Traffic lights
They have all this technology and IMHO it's not implemented correctly, if you use the A580 like me you will notice a vehicle at the lights say 200 yards ahead and the lights go on green but by the time you get there it's back to red, no vehicle has come onto or through from the junction from either side.
It's obviously far more noticeable late at night when traffic is light.
Why does it change back to red for the main road and green for the minor road, can't we have a system that sees say ten cars on the main road and two on the minor road and adjust the lights accordingly?
The vehicles on the main road might be doing 60 MPH and are arbitrarily brought to a standstill wasting a lot of fuel, five get through and five get stopped to let one car from a 30 zone get through in five seconds at that speed the other five would be through anyway.
I would happily be informed to slow to say 50 or any speed less than the limit for that road and get through the lights without stopping, a sort of continuity would result even at peak times.
This road is a particular pain in the bum as the speed limit on parts of it have been reduced to 40 MPH because of a few pedestrian accidents and at least one bicycle death.
It's a three lane road in some places FFS the same as most motorways so why punish the motorist because of a few dumb people, some nice roads around where I live and if two vans were meeting on parts of them the hedgerows would get a caress or two but still 60 MPH roads, absolute craziness.
If traffic lights were clever and detect that one side of the junction was far busier than the others it could instead of just being on a timer and adjust accordingly, maybe this already exist to a degree but I've never seen it in action.
I would happily see the day when all transport was driver less because the standard of driving today has fallen to a point where I dread it, I mean how hard is it to give way to the right? FFS! 32 years driving and not one crash BTW.
On a side note I hope they don't use ever use Mickeysoft for running any of these driver less vehicles!
On another side note recently lights have been changed for a raised roundabout instead at a congested junction and ruddy big bollards on the pavement, but they're digging it up again because big wagons can't always get round it and are apparently going to make it a bit smaller.
Another concern I suppose is you hear about people doing exactly what the satnav tells them to even if it's obvious there's no turning where it tells them to turn, what assurance could have that a map update could be corrupted on the vehicles system let alone hacked?
Could you have personalities for your car, BMW and Mercedes cars could be lane hogging pricks just to make it more true to life?
Ok that's enough bollards from me.
Ian.