A BUNCH OF BANANAS
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"Too many drivers seem to assume that the middle lane is for cruising and hog it rather than reverting to the inside lane after overtaking." Strike a familiar chord with anyone?
Concerned by the growing incidence of "bunching" on British motorways, Tory MP John Butcher is asking Transport Secretary John MacGregor to promote a national advertising campaign to improve lane discipline. What a good idea—even if it is 10 years overdue, There can't be many hauliers or drivers who haven't found themselves behind a dimwitted car driver bumbling along at 50mph in the second lane, eyes focused on the horizon, jaw set firmly, blissfully ignorant of the chaos and frustration he's creating behind him.
According to the MP for Coventry South West: "Driving standards on motorways are deteriorat ing and lane discipline is noticeably worse than it used to be even a few years ago." We doubt that it's any worse. What has changed is that delivery times are now so tight that what once was barely tolerated is now a critical issue.
Strangely, Butcher makes no mention of commercial vehicles. Perhaps it's just as well given the some HGV drivers' preferred method of dealing with middle-lane blockers. Namely to hover a cigarette paper's thickness from offenders' back bumpers while flashing their lights. Hardly a safe solution to an unsafe problem. Once it was slow-moving cars holding up corn mercials. Now, with speed limiter legislation offering not one, but two motorway speed limits, we've now got commercials holding back other commercials.
Before the arrival of mandatory speed limiters HGVs at least had the power to overtake the slow movers among their ranks. Unfortunately too many operators weren't content with that—they had to pass everybody and so the DOT lowered the boom.
But given the current difficulty in enforcing the law, was mandatory limiter fitting the best way to tackle speeding HGV drivers? Today's speed-limited trucks form long lines up and down those relatively free-moving stretches of our motorway network, each struggling to overtake the rest. Rather than be blocked in by that unbroken stream more and more HGV drivers are being tempted to stay out in the second lane once they get out there. Who can blame them? Limiters and bunching was explained to the Department of Transport during the speed-limiter consultation period, but it chose to ignore it. Should the DOT ever adopt the daft idea of restricting coaches to the second lane then things will get worse: a slow car blocks an HGV, followed by a coach, shadowed by an HGV. Who'd want to be the meat in that sandwich?
It's ironic that Butcher should be asking for a solution from the one man who has presided over much of the limiter fiasco in the first place.
If the Transport Secretary doesn't want to be seen as yet another of those politicians bumbling along in the ministerial middle-lane holding everybody up perhaps he'll be good enough to do something about motorway bunching.