The Psychotic Monkey » Travel

Road tax petition

The Monkey — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:24:31 +0000

For those of you who have read my previous post regarding the proposed changes to road tax (here) it appears that the number of people opposed to this are starting to voice their opinions. In fact the most popular petition on the 10 Downing Street website is now the one opposed to this change. I urge all of you to head over to this petition and sign it now. At time of writing, there are just short of 250,000 people who have signed this, and I’m just off to add my name to this growing list.

New booster seat laws

The Monkey — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 08:37:06 +0000

So today sees the introduction of new laws here in the UK relating to the use of booster seats for children travelling in cars. The new laws state that a seat has to be used for any children who are either:

a) under the age of 12
or
b) under 4 feet 5 inches tall.

Once a child passes either of these milestones they no longer need to use a booster seat. Interestingly, comments on the news this morning from parents who are bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t buy a seat this weekend as “they were all sold out” and who “are outraged as they haven’t been given enough notice about this”. Funny because the media coverage of this started back in January. I guess 8 and a half months isn’t long enough for some people…

Hard Shoulder trial starts

The Monkey — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:57:23 +0000

Yesterday saw the start of a trial on a stretch of the M42 here in the West Midlands. The trial is to assess the impact on traffic congestion of opening the hard shoulder for general use when the road is congested. The trial is taking place within the Active Traffic Management portion of the M42 from J7 (M6 junction) to J3A (M40 Junction). It appears that when the Active Traffic Management speed limit is set to 50 mph, the hard shoulder becomes effectively a fourth lane for general use. Based on my 2 journeys on this stretch of road yesterday it seems to work well, although it is a little unnerving driving along the hard shoulder at just under 50mph with a whole load of other cars. What did surprise me yesterday is that people actually took notice of the signs and used the hard shoulder. I was expecting to be scowled at for using it myself but there were lots of people using the hard shoulder and it all seemed to work well. If this trial is successful it could be the catalyst for this scheme being rolled out across other traffic congestion blackspots across the UK motorway network, although there is a lot of work involved with the new style signage which would need to take place first.