Agreed. The LED jobbies are awful, the flicker in your peripherial vision is realy distracting. They put some in along the A689 just past Eden Hall a year or so back, I'm glad to say that most of them have now stopped working.
I know exactly why. (My parents live in Pennsylvania). The snow ploughs tear them out of the road.
In bits of Northern Continental Europe I have travelled in, plastic posts are fixed either side of the carriageway, with a patch of white reflective material one side and yellow t'other. They nicely delineate the carriageway when there's snow on the ground.
On minor roads, bamboo sticks are stuck in the ground/snow at intervals each side of the carriageway, with a strip of white reflective material wrapped around near the top. They seem to be replaced every so often as necessary.
Cheers,
Sid
But if you are expecting darkness you'd be mad not to have a suitable torch. And the range of models, quality and, most especially, battery life of torches these days is astounding. And the prices make them quite accessible to most of us.
I remember getting a torch as a Christmas present and it was dull within the hour. :-(
If you don't notice the dazzle on motorways *you* need an eye test.
Similar in parts of Scotland - e.g. round from Thurso to Kyle of Tongue and Durness (or thereabouts). (Not the bamboo as far as I am aware!)
Same ideas also help when the edges of roads are flooded, covered with leaves or other extremely rare things not worth mentioning.
Mainly because it is both cheaper and more reliable that way, although there are also safety considerations on major roads too. Dusk to dawn lighting simply needs a very reliable and cheap photocell controller in each light unit. The light columns can be connected directly to the nearest mains and if one controller does fail only one light goes out. Timed lighting requires a separate supply to the street lamps, running back to a central control unit. If that fails, or gets out of step with the correct time, a whole bank of lights are affected. Timers also need regular servicing, which adds considerably to the cost. There were some experiments with individual timers in each column, but that turned out to be a logistical nightmare.
Colin Bignell
In these days of radio-controlled alarm clocks for a fiver (or less), is having the correct time such a problem?
And what servicing does a timer need? Assuming a nice simple thing like a central heating control. No moving parts. Nothing to go wrong except, maybe, a replaceable rechargeable cell for backup.
remember the street lights after power cuts in the olden days!
They don't up here, and yes I do live in a bit of England that does require the roads to be ploughed fairly regulary. The hefty cast iron casting set into the road should protect the rubber cats eye unit from being ripped out. May be US cats eyes are of a different design?
All the roads out of here have 8' snow poles along the side of them...
Also on stretches of the road from Lairg up to Tongue.
Rather more than "experiments". Before photcells came in every lampost had a mechanical timer in the bottom. Quite a sophisticated jobbie as well as it could take into account the seasons but not BST/GMT. I can remember the man coming round adjusting them twice a year. This is probably from the
60's or 70's.
Ahh - up here we do it by trying to judge where the snow isn't quite so high, thus indicating where the last vehicle went through. :-)
Yes, none of that here - but just about every minor road has ditches alongside it, so you can usually make out where the edge is (roughly). There are snowmobile-related signs at a lot of intersections, so they tend to provide a good indication of exactly where the junctions are.
D'oh, yes - that hadn't occurred to me :-( I still need to get a photo of a plough coming through; it's damn impressive to see a 30' high cloud of snow getting chucked everywhere.
Most. I remember doing 135mph up the A10, and slowing down to 120mph because I couldn't see far enough..
Well it was my one chance to drive the bosses Alfa GTV 2000 so I had to didn't I?
Good lights on a decent car will pick out anything bright up to a mile away: Not sure what 'standard stopping distances' are but I would expect most cars to be able to stop from 100-120mph in under a mile.
One expects cars to be equipped with reflectors.
It's not unlit motorways at 3 a.m that are accident risks: Its crowded ones at 8.30a.m. with everybody bleary eyed and blindly following the car in front at 50 feet.
driving in the dark or rain actually makes people more nervous, and they slow down far more.
Having lit up urban roads is a recipe for mad teenagers in TWOCced cars to zoom around and kill people.
Yup. And no reflected light either. Oddly enough, its actually quite easy to do it once you forget eyesight.
Other senses work..you can hear the faint rustle of the hedges.. and you can even hear your own breathing and footsteps being reflected off solid objects. ..you an even run if you pick your feet way up high so as to not trip on low level trash..
Try it sometime. Its actually interesting...
I used to cycle a lot on ulit roads as a teenager. Best to turn the lights OFF if no cars around. You can in fact see further even in just starlight..good moonlight is more than enough to drive in as well.
A torch makes you a total target. Torches not required. A torch says 'I am nervous of the dark'.
Learn to walk in pitch black without one.
Indeed, for power conservation reasons they strobe at a fast rate rather than remain constantly lit. They also light in both directions such that you see them in your rear view mirror, which is a bit distracting as well I find.
David Hansen used his keyboard to write :
They originally used mains signalling to turn them off and on.
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