RECLAIM THE ROADS WE PAID FOR!

Somedays I feel like a member of the most hated race on the planet. I am reviled for my beliefs, attacked for my actions, sneered at by those who do not share my worldview and ‘soaked’ to pay for everyone who doesn’t belong to my clan. Unfortunately no-one has yet permitted ‘Driver’ as a religion under any act.



We all know the litany of issues that we, as ‘drivers’ have to suffer. We are taxed in every possible way – we pay Car Tax, Road Tax, Petrol tax, VAT on the taxes, Tolls on any new roads and many of the old ones, VAT on the Tolls. We pay speeding fines, fines for parking, fines for encroaching in lanes designated for everybody else and fines for loading/unloading in vehicles that are not designated as appropriate. We even pay tax (charges if you will) to use the roads that we have paid for during the hours that we are most likely to need them in the hope that the roads will miraculously become clear and all the pedestrians and cyclists can flood into the town centres and frolic in the empty streets.


There is a very good reason why the roads are congested – there are too many pedestrians and cyclists travelling a too slow a speed and requiring the regular stopping of faster traffic to allow them to get by!


Before you decide that this is a daft comment think a moment. If a car, or a bike or a van or a truck or a lorry or even a Tank, is travelling at 30 miles per hour then it will get to a destination 15 miles away in 30 minutes. BUT, and this is a big but, the vehicle takes time to get up to 30 miles per hour – it does not just go from Stop – 30 mph in a second. Every time you stop the vehicle you add another delay as it slows to a stop and speeds back up again – every traffic light at ‘Stop’ adds to the congestion and to the slow speed of the roads.


Some time ago a number of roads were designated as ‘Red Routes’ with no stopping; this was to allow the traffic flow to be constant. Then the rules were relaxed to allow for stopping for short periods in designated boxes, then they added bus lanes and then they added more traffic lights to allow the pedestrians to cross. Cyclists are allowed free use of the Red Routes irrelevant of the speed that they are capable of (NOT 30 mph) which forces the buses to come out of the Bus lane and into the other lanes. And when the Red Routes slow to a crawl who gets the blame – Drivers.


If a bus stops at a bus stop (its what they are made for after all) in the bus lane, what happens to the other buses that are NOT stopping at the bus stop – they don’t queue, they enter the other lanes.


What makes it worst is that more often than not there is no traffic on the crossway and no pedestrians waiting to cross – which driver has not been held up for 2, 3 or even 4 minutes on a set of lights where nothing else is happening.

We are all aware of the constant drip of venom aimed at the drivers in our society and of the constant flood of money from our wallets to pay for the roads and much else.


Anyone else would be up in arms and threatening violent revolution at the unfairness and unrepresentative assault of our freedoms and good names.


Next time a cyclist flips you the finger as he cuts you up at a junction just ignore him (it is almost always a him) and drive on regardless – don’t forget that he has no insurance and pays no road tax – let’s see how long it takes before they begin to obey the same rules of the road as most drivers do.


RECLAIM THE ROADS WE PAID FOR!