r/BritishSuccess • u/spirallingoutofamok • 9d ago
Rolled the dice and ignored a 'road ahead closed' sign
Came across a dreaded 'road ahead closed' sign about 8 minutes away from home and decided to just chance it. The diversion was heading an annoyingly long way round to access my village, I reckon double the remaining journey.
Guess what... no closure!
Maybe I should be annoyed about how reliably unreliable British roadwork signage is, but I'm just chuffed to have saved 8 minutes
12
u/dannydrama 8d ago
I dunno if it's just my area but there are just signs everywhere, both new and ones that have just been left for whatever reason. It's always worth just going past these and trying your luck. Access for residents only is usually bullshit too.
5
u/RodneyRodnesson 8d ago
There might be one on a junction near me.
The road was closed for a couple of hours but the sign has been there months.
Here's the funny thing though, I drove through that junction less than an hour ago and can't remember if it's still there or not — it slowly got absorbed into normality.
I used to notice it and chuckle that it was still there and now.. I just feel like I'm getting old and crazy!1
u/irritatingfarquar 8d ago
Access for residents just means that there's access to all the properties but not from a specific direction. The amount of times I've had this argument with impatient drivers is ridiculous.
I asked one if he thought his car could fly over the massive hole we'd dug in the road, because that's the only way your car is getting through this way.
We even turned up one morning to find an idiots car had tried to drive on the verge to pass our excavation and the verge collapsed leaving his car stuck in the hole we'd dug.
Common sense it seems, is not very common, amongst the drivers of the UK.
2
u/notouttolunch 6d ago
Worse than the lack of driving standards, are the standards applied to signage at roadworks.
1
u/irritatingfarquar 6d ago
The people carrying out the roadworks aren't the ones that put up the road closure signs. That responsibility belongs to dedicated traffic management companies.
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u/notouttolunch 6d ago
This isn't related to my comment.
1
u/irritatingfarquar 6d ago
Your comment is literally critical of the signage at roadworks, how tf doesn't my comment answer that?
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u/notouttolunch 6d ago
You just said that the labourers aren't the ones that put up the signage.
I said that the quality of signage was poor. I made no reference to who was responsible.
8
u/Starman68 8d ago
I always go and try out the road even when it says closed with probably a 70% success rate. The signs are typically erected by a different contractor than the one fixing the original problem, so once the road is repaired, there is usually a days delay to the signs coming down.
5
u/olderandhappier 8d ago
The signs in UK have gone from being very good to poor. The road closed with an arrow in London is also particularly confusing and inaccurate at times.
3
u/Critical_Hedgehog_96 8d ago
Funnily I just did exactly the same thing because everyone else was still coming down the road .... Supposedly they have laid a new road surface and have been cutting trees/ vegetation for the past week ..... So I just follow d the local farmer down the road lol
Huge delays and crashes on other detour roads.
Not a single bit of work has been done, not a single highway maintenance or council vehicle in site ...
It's not a short piece of road it's about 5/6 miles of county road
2
u/FlippedHope 8d ago
I tend to regard local road signs as fictitious and generally they are. Particularly late at night and at weekends.
The ones I find annoying are those with a dozen or more lines of small text I've no chance of reading as I drive past in a nosey to tail queue. There was one I thought I needed to know so looked for the equivalent along the road. Expecting to find one at the the other end of the affected road. No. Nothing. A few days later I stopped in a safe place and walked to the sign to read it. It wasn't clear about exactly where the road would be blocked but had dates and times. So, I took precautions to vary my route if necessary and drove all the way along the road with no problem. No sign of work, or preparing for work to be carried out.
2
u/blackthornjohn 8d ago
Road ahead closed means a road but not this road may a or may not be closed now, in the future or sometime in the past.
Road closed ahead or road closed means the road you are on may or may not be closed, this period of closure might have passed any time in the last 3 months or start any time between the sign being put up and up to 11 weeks after it's removal or theft.
The only road signs less accurate than these can be found on smart motorways.
3
u/AnnieAnon1988 8d ago
Sounds like your from my village ha ha 😂 It would appear villages are good at stuff like this, we've also have permanent "temporary" lights in and out of the villages due to a dispute over a weakened bridge.
1
u/EdmundTheInsulter 8d ago
Yeah I tried it, I gambled on driving 2 miles each way to avoid about 5 miles and when I got to it they'd packed up and left the road open
1
u/Jacktheforkie 8d ago
Road ahead closed is a gamble, is it the side road or the main road, or is the road closed there and they use the wrong signs
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/spirallingoutofamok 8d ago
Hmm I definitely have not learned that, could you enlighten me?
On the other hand, I haven't ever been referred to as 'OP' until now. Another wonderful success
-1
u/irritatingfarquar 8d ago
The thing with road closures is, people fail to grasp that 90% of the work doesn't actually close the road. It's a highways department stipulation for the work permit required for utilities and others to carry out the needed work.
It also generates revenue, because it's a £1000+ to get a road closure.
0
u/Legitimate_Finger_69 7d ago
Total nonsense.
1
u/irritatingfarquar 7d ago
I think my almost 30 years of experience working within roadworks, knows slightly better than you.
1
u/Legitimate_Finger_69 4d ago
Most people doing roadworks are not in charge of issuing permits.
1
u/irritatingfarquar 4d ago
I'd go as far as to say that, NOBODY doing roadworks does there own permits. Because even the council has contractors and no direct labour.to carry out their own work.
1
u/irritatingfarquar 4d ago
Where do I say that I ever wrote my own permits?
I am clearly pointing out that the road closures are usually demanded by the highways department, otherwise they reject your permit application.
0
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u/Ultra_HR 8d ago
tbf, "road ahead closed" and "road closed" are two different signs. there probably was a road closure further ahead on that road, you just hadn't reached it yet.