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Gridlock and Road Rage
About the jams
Driving people crazy
Tony is a long-distance mortgage salesman from Essex who has the unenviable task of battling through the M25 on a daily basis. “My relationship with the roads is hate” he says calmly as he sets off on a five hour round trip that takes in such delights as the M25 “car park” and the infamous Dartford Tunnel during evening rush hour.
Tony is a long-distance mortgage salesman from Essex who has the unenviable task of battling through the M25 on a daily basis. “My relationship with the roads is hate” he says calmly as he sets off on a five hour round trip that takes in such delights as the M25 “car park” and the infamous Dartford Tunnel during evening rush hour.
But while he rages against the system, the system itself is watching him. All the time, he’s being filmed by a small army of Highways Agency civil servants from their secretive bunker in South Mimms.
The Highways Agency
It’s from high-tech centres like this one that the signs, signals and road blocks on Europe’s most congested motorway network are controlled, and it’s people like Louise Boothman from the North-West centre who are trying to keep the traffic moving. She admits to getting a stomach-ache when she sees jams on her stretch of the network and sometimes it falls to her to close motorways too: “It’s a novelty to close the M6, not many people can say they’ve done that in their lives...”
Why do we love our cars?
So what is it about people and their cars? Why do drivers put themselves through the wringer every day?
Author Phillip Ball points out that cars have been sold to us as images of power, freedom and control in a world where no one else exists. In fact, cars do the opposite – they imprison us in a world full of other people.
Luckily there are people like Jamie Shaw around who can decorate vehicles with every gadget under the sun – not just sat navs and heated seats, but TV and DVD players too.
Reasons for jams
This probably comes as little comfort to those people travelling clockwise on the M25. The Highways Agency have received a call to say there's some debris in the road, and although this is unconfirmed they must take drastic action, slowing down fives miles of motorway with a "rolling road block" in search of it. After an exhaustive trawl, nothing can be found, and hundreds of cars are finally allowed on their way.
Out on the road in Gloucester is a long-suffering team of road workers whose swivelling 'stop-and-go' boards are to drivers as red rags are to bulls. While protecting the gangs fixing the roads behind them, they get daily abuse and missiles from drivers, much to their annoyance.
"I don't walk into their offices and spit in their faces, do I?" says one. "They want it both ways" says another. "They want nice clear roads, but aren't prepared to wait for them."
Road rage
Let's hope they don't run into Matthew, a lorry driver from Liverpool. His fury extends way beyond roadworks, to those he shares the road with, particularly women drivers, learner drivers, those who go very fast, and those who go too slowly, the young, the old (or 'coffin dodgers') – in fact pretty much anyone who gets in his way.
Phantom jams
But what about so-called traffic jams that appear out of 'nowhere' – no accident, no roadworks, no debris on the road? Mathematician Dr. Eddie Wilson, who studies traffic, explains how steadily moving lanes of cars can suddenly slow to crawl, for no apparent reason. And he's one person who actively seeks out tailbacks, all in the name of research.
