Our Beautiful Trashy Roads

Wanted: Green Drivers

Once in a precious while I get to be the passenger. It is such a joy when someone else does the driving, although as the passenger you always think your driver is crazy. However, as the passenger you get to look around you and you notice things that you just don't see when you are concentrating on traffic conditions. This is as it should be, so I get a treat when I can let my attention wander all around.

Recently my wife and I went for a fairly long drive to Barcelona and back to Valencia, and we took turns at the wheel. It was then that I noticed the dark side of Spanish resident's customs by throwing so much trash out of the windows of vehicles. If you look along the sides of the roads and in the grass and underbrush you will find bottles of every description, cans, enough plastic to cover the earth, metal, parts of garden furniture (?), half eaten bocadillos, plastic food containers, car parts, like bumpers where there had been an accident; plastic gloves, big and small plastic water bottles, which probably make up the major percentage of trash, and all sorts of other small items, including baby's diapers. You wouldn't want to get hit by one of those flying at you.

I have worked on roadside cleaning crews and found all of the above, as well as used condoms, lipstick, mobile phones, and a Gps system. If I had one I would throw it away as well, but not out of the window of my car. Along secondary country roads I have seen whole bags of household trash just dumped where it should not be; and old mattresses.

I was talking to a friend about this and he said that at least its a job for someone to clean up the trash. I suppose that's true, but what is really needed is respect for the environment. I was bought up on an island that sold itself to visitors as a tourist destination. We were encouraged to treat visitors to our island in the same way as though they were visiting our own homes. We kept a pleasant attitude, and we kept our country clean. Even now I put my pieces of paper and wrappers in my pocket and transfer them to the trash when I get home. I once followed another person's example by simply dropping a chocolate wrapper on the ground at the car racing circuit, and I felt so guilty I vowed I would not do that again.

We have only one world to live in, and our own environment is our own responsibility. If we make it dirty and clustered with garbage we can expect others to do the same thing. Should we lead by example by sorting our waste, and picking up after ourselves, we can expect others to do the same thing.

May I suggest that we equip our cars with a small garbage bag to place our waste in, and at the end of our journey we can then simply clean the car out, transferring the waste in the bag into the garbage can. That is a simple, feel good custom to follow. I know this to be true because it is my custom, and I feel very good to have a clean conscience about it.

Copyright (c)  2012   Eugene Carmichael

Big Brother is Watching Us

A view from an overhead camera with a strong zoom lens

Be careful!

We have seen on television scenes from inside some cars that reveal what the driver was doing in addition to watching the road. We have seen people eating sandwiches, drinking beer, talking on their mobiles, trying to make sense of their GPS system, and we have even seen driver and passenger playing sexually with one another on the highway. I always wondered why the people didn't hear or see the helicopter, when it occurred to me that the images were from overhead cameras, not helicopters.

You are probably saying, oh! oh!, because we just don't think about the fact that those monitoring cameras are there and they see, and can follow the action in your car. That puts everything into a different context and will make a lot of us go, "Oh my Gawd!"

A small thing, but most of us commit the offence of not having both hands on the wheel other then when we are changing gears. The most frequent offence, Im sure is talking on the telephone. A call comes in, we look around us to see if the police are anywhere near us, and we pick up the phone, completely forgetting about the cameras. The DGT makes no effort to cover up their existance. Each pole with a camera has a yellow sticker with a picture of the camera at the height of a person. Alternate cameras focus on the front of the car, and others the back  of the car.

This is just a heads up to remind you that Big Brother is always watching us, and don't forget about the cameras up above, as well as those on the ground tracking our speed. Meanwhile, congratulations drivers for watching your speeds and saving ourselves a mountain of money as tickets for speeding have fallen by 50%.

Copyright (c) 2012    Eugene Carmichael

Mysteries of the Motorway

Road crashes. Stranger than Fiction

While travelling along the Autopista between Valencia and Barcelona we came upon one of those complete mysteries that happen from time to time. How they happen is beyond my ability to comprehend, and you may want to agree.

We encountered a car in the right-hand lane that had tipped forward just a few minutes before we came on the scene. It was a one-car crash, and the car was resting on its bonnet and the forward part of its roof. There were four people standing along the road waving all sorts of garments to get upcoming vehicles to slow down. We could only hope that meant that everybody was out of the car. No emergency vehicles had yet arrived, so those involved , and one or two cars that had pulled over to the side after the site were trying to manage the scene.

It seemed to me that the car had suddenly stopped so short that the backend flipped over its head and it landed they way it was resting. I'm sure there is a better and more rational explanation, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out.

Be careful when driving, its a jungle out there full of mysteries!

Copyright (c) 2012   Eugene Carmichael  

Politicians!

3-2-1 We have lift off!

I am now convinced that the world would be so much better off without politicians. These are the people whom we elected because somebody had to be chosen to do the job, but once we let them loose they seem to be only capable of making our lives worse than before.

A perfect case in point is that here in Spain a proposal is now on the table to raise the speed limit of the autovia and the autopista from 120kph. At the highest point in Spain's recorded death toll history on the highways, more than seven thousand people lost their lives in one single year.  From the time the points system was introduced the yearly death toll has been steadily dropping to below 1,500, which is still far too many. Complicit in just about all highway crashes is an element of too much speed, so it was a very good idea when the government lowered the limit to 110 kph. They said it was to lessen to need for fuel, but less fuel bought meant less tax revenue.

The thinking was that the government would claw back lost revenue in fines for speeding, but motorists frustrated that plan by driving slower, buying less fuel, and avoiding fines by driving within the limit. The government quickly changed its mind and the 120 kph was reinstated.

So now, they are talking about increasing the limit, presumably to 130 kph, just at the time when fuel prices have risen to the highest point at the pump that they have ever been. Perhaps its just me. I am searching for the logic in all this where there is no sensible logic at all. An increase in the speed limit, where a lot of people drive over the limit anyway, means an even faster movement of vehicles, and that will surely lead to an uptick in the number of crashes, and the death toll will most likely rise.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Is there a problem with a declining death rate? Are the people of Spain, for whom there is a declining inventory of jobs, to be culled to make our joblessness statistics look better?  Don't laugh, stranger thinking than that has come out of the Cortes.

Personally, I choose to ignore that lot and make my own rules. I drive at 100 kph whether the limit is 110, 120, or 130. I get to where I'm going in one hour, or part thereof, and as long as some nutcase doesn't slam into me, I promise not to slam into them, because I will have everything under control.

Amen!

Copyright (c) 2012   Eugene Carmichael

NATIONAL ROADS: DANGEREOUS BY DESIGN!

Be careful!

Spain's National Roads are those roads that served as major highways before the coming of the autovia and the autopista that now carry the major share of through traffic. The national roads now connect the many villages, and the two other types of roads are by-pass highways. National roads carry two-way traffic without a central barrier, except the centre painted line, and that's the problem.

When driving a long distance the driver can see for himself how the danger multiplies and the risk grows . Firstly, there are sections where the layout of the road is just plain confusing. While passing through El Campello in Alicante province along the N-332, it is very difficult to understand what the designer had in mind, so, if it's confusing to a moving driver, it is also helping to promote a crash.

Secondly, there are the drivers themselves, the ones who are a menace to society. They seem to have the idea that they are cool, and super good drivers. So they speed, overtake, zip in and out, and disappear in a cloud of smoke leaving a long line of drivers who have been shocked by his actions, and nearly driven into each other by his distractions.

These roads are toll-free, and that attracts a lot of traffic that is trying to keep costs down. As a result the opportunity to overtake safely is very much diminished, but that is no obstacle to the foolhardy. The result of that is there are so many head-on collisions in which dead people are hauled away to the morgue. It is all too common that innocent people lose their lives to a maniac in this manner. When I see people driving without responsibility I can only hope that there is a tree waiting for them, and only them to take them off the road.

Spain's death toll-rate is falling because so many of the lunatics have killed themselves, which is a good thing, but unfortunately they took other people with them.

Another contributing factor to head-on collisions is the fact that for many drivers they will have to make a left turn across incoming traffic in order to get to their destination. There is a lack of roundabouts that otherwise would encourage the driver to carry-on to one to make the turn that puts them on the other side and then to make their turn off the road from the right-hand lane. Making a left turn across the incoming lane is a very tricky operation. First you make certain that the traffic behind is not about to overtake you, then you check that there is nothing in the left lane before making the turn. What often goes wrong is that the driver does not check several times to make sure that the lane is clear, and in particular, that he fails to look for motorcycles. If you are looking for  cars and trucks you may completely miss the motorcycle.

National roads are certainly much more interesting, although much slower where the top speeds are 80kph. As modernisation takes place there are some stretches where the legal limit is now 120 kph which does make them more efficient in getting to your destination.

A special word of caution is appropriate about speed cameras and the many sections where it is necessary to reduce speed. I have come to agree with the reduce speed sections and generally make an effort to comply, because such zones do represent heightened areas of risk. I'm concerned about the speed cameras of course, but more importantly I would rather not crash into anyone. Instead I prefer to  do my part to make using the road as safe as possible. Whenever I pass a crash site the thought passes my mind that thousands drive pass that very position without incident, so why couldn't those two have done the same?

Yes, national roads are dangerous by design because of a variety of issues, but we drivers can help to reduce the danger by using common sense. There is no substitute for common sense which came free, and there is no restriction on when and how much we can use it.

Copyright (c) 2012   Eugene Carmichael