On the M25 the other night and traffic was light.
Overhead gantry had red crosses over lanes 1 and 2.
An HGV and several other vehicles in lanes 1 & 2 ignored the signs and just carried on.
There was no problems in those lanes, no breakdowns, no overnight works happening nothing.
No NSL indicators on the next gantry so what was going on.
Preparation for lane closures later in the night ?
IMO the signs are not very well controlled and this must lead to folks ignoring warnings.
p.s. On our trip out and back there were Gatso flashes from one of the gantries on the M25 north of Heathrow.
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Completely agree. Its all very much "crying wolf".
I pay a little more attention when I see a lane closed sign than if I hadn't, but I don't move out of the lane until it seems too risky not to do so, or one obviously needs to.
Equally the signs that distract me by telling me to pay attention annoy me.
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Last Sunday about 12.30 the overhead signs warned of debris and closure of lane 1 South on M90 near Dunfermline - 3/4 miles where people got out of lane 1. Lane 2 slowed to 10mph at one point.
10 minutes later we were on the Forth Road Bridge - traffic flowing freely - there may have been debris at one point but it was well gone probably 15-30 minutes beforehand.
Signs are great when they are up-to-date and a right pain in the rs when they display duff info.
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And the result is the traffic I got stuck in on the M5 yesterday. Signed for about 1.5 miles that outside lane was closed, then middle lane.
People started to observe, but then decided to pull back out into those lanes until they hit the incident then pushed back in.
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Saw a programme on TV about two years ago querying tis very concern-the people who control the signs can only put up or remove info when instructed by their management-if there is no management available(in a meeting) at a particular time,then no change!
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Or the M6 the other day at midnight, three lanes open with little or no traffic but the overhead gantries showing the variable speed limit as 20 mph. No broken down vehicles, no workers, no debris.
So what do you do? 20 mph with an arctic up your chuff or break the limit and do 50-ish? Then again, 50 in a 20 is probably ban territory so you may as well carry on and do 80.
I imagine that you'd be on flimsy ground if you were hit from behind while doing 20 on a deserted and dark M6 regardless of the variable speed limit.
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The M25 is good for gantry speed limits overnight at weekends to be so slow that if you did obey them, you would certainly end up with another vehicle in the back.
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There may have just been a maintenance worker in the lane marked closed - how would you know.
Highlights the big problem with our society
Everyone in a big hurry to get somewhere else when 10 minutes would not really make any difference and no-one cares for anyone else.
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Had an uplanned trip Lon Oxford Lon this afternoon.
Gantry showed something like 7 miles in 8 minutes.
Next gantry 40mph and the next.
On return journey.
Sign said debris in road. same the next one and then series of 50/40 mph restrictions.
Guess what? NOWT. No debris, no workers no sign of anything amiss.
Then NSL and five lanes of traffic can resume its normal progress.
Hurry ?
I watched a white hatchback tailgating ( well two small cars gap) another vehicle from Stokenchurch to beyond the OXford turn off.
Speed up to 80/90 MPH. Maybe someone videoed it?
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If the message showed a time e.g. 19.30 and was updated every 15 minutes they would carry more authority.
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I get bored having to explain to my fellow motorway commuters at work that the times are historic information, e.g. if it says 22 minutes it means that vehicles passing the sign 22 minutes ago are now at the destination point. It doesn't mean it will take 22 minutes for them to get there, could be half that, could be double. i.e. the information is next to useless.
The most annoying one for me was one that stated "J13 closed" on the M3, what it mean was that the whole darned motorway was closed at J13, not the junction itself. Cost me two hours extra journey time
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As Spamcan says, excepting pre planned stuff like recent closures of A43, the data on the gantries is reactive. Similarly, once the problem is solved it takes a certain amount of time for message to get back to 'control' and for signs to be switched off.
If the gantry message says queue, incident or debris it almost certainly means such a thing existed. It might have dispersed or been resolved/removed by time you get there but it doesn't mean the alert was wholly spurious.
Gantry messages, along with radio alerts and observation of traffic as far ahead as you can see, are clues that stuff might be amiss. They're not gospels.
I do appreciate them being used to give long range alerts for closures and diversions. A message in Lancs about trouble on M6 in Staffs/Brum gives me time to select a preferred diversion; A 50, M6 toll or urban roads through Black Country. Much better than wig wags half a mile before it all grinds to a halt.
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My experience of them is that they are pretty poor. Quite often travelling south on the A1, usually a sunday night, person or animal on the road would be displayed along with a reduced speed limit. Probably once or twice a month, this went on for months and months. Never once saw anything on the road or any police or any HA. God knows why they were putting those signs up, very few people took any notice of them.
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MWay signs. Wrong info so folks ignore them - No FM2R
