A 50mph limit on an empty motorway is hardly a 'smart' move

THE roads were eerily empty when I plodded over the Pennines last Friday night.

Perhaps the four-minute warning had been issued and – totally oblivious, given the radio on my Peugeot 306 doesn’t work – I was about to be wiped out in a Russian nuclear missile strike. Maybe there was a particularly riveting repeat of I’m A Celebrity keeping everyone off the roads. Either way, on a Friday night commute which cris-crosses eight counties over 200 miles the traffic jams I normally encounter were nowhere to be seen.

So you’d think I’d have storming progress, then? Erm, no. Even though the roads were so sparsely populated I was overtaking a lorry every other ten minutes, there were still long stretches where I couldn’t go one measly mile an over 50. The culprit, the average speed limit preceding the new ‘smart’ motorway sections, is one of my real pet hates of motoring.

I love the idea; rather than have every Audi or BMW fly into the fog at 75mph and wreaking havoc on your morning commute, someone flicks a switch and lowers the limit to 50mph in an instant, massively reducing the odds of a pile-up. The powers-that-be spent ages calling them ‘managed motorways’ – largely because they always managed to make you do less than 70mph, but nowadays the idea is they’re ‘smart’ because they’re brimming with technology to make life safer.

All of which would be great apart from the one thing even the greatest gizmos can’t control – the highly evolved monkeys controlling the machines.

Why, when the limit is 50mph and clever cameras control all three lanes, is there still a prat in an Audi A5 doing 70mph (who, incidentally, never seems to get flashed)? Why do the lorry drivers, who seem to be on autopilot at 55-60mph, do everything in their power to get past?  It’s not just the motorists either – why, at stupid ‘o’ clock in the morning on an empty motorway with nobody working, is the speed limit still switched to the lowest possible setting? All that does is encourage drivers to switch off and listen to The Archers. 

Last month the Department for Transport announced the M62 and the M53 will be smartened up in their entirety, and chances are once they’re finished they’ll have a crack at the other ones too. While I’m all for clever roads that can alter their speed limit according to the conditions, I’m genuinely dreading having to spend years on end crawling along empty motorways while they’re doing the work.

Saving lives with adjustable speed limits? That’s a clever idea. Forcing motorists to spend years doing 50mph along an empty motorway because everyone in a position to change it back to 70mph has turned in for the night?

That’s not very ‘smart’ at all.

Motorway service stations are still worth missing out

Suppose you’re on your way back from a classic car show and feeling a tad peckish. Where are you going to stop?

It’s one of the questions I'm forever wondering when I'm out and about, cruising the highways and byways of Britain in all manner of classics in the quest to find a spot of decent en-route grub. The irony is that the usual place we end up stopping – motorway service stations – are largely locked in the 1970s.

Like multi-storey car parks designed for Austin 1100 owners, quaint farm entrances on the A1 and Little Chef restaurants, they’re a bit of Britain’s motoring empire which haven’t really caught up with the 21st century yet. If you happen to be shooting through the more scenic bits of the M6 in Cumbria you’re in luck – Westmorland Services, thanks to a combination of the nearby Lakeland scenery and its insistence on farm fresh local produce, is a joy to visit – but almost all of the rest are a not-especially-appealing exploration of fast food takeaways and overpriced fry-ups.

Of the alternatives, I’ve always had a soft spot for Little Chef, but the firm’s will-it-won’t-it skirt around potential demise makes us wonder whether we can count on an Olympic Breakfast in years to come. We’re also quite keen on the Route 66 vibe of OK Diner, frequented by A1-bound Elvis lovers, but we’d only make it an occasional joy unless we really wanted to emulate the Memphis rocker in his Vegas years.

Yet these aside – and the option of the shady butty van in a layby for the risk-takers among our resident food fanatics – stopping on journeys for a bite is almost always a succession of depressing service station eateries. That’s why one of the latest books to land at the Classic Car Weekly offices – Near The Motorways, by Hugh Cantlie, proved a bit of a hit with our hacks. Fed up with a succession of KFC Boneless Banquets, two-hour parking restrictions and toilets which all too often resemble that scene out of Trainspotting, it gave us hope that we might actually find a culinary delight to truly satisfy our post-show cravings.

The irony is that during the pre-motorway era of your mum and dad actually driving around A35s, Anglias and Minors the chances of getting a meal you’d enjoy – rather than ramming down your throat in under five minutes – were actually better.

Where do you stop for a bite to eat on your classic car journeys? I’d love to know whether you’re as keen as we are to give motorway service stations a miss

Motorway pubs could prove the saviour of a Lancashire motoring landmark

SHERLOCK Holmes might have called it a two pipe problem. For me, a clash between two of my favourite things – real cars and real ale – is a two pint problem.

Until very recently I could enjoy both, but knowing the clear boundary between them. Most of my motoring life, particularly on still, summer evenings like the ones we’ve been having lately, involved a classic car of some sort, a quiet pub in the West Lancashire countryside and a refreshing, but legal, shandy. Similarly, if I wanted to be happy in the haze of a drunken hour, Merseyrail’s finest and a plethora of town centre pubs were my oyster.

That’s why new plans by JD Wetherspoon to start opening pubs at motorway service stations didn’t leave me angry or overjoyed. The idea, like a hangover, hurts my head slightly. On the one hand you can take the view of an old mate of mine who argued vociferously that allowing any pub, anywhere, to have a car park is encouraging driving while smashed.

Motorway service stations are essentially big car parks, albeit ones with overpriced coffee shops attached. What’s more, unlike even the quietest of country pubs they cannot be reached by public transport (National Express coaches don’t count).

The Daily Mail reader in me, therefore, thinks motorway service stations are a menace that’ll fuel a drink-driving epidemic. But then I remembered all those visits to Forton Services on the M6, gazed at the Gerry Anderson-esque architecture of the old restaurant tower and wondered which idiot it was who decided Britain’s motorists would no longer benefit from it. It’s a wonderful bit of Sixties architecture – and, on account of it being a listed building, it seems the powers that be agree with me – and I always feel slightly sad when I see it lingering above the Lancashire countryside, unloved and unused.

The idea of it being a family-friendly pub/restaurant job, albeit one festooned with signs warning the designated drivers not to fill up on John Smiths as well as unleaded, appeals more than seeing it not being used at all.

Last year, I put it to JD Wetherspoon that if they’re serious about opening a pub in Ormskirk, they should name it The Harold Wilson (and if they do, you heard it here first). Now I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that if they’re going to throw caution to the wind and start opening pubs on the motorway, they might as well bring a Lancastrian landmark familiar to drivers across the North West back to life.

Well, the idea made sense at the pub anyway.

We should raise the motorway speed limit - but with a few strings attached

HOW many motorway drivers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Given the not-at-all defensive tone of most of the articles about proposals to revamp the motorway speed limit, I thought I'd wait a week for the dust to settle to write mine, and open it with a joke. The answer, of course, is that none of them should even be attempting it. Not when they're at the helm of a tonne of metal doing 70mph. Or 80mph, for that matter. There is nothing funny about getting motorway drivers to change a lightbulb. This is serious business.

My dad actually wrote a letter to his MP urging him to vote against any attempts to raise the motorway speed limit to 80mph, saying it was “ludicrous”. Lots of you - mainly the Tory party - argue it's high time to add another 10mph to the speed limit. Others, including every road safety group you care to think of, say it'll lead to more accidents and all end in tears.

For what it's worth I don't agree with sticking with 70mph - but I don't necessarily agree with raising it either.

The thing to remember is that the 70mph was instigated in 1965, when most motorists ventured onto these newfangled superhighways in Ford Anglias and Austin 1100s equipped with skinny tyres and brakes the size of milk bottle tops. It doesn't take Jeremy Clarkson to tell you that today's motors of the masses - Focus, Golf, Astra - will easily outrun, outbrake and outhandle their fortysomething ancestors, and they're crammed full of airbags, anti whiplash zones and crumple zones even if they don't. Getting less than five stars in the Euro NCAP crash tests is very bad form in 2011, and it's for this reason I reckon modern cars at least are more than equipped to handle an 80mph limit.

Unfortunately, their drivers aren't. To this day the basic driving test doesn't include any motorway driving, which is insane and almost certainly explains all the middle lane hoggers, the headlight flashers, the outside laners who insist on doing exactly 69.99mph and the ones who think it's fine to shoot out from a slip road into lane three in a single ignorant swoop. Weirdly, there seems to be a correlation between all these drivers and sales of BMW's X5.

So I'd happily back an 80mph limit as long as those expected to do it are forced to learn how to drive on motorways properly. I've said it before and I'll say it again; I honestly believe speed, if you're trained how to use it properly and responsibly, is harmless in the right conditions.

On the other hand, we could ban all BMW X5s from the entire motorway network. Problem solved!

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

A CROSS chap in an RAC lorry has left me revisiting one of the biggest questions in motoring.

He was driving along to somewhere important this morning along the M62 - the very same stretch of motorway I needed to join en-route to IKEA. Because my better half needed a bookcase too big for any of the Life On Cars fleet, I was at the helm of a Ford Transit, and might have got a bit carried away with the whole White Van Man thing.

Put simply, I might have cut him up. Cue an angry flash of the lorry's headlamps.

Still locked into Transit mode, and with the window convenientally open, I immediately wanted to figure out how many fingers I should put up at the driver to make him aware of my discontent. Only I didn't, because a split second later I realised he wasn't being unecessarily uppity. It was in fact me who was driving like a berk. What I should have been doing, in fact, was apologising.

Which brings me to the big question; how? There are, as I'm all too aware, a multitude of hand gestures and angry facial expressions to let someone know they've been a wally* at the wheel. You can also plant your hand on the centre of the steering wheel to voice your disapproval through a patronisingly long parp of the horn, or you can flash your headlights in disgust.

Yet I can't think of any convenient, universally-understood gesture or signal that means "Sorry, my mistake". Giving a wave or a thumbs-up can be easily misunderstood and wind up the motorist you've already angered even more, which means that eating humble pie at the helm of a white Transit - in fact, any vehicle - is next to impossible. So what do you do?

Clearly, the Government and the great and good of the motoring world should get together, thrash it out and work it out, because Britain's motorists need a symbol so they can easily say they're sorry. It wouldn't just cut down on confusion, it'd save accidents and road rage. People would arrive at the office happy and be more productive as a result. It could also be used in other places you can't speak to people you've just peeved off - nightclubs for instance - so clearly it's something which could transform our society if it's successful. Britain needs a new apology gesture, and the campaign should start here.

I think I'm owed a few apologies off other motorists as it is!

*With The Champion being a family publication "wally" is a substitution for a certain other word beginning with 'W' which most wound-up motorists actually use...

AA, eh?

I MET a cyclist once who managed to get from Merseyside to Carlisle in twelve hours.

I mention this because I've just completed the return journey, but I had a broken car and some breakdown trucks instead. Despite having the M6 and the fourth emergency service at my disposal, my ride home took ten hours.

Admittedly the cyclist in question was made almost entirely of Lycra and bits of string but I'm still dumbstruck how it took the AA team just slightly less time to rescue and recover me.

While I'm not exactly a stranger to breakdown crews - my car is almost three decades old, after all - I'm used to the boys in yellow being a smiley service, who send you texts to keep you updated and apologise profusely if they're more than a minute late.

In the adverts they even sing, with some poor soul in a dead Vauxhall being serenaded by the company's entire workforce (although curiously, you never saw the car getting mended).

But last Sunday they sounded more Simon Cowell than Susan Boyle, with their lorry arriving four and a half hours after that first phone call. Even then, the car wasn't going anywhere, because the poor driver had just clocked off and needed a cuppa. That'll be another 45 minutes, then.

Yet what wound me up most of all was that we weren't even going to Southport - we were headed for a service station, somewhere on the M6, where I'd have to change trucks. I'm used to changing at Lime Street station, but between two yellow lorries somewhere near Charnock Richard is something else. Naturally, the second driver had just clocked off too.

I don't blame the truckers - in fact they were really were soldiers of fortune - but the rest of the AA-Team failed their mission this week. The dead motor eventually croaked onto my driveway at 8.30pm, a depressing ten-and-a-half hours after I first called them.

I think I might take the Raleigh Chopper next time.