position it 100 yards up the road from the stricken vehicle!!
Readers will have taken it for granted that there's no shortage of motorway style yellow tops (and bottoms) in the car in case it's tipping it down...sods law would dictate that it would be.
Edited by KB. on 29/11/2015 at 15:59
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KB having seen and taken the approriate avoiding action when encountering broken down vehicles in the (still) live hard shoulder lane, i humbly suggest the best thing to do should you break down on one is to stick your hazards on and bale out with a coat and your phone if you have time to grab them, and all of you get as far from the vehicle as possible and preferably well up the bank.
It's shocking how even at 50 mph and from the elevated postion of a lorry cab how quickly that broken down vehicle appears, especially in poor visibility.
It's not an option for lorry drivers due to the soft soil to the left of the hard shoulder, but i for one if possible would use the last slowing action of my car to roll the vehicle onto the grass and off the road completely.
That's not an option on the elevated section and area of M6 at B'ham of course, where presumably the camera operators only work part time so live lane should be assumed to mean could be anyone parked on it lane.
Those amber flashers are a good idea assuming you have time to set it up without becoming a victim, but even road works and breakdown vehicles lit and marked up enough to be seen from outer space get run into by the blinkered lemmings.
As for smart motorways, a clever idea but a cheap bodge IMO instead of building 5 lane motorways as and when they get upgraded as that's what will be needed within 20 years due to population growth.
Edited by gordonbennet on 30/11/2015 at 12:19
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There are wagons out there with orange flashing beacons that you struggle to keep up with!
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Highway code rule 277 (breakdowns on motorways)
Do not attempt to place any warning device on the carriageway.
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Highway code rule 277 (breakdowns on motorways)
Do not attempt to place any warning device on the carriageway.
Indeed it does say that...and for good reasons, of course. I have wondered if I might try, however, to walk back on the safe(r) side of the barrier - with a yellow jacket on - and lean over to place a triangle on the edge of the lane/hard shoulder. But until it happens, and depending how vulnerable we felt, we don't know quite what we would do. But the photo in para.275 conveniently shows a nice convenient emergency phone right there and a handy section of grass bank and it's not raining and it's not dark.
Edited by KB. on 30/11/2015 at 14:45
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Highway code rule 277 (breakdowns on motorways)
Do not attempt to place any warning device on the carriageway.
Indeed it does say that...and for good reasons, of course. I have wondered if I might try, however, to walk back on the safe(r) side of the barrier - with a yellow jacket on - and lean over to place a triangle on the edge of the lane/hard shoulder. But until it happens, and depending how vulnerable we felt, we don't know quite what we would do. But the photo in para.275 conveniently shows a nice convenient emergency phone right there and a handy section of grass bank and it's not raining and it's not dark.
The reason for the ban on placing warning triangles behind a broken down vehicle on the motorway is that in addition to the driver taking their life in their hands walking back to place it, the triangles were being blown into the moving traffic on the motorway causing accidents.
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Thanks for your thoughts there GB. Valid points too. It was, indeed, uppermost in my mind that there would be a fair chance of getting hit whilst removing the beacon from the boot. The Britax light bar arrived this morning (without wishing to sound like an advertiser...which you know I'm not...great service from a firm that supplies "Commercial Vehicle Products" as I only ordered it Friday at 5pm and it's Monday today! - it was delivered by Hermes!). It's in a very immediately accessible position in the boot where it would take just a few seconds to retrieve and plug it in but, as you say, it only takes a few seconds to come to grief.
I did once watch a lorry veer towards me....and move back out at the last moment.... when I stopped on the hard shoulder to tighten a load on the car - and the wife was in the car at the time! - so have been even more aware since.
And my work experience prior to retirement did put us in vulnerable positions on motorways at times and a fellow crew member came within a whisker of getting dragged away by the draught of passing lorry...he grabbed at the vertical ladder on the back of the appliance and was OK but it was close!
It may never happen...as I say I've only used the current amber revolving beacon once in many years, and that was due to a breakdown in an awkward posion - not on a motorway - and do everything possible to avoid the possibility of having to stop on a motorway...but it's just that one odd occasion that comes out of the blue that I'm hoping to be prepared for.
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I think the warning triangles are great, but prefer the idea that Mercedes saloons have, its clipped into a holder in the top of the bootlid so when you open up the triangle is there at a decent height without any faffing about wandering down the hard shoulder where if was a live lane would last about 20 seconds before being crushed.
Talking of the M6, last time i had a lorry puncture there the ATS lad that sorted it out was telling me he nearly bought it recently, they are obliged to put their van behind the breakdown which i reckon is a bit silly cos i'd rather be changing the tyre with 40 plus tons of lorry to protect me not a 2 ton Sprinter, but hey ho i didn't write the H&S book of must do's, anyway whilst working on the wheel placed between his van and the lorry someone rammed his van up the back ramming it in turn into the lorry, luckily he went flying over the armco shaken not stirred.
You can see why the Highway Agency lads always have at least one of their teams watching approaching traffic at all times.
Amusingly that flat was on my NSF wheel on the car transporter i drove at the time, the breakdown lads air line wasn't long enough to reach the front wheel so we had to drive his van up onto the back of my fortunately empty transporter to shorten the length...all this watched by two amused/bemused VOSA chaps sitting in their Galaxy perched in their eerie on the other carriageway.
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Just spent a while looking at the Mercedes triangles online to see if it gave me any ideas but the hatch on a Yeti doesn't lend itself to anything along those lines.
But as dusk approaches I can see that Britax light is a cracker. It was good in the daylight today but in lower light it's outstanding (literally).
Avant. This is probably all in the wrong place. Does it need to be.... can you be bothered to.... put it in it's right place? :-)
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Not the wrong place at all, and a good thread to resurrect given the proliferation of so-called 'smart' motorways.
I can't see what is supposed to be so smart about this change to our motorways. Firstly it's far from smart to take the best part of two years to "upgrade" the stretch of M3 between Bagshot and the M25. And more importantly it's putting lives at risk, as you and GB describe, by taking out the hard shoulder.
Yet another decision taken by men in suits who never leave their office except to go home on a train.
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Few years ago I was stationed at Chiswick. As many on here know the elevated section of the M4 has no hard shoulder. Any breakdowns or minor collisions cause havoc by reducing the flow.
On one occasion we were called to a collision between two cars. As we approached along the opposite carriageway at night, I could see a car had rear ended another and there were people standing about. As far as I could see no one was trapped inside the vehicles. So we travelled to Jct3 at Heston and returned on the eastbound carriageway to the crash.
Luckily we managed to weave through stationary traffic and catch up with crews already on scene. As I approached the rear of the collision I saw a guy, standing between the boot and bonnet of both cars. Thinking he was just standing there, I arrived at the spot and discovered he was pinned between both. He had a puncture on the hire vehicle and decided to go to the boot to fix the spare. It was late, around 1130 so the flow was quieter than usual, but took his life in his hands getting out in the first place, let alone stand at the rear.
The collision happened on the left hand bend which the following vehicle probably didn't have time to see him before it was too late. That part of the M4 has always been monitored and I was shocked that he hadn't been picked up on cameras and the correct warning signage activated.
It was a stupid unwise thing he did. He should of got out and stood on the tiny piece of paving. There is no option to ascend a bank. Even if he had been to one side of the barrier, a collision would still have occurred and most probably, he and his family would have been involved.
We've been warned for years about the dangers of stopping on the hard shoulder and rear end collisions. These new systems are a recipe for more incidents. They will tell you these will be closely monitored and closures put in place, and that statistics on motorways that have hard shoulder running prove it is low risk. But all it takes is bad weather, darkness or distracted drivers for an incident to turn bad.
In my view, they should not use the hard shoulder as a live lane. And for those wondering, we managed to get the guy to hospital, but he sadly died from internal injuries.
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the thought of leaving the bootlid open brings a rush of concerns of light fingers helping themselves to easy pickings .....
Edited by Smileyman on 30/11/2015 at 20:18
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the thought of leaving the bootlid open brings a rush of concerns of light fingers helping themselves to easy pickings .....
That'll be Darwinism in action if they're doing a bit of casual pilfering out of an open boot on a still live lane hard shoulder.
Ben10's post brings home the dangers involved here, i'm all for keeping one's wits about you and trying to sort something like a puncture out asap on a proper hard shoulder, espacilly if the HA lads turn up to shield you with a lump of a 4x4 100 yards back and a keen eyed womble ready to shout a warning, but live lane break down? i'm off till the cavalry arrive.
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Ta for replies...opinions, advice and experiences all noted with thanks.
In truth if I was stationary in a live lane on a motorway I confess the last thing on my mind would the possibility of pilfering from an open boot. I would imagine that I, or my good lady, would be very adjacent to the vehicle, looking on very closely, and I just can't picture another vehicle pulling up behind me - and putting themselves in a life threatening position - to nick something from the boot and then re-join the flow of traffic.... but I guess it must have happened somewhere, to someone, in other circumstances.
I suspect Ben10 and I had the same employer in the London area. His recollection does remind me of a lady on the elevated section of the A406 at Woodford who foolishly stopped in the nearside lane of a two lane section...the reason for her stopping wasn't clear at the time but afterwards it was thought she panicked after missing her turn off and may have been considering reversing back !!!!! She was struck from behind by a Tipper/HGV with more wheels than you could shake a stick at - loaded with hardcore/earth/whatever. It drove over the top of the car and stopped in front of it. The outcome wasn't remotely good.
I shall remember all that we have spoken about here and treat this as a reminder to be extra aware....so maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to resurrect the thread?
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My impression of amber beacons is that they are the high speed version of the ubiquitous hi-viz jacket and the "I've got one so I'm going to use it" rule seems to prevail. It can only be a matter of time before hea***s have them and funeral directors and pallbearers will be seen clad in bright yellow, since every other trade from hot dog seller to hire car valet seems desperate to fulfil an urge to don dayglow yellow.
Spain is dragging its heels over changeover to blue beacons/strobes for ambulances and fire engines (the police have always had them) which is apparently down to some EU legislation that got stalled on its way to Madrid, the 17 regional parliaments and our 8000-odd town halls. Some new emergency vehicles have blue lightbars fitted in anticipation, saving up to €3000 a pop, but flashing amber for ambulances and fire engines is still the norm.
Most times when I'm preparing to move over in my lane for an approaching amber beacon, thinking that lives are in danger, it turns out to be a marauding dustcart.
Edited by Bilboman on 12/12/2015 at 23:20
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All noted....but if you did happen to break down in the circumstances described above, and you had a bright beacon in the boot, would you not use it (assuming it was safe and you took normal precautions)? If you're car is stationary in a running lane with a flat tyre or some serious malfunction then surely it's better to do something rather than nothing. It's got to be better than nothing. We're told to wear something bright (like a motorway jacket or vest) if we breakdown....would you not use one of them either?
Not having a dig but keen to know what others think.
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