Generalism

There is something to learn every single day of your life. This work-safe video taught me today’s little lesson. Wow.

I, like many people, received a Nike Store email this morning. I do quite a bit of sport when I have a mind, so, being interested in the tennis top that they were showing, I clicked on it. And it took me to their website. And left me there at the home page.

But I wanted to look at the t-shirt I just clicked on! Why couldn’t you take me straight to it? You mean I now have to work to find it? Even though it was originally handed to me on a plate? I was interested enough to click on it, but now not so sure…

So I went back to the email and clicked again; sometimes computers have funny turns that simply clicking a second time seems to sort.

Aha! This time I’m taken through to the shop, but… the page hasn’t loaded correctly. Well okay, tough. I have limited viewing time, and you’ve squandered two tries, more than most websites get. It’s now going to be much harder to pull me in, and if that’s the case with me, a regular amateur sportsman, how is it going to be for people of a lesser inclination?

There have been several times recently that I’ve been driving, on the M1, the backbone of the UK road network, at midnight, with traffic at a standstill. Lorries, cars and vans as far as the eye can see, going absolutely nowhere.

Let me quickly go over that again; car, motorway, midnight, traffic jam.

I can only think that everyone is deciding that driving is getting so bad that they’re all driving late at night to avoid the jams. And thereby causing jams at a different time of day.

What also doesn’t help is that many people are now using Satellite Navigation to get from point A to point B. Now if I want to go from London to Leeds, I’ll type it into my sat-nav, and let it take me there. It’s generally the same route every time; back roads, major roads, motorway, back off to major roads, then minor roads to the destination door. And this is great. UNLESS. Unless you’re not one person with sat-nav, but 10, or 100, or 1000 people, and then you realise that EVERY person that is travelling from London to Leeds is using sat-nav, following the IDENTICAL route to you.

So of course the other thing I have now noticed, especially late at night, is just how empty every other non-sat-nav-recommended road is. Silent. Not a badger. A purely blissful driving experience. So is there a chance that having upgraded from maps to sat-nav to get me to places quicker that I’ll now consider going back to maps again? To avoid traffic jams on the M1 at midgnight along with 10,000 other sat-nav users? You betcha bottom dollar!

I’ve been driving around the UK quite a bit recently, and I’ve come up with a universal truth about lorries. Call it a Snoopyism if you will.

Lorries are dangerous.

With lorries on a single lane, the traffic clogs up. On a dual carriageway, lorries either stay in the slow lane, whilst every other vehicle stays in the overtaking lane, or, they overtake each other very VERY slowly, blocking both lanes in the process. Either way the traffic clogs up. On a motorway, lorries seem to be permanently overtaking each other (at identical speeds), reducing the three lanes down to one lane, which every other vehicle on the road stays permanently in, whether driving quickly or slowly. In all situations the traffic clogs up, people get frustrated and, as people do, make mistakes or do silly things.

In addition, lorries appear to overtake will little concern for other vehicles on the road, the draft that they create in their wake is enough to send a car out of its lane, and in the wet, the dense spray obscures the road in all directions.

Based on the above, and based on listening to traffic accidents on the morning news I would not be at all suriprised if AT LEAST 80% of all dual carriageway and motorway accidents are either directly or indirectly caused by lorries. I wonder if any research has been done to back this up, and if not why not? And why, when there’s so much research going into cars that can drive themselves, and their presence on the roads is so dangerous to all other drivers, that we hear NOTHING about automating lorry driving, a task which would not only unclog the roads, but also make them safer in the process. I’m starting to wonder if lorry drivers have a particularly good union…