#TRAFFIC GRIDLOCK DRIVERS#
Tailgating is the act of driving dangerously close to the car in front and a huge number of drivers do this. Any incident at all, on a main route into the city will cause a tail back - a police motorbike pulled over in the hard shoulder can cause a knock-on effect kilometers down the road as people slow down to look at him! If we were able to reduce the number of minor fender benders and avoidable breakdowns by simply adjusting our mindset and the way we drive slightly then the world would be a better place - or certainly the N4 between Celbridge and Parkwest would be! So as I mentioned before, when everything's running smooth, our road network just about copes, we all get to work on time and we all keep our sanity for another day. If this article impacts the way 1 other individual thinks and prevents that 1 individual from having an accident, that might also prevent one more twenty km tailback! If we can achieve that i'll be a happy man! It's wishful thinking to hope that this little rant on our little blog is going to have a meaningful impact on the daily commute but it has made me think about some of the decisions I make when I'm behind the wheel and I am going to change a few things about how I drive.
The 120 incidents every month that I mentioned above are a mixture of things that are largely avoidable and include us crashing into each other, us breaking down, speeding, texting, lane hogging, tailgating and all sorts of other daft things that we actually have control over! This morning's 2 hour farcical commute got me to thinking - What can I actually do about it? and it was then, as I was cursing the government and the system and ' the man' that it dawned on me that we were actually a big part of the problem and if that was the case we actually have an opportunity to make a change. Multiply this lost time out across the city and you're into millions in lost revenue, not to mention the stress and aggravation it causes the commuter - i'd be fairly confident in assuming more than one individual has been tipped over the edge thanks to commuter stress over the years. This is 2 hours lost to my employer that i'm going to struggle to make up - why? because I have to leave on time to collect my kids from the child minder. This morning for example, I'm 2 hours late for work because there was an incident on the motorway (there was a minor fender bender in the inside lane with no injuries and minimal damage). On roughly 3 out of 5 days a week my standard commute time of 40 mins (already double what it actually should take to get to my destination) will take upwards of an hour and a half. The net result for the commuter? Hours and hours of abject misery, sat in traffic jams, week after week. Throughout the city there are multiple incidents, crashes, breakdowns, fender benders, spills and other minor issues, all of which have a knock-on effect on the arteries that feed into the city. The issue arises when everything is not running smoothly and that, unfortunately is every day. "The M50 alone experiences over 120 incidents a month and rush 'hour' now lasts 8 hours! from 7am - 10am and 3pm - 7pm" Like a lot of capital cities Dublin's road infrastructure is over capacity and bursting at the seams. On a weekday it usually takes double that, which is fair enough and kind of what you'd expect living so close to the capital. On a weekend, with minimal traffic, driving in to work takes about 20 minutes and is a mixture of motorway, dual carriageway and urban roads. I live in a large village about 20km outside of Dublin and about 15km from MicksGarage HQ. When everything is running smoothly and there are no incidents the motorway network which feeds the city just about copes with the volume of traffic. The M50 alone (which is the main motorway around Dublin city) experiences over 120 incidents a month and rush 'hour' now lasts 8 hours! from 7am - 10am and 3pm - 7pm. Now before you all get too defensive, of course I accept that commuter routes are overcrowded, the sheer volume of traffic on our roads has them at breaking point, infrastructure could be improved and public transport should be better but the pointy finger of blame when it comes to some of the gridlock and motorway mayhem points at us, the motorist. it's because we drive like idiots! That's right, a large part of the problem is us. Do you know one of the main reasons there are so many traffic jams these days? I'll tell you why.