Kerbed wheels

W

walker1c

Member
 Huntingdonshire
It's night-time, and I'm driving along an unlit road with no pavement or kerb. In common with most such roads, there's a white line painted near where the hard surface gives way to grass and mud. I know that to stay safely on the road I need to drive to the right of the line.

Then I come to a stretch where they've just constructed a combined pavement and cycle track alongside the road. To my shock and horror I hear the sound of my nearside wheels scraping the kerb at 40mph. How could I be so careless?

It turns out that they've painted a conspicuous white line on the pavement, 12 inches in from the kerb. It's presumably there to show cyclists where the edge of the track is. There's no line on the road next to the kerb. So we now have grey road surface, grey kerb stone, grey pavement, then a white line, all unlit. Half a mile back the white line indicated the edge of the road: if you assume it still does, you'll hit the kerb.

So I'm stuck with a bill for an accident that I think was caused by deceptive road marking, but if I complain I'll probably be told that I should have been paying more attention.
 
It's worth reporting as you may have a case for compensation - look here https://eastsussex.fixmystreet.com/report/693209 and read the comments regarding the Traffic Signs manual
 
Thanks @PerryGunn. That's really useful. It never occurred to me that this might be a known problem.

Highways Dept, here I come :fuelfire:
 
last summer I bought presents for two colleagues who were moving on. Cost about £75. In order to collect them I had to park the 5 series in Chester city centre, no problem as the rodee is after 3.00pm and I had loads of time.

Just as Im leaving the boss finds me another job that takes 40 minutes, then I get caught in rush hour traffic and suddenly my 2 hours becomes 25 minutes, so I had to change plans and park in Princess st. car park, also free but rather tight.

entry is easy but on exit I discovered that the narrow car route has 6 inch curbs and managed to test the integrity of 3 of my 19 inch alloys. The alloys lost and a bill for £225 was added to the cost of the pressies!

:thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:
 
Yeah, thats not great at all.

I had a similar experience with traffic calming. They put an 'island' out into the road with a bollard so far from the edge you couldn't work out where it ended. Lucky for me I was in the van and just bumped over it.

Certainly worth a letter to the council.
 
My local council are pretty good for doing dumbass things to the road:

1) A 3 foot long piece of kerb hidden on the inside of a 90 degree bend on an otherwise unkerbed country road with no footpaths. Just nice to scrape your alloys on if you're aiming for the apex.

2) Adding what look like cycle paths to either side of a narrow country road by painting dotted white lines & leaving a single track width in the middle. Weird thing is they're not cycle lanes, they're just there to "calm" traffic. If by calm they mean have morons driving towards each other instead of keeping left... well done.

3) The red light district. It's a laughing stock. Seriously, just google "red light district beverley". https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=r...9i57j69i64.14670j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
 
Car parks are the worst. They always seem to have been designed by somebody with a stake in the wheel-repair business. They're full of narrow lanes, often curved, delimited by kerbs. Usually they're slightly wider than a car, so you can't see where they are from the driving seat.

The car park in the centre of St Neots has lots of square oak posts, about 2ft tall. They too are invisible when your car is close to them, and they don't register on the parking radar, but they sure as hell register when your car hits one. :headbang:

Great idea - let's fill the car park with invisible obstacles! What could possibly go wrong?
 
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