Will Traffic Lights Be Phased Out?
Sunday, 20. June 2010
You know what it’s like when you come to a set of traffic lights that have stopped working, from my experience it causes total confusion because there is no specific right of way for drivers and pedestrians appear to close their eyes and run across the road in blind hope of reaching the other side. It’s a nightmare, fortunately most pedestrians seem to have an overwhelming will to live so they use a sixth sense that tells them that drivers trying to cross the uncontrolled junction whilst concentrating on all the drivers around them, steering, changing gear, eating a sandwich and chatting on the mobile, now being finely balanced under the chin, are unlikely to notice a pedestrian attempting to get across the road, so have an instinct to weave and dive and, as a result, generally complete the manoeuvre unscathed. Why have I mentioned this? Well, the Government is thinking of switching off traffic lights! It’s true, they believe that traffic lights cause rather than reduce congestion so they are going to extend some experiments that were carried out last year when turning off traffic lights were found to improve vehicle flow. Two experiments were carried out last year in Bristol and it was found that there was less congestion so they are thinking of spreading these types of experiment across the country, even though each experiment only lasted for a couple of weeks. Look you dopey lot, I’ll tell you why the junctions were less congested, I have friends who don’t drive on motorways, won’t drive up a hill if there is a chance that they will have to carry out a hill start and would drive 10 miles extra to avoid a roundabout. So as soon as one finds themselves caught up in a junction with no lights they immediately get on the phone and text all their friends who now avoid the junction like the plague – job done – no congestion but they are all now driving extra miles to avoid the junction burning more fuel and chucking more CO2’s into the atmosphere. Now was that so difficult to work out? By Graham Hill
