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Re: Brain-Dead Road Engineering (was: driver's ed. is a joke)



In <rushton.169.00EFBC40@primenet.com> rushton@primenet.com (Rushton) writes: 
>
> lily1@ix.netcom.com (J. Hale ) writes: 
>>> It's just too damned easy to get a license in this country.  
>
> rpaller@ix.netcom.com (Robert M Paller ) writes: (Re: driver's ed. is a joke:)
>>I agree 100%. After visiting Germany last year and travelling the
>>Autobahn in both a car and on a motorcycle at speeds of 90mph+, I no
>>longer feel safe on American roads. Not only do we need to be retrained
>>on driving, DOT needs to do major work on the roadways and signs.
>
>>In Germany there is not such thing as a blind corner, they use mirrors
>>where ever they feel it is dangerous to pull into traffic. Thus there
>>is no need to have your car dangerously set in traffic to look for
>>oncoming cars.
>
>Of course in America we are blessed with such brain-dead engineering as 
>left-lane entrances and exits.  The left entrances are probably the
worst.  
>Here you have a bunch of people **merging into what is normally
regarded as 
>the fast lane!!!**  So you get all these people that would normally be

>cruising by in the left lane at a higher speed doing their little
non-signaled 
>maneuver into the far right lanes (and sometimes the shoulders,
killing people 
>who are changing flat tires.)
>
>Add to that all the folks from out of town driving around trying to
search for 
>some section of the city w/o decent street signs.  We also have a
number of 
>"disappearing lanes" that are not marked at all.  All of this
goofiness adds 
>up to accidents, deaths, and confusion.  How many years have we been
building 
>roads?  And we still haven't figured it out?   
>

Add to that the huge grooves created by trucks.  Those grooves are a
hazard when changing lanes; they can wreak havoc on an unwary driver. 
They're a hazard when attempting to stay centered in a lane; often the
grooves are just slightly farther apart than the average width of a
car.  In the rain the grooves are doubly hazardous; standing water
collects in them and the results are obvious.  
    The roads definitely need to be fixed (or at the least thought
through before building), but I think that educated drivers would be
better able to handle any potential dangers and that is where we need
to concentrate for the time being.  Repair of the current roads should
continue, and as we can't fix all of the left-lane entrances we need to
learn how to deal with them.  Why is it that noone in our legislature
has proposed a solution to these problems (like the newly elected
governor(?) in Ontario).
    But...that's just my opinion...I could be wrong....


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