Like me, I’ve been trying to write everything down before I forget, but then I forget where I wrote it down.
1 Like
in Barky’s video . .
that car DROVE off the ledge !
it did not slide or slip.
They just flat out steered the wrong direction . .without a clue !
on the subject of ice on a banked road surface . .
even just the crown of a road can , when iced over, cause you to go in a different direction from intended.
-
- been there , done that - -
PLUS
I’ve been on a properly crowned DIRT road too.
rainy and muddy
had me sliding toward the ditch !
With the 4x4 engaged . .
I could stay up on the roadway but it looked like I was flying my plane in a crosswind !
Angled in such a way as to be constantly CLIMBING toward the top of the crown plus moving forward -ish at the same time. ( ‘‘drifting’’ they call it on the track )
- been there , done that - -
The one I remember is something like: When you make something ‘idiot proof’ better idiots instantly appear.
During the 10 seconds needed to grab a pencil and paper I forget what I needed them for.
As always excellent advise.
Two months later? At any rate in a motel in Indiana a couple weeks ago, in desperation I read the local paper. In there they had all of the police reports for the week. I had never heard the term “slide off” before but there were about a dozen reports of slide offs due to the ice on the road. We call them spin outs in Minnesota since usually you spin around a little and then in the ditch. Rarely would you just slide off the road-although it does happen. Oh well, the King’s English and all that, the important thing is we seem to understand each other.
Many years ago, I had a relatively minor slide-off in rural PA.
Unbeknownst to me, there was black ice on the road, and although the road was straight, it was high-crowned, and the next thing I knew my Volvo began fishtailing, the oscillation became more extreme and uncontrollable, and we slid into a (thankfully) shallow ditch. When I got out of the car and fell on my butt, I suddenly realized the reason for that incident.
Luckily, a guy with a 4WD truck came along and pulled us out of the ditch.
And, I continued that drive at a MUCH slower speed after that black ice incident.
Flat would be better then some roads here in NH. We have OPPOSITE curves. The road turns right, but it’s banked ever so slightly to the LEFT.
That advice cannot be emphasized too much.
Yeah, I know of a few.
I recall reading somewhere that they’re banking rotaries the wrong way on purpose to further slow down the traffic going through them. They’re intended to slow traffic down to begin with, so I don’t doubt the article. Personally I think rotaries are a pretty dumb idea anyway. I predict that in ten years they’ll be getting torn out and replaced with traditional perpendicular intersections with stop signs and traffic lights.
Don’t tell Pelham NH. They just added 2 last year and a proposal to add another one.
I can’t speak for your state, but in NJ when rotaries are replaced, the new construction involves flyovers. It’s very expensive, but ultimately its much safer, and in the case of a very high traffic density state like mine, it moves the traffic much more efficiently.
1 Like
Rotaries work fine for low volume roads. The new one Goffstown NH added a few years ago on Goffstown back road works much better then the intersection it replaced. The new on in Pelham NH works fine too. The second one they add (less then 500’ from the first one) makes a lot of people scratching their heads. Not too sure how well the third on they’re proposing will work. That is not low volume (at least during rush hour).
One need only to visit one of the traffic circles in downtown DC to see the flip side of this statement.
1 Like
One need only visit Europe to see the truth in this.
That’s the real problem with rotaries. If drivers are familiar with them, they work OK. i.e. Europe
If not, carnage occurs. i.e. Most of the US. I generally like them surrounded by drivers who understand them, not so much when ignorant traffic is around.
I’ve driven through DC…it’s a nightmare.
Some rotaries start out as low volume, then as the area grows traffic grows and after a while the rotaries are a nightmare. In MA, the Rotary at Rt-2 rotary in Concord is a prime example of this. 61,000 vehicles pass through that rotary every day. In 2003 a proposal was introduced to build an overpass. Not sure when that will happen.
There is one rotary that I have to use on a regular basis, and almost every time that I use it, I will see somebody going to a right-hand exit ramp from the left lane, or vice-versa. I guess that this is mostly the result of people who are not familiar with the area, but last year I witnessed one incident that absolutely astounded me. Somebody in an older Lincoln turned from the rotary onto an entry ramp, instead of an exit ramp, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision.
This maneuver involved making a turn so sharp that it should have been a clue that it wasn’t a place where one is supposed to turn, but clearly that driver was not nearly as sharp as the illegal turn that he/she executed.
3 Likes
I consider rotaries so dangerous that when I taught my daughter to drive I specifically too her to rotaries and taught he how to traverse them safely. To me the test of a design is how well it works not for the best drivers out there but for the least experienced. And by that measure, rotaries are a disaster.
Some here have commented that they work okay for low volume traffic areas, but I have to question their worth in low volume traffic areas. Do low volume intersections actually benefit from them? I think not. I suspect it’s more of a fad among civil engineers, perhaps required by some federal agency in DC in order to get matching highway funding…
The one in at Goffstown Back Road works great. The intersection made it very difficult for people from the Grassmere sectionto enter Goffstown Back Road. The Rotary was a big improvement.
But I do agree - in general they are dangerous…especially here in New England with super aggressive drivers who don’t know the rules or just completely ignore them. I think a Rotary should be the very last thing tried.
I suppose they can work but I’m still not a big fan of them. Especially when they add one on a road out in the middle of nowhere in the pitch black night driving at highway speeds and all of a sudden a round about in the middle of the road. In my own curmudgeon mind, I tend to think its the highway department just excited to spend more money on new projects. There must be a round-about department fighting for money from the highway builders. Then again I suspect some of this is tied to federal money and requirements.