Roads

[bellinghman]

I am amused by this BBC article on Britain's most intimidating road junctions.. Particularly this comment: Between them, Birmingham, London and Glasgow took eight of the top 10 spots.

Strangely enough, I had no difficulty in guessing what the other two junctions in the list were. Yes, the Swindon and Hemel magic roundabouts, at #4 and #9.

(As someone who negotiated the Hanger Lane gyratory (#5) twice a day for several years, I think I can cope with just about anything, though I'll concede that the Glasgow ones are a real pain.)

Comments

[artela.livejournal.com]

I thought that list was going to have things like "Snake Pass in the Snow", or "The Black Mountain Road in fog and ice", but no, it seemed to be a list of junctions half of which I regard as easy-peasy (what's wrong with the M5/M6 junction for instance? It's perfectly straightforward!)

[autopope.livejournal.com]

what's wrong with the M5/M6 junction for instance?

Nose-to-tail traffic with drivers changing across three to six lanes at average speeds of 70mph, that's what's wrong with it. That, and the layout is so non-standard for British motorways (cloverleafs are vanishingly rare on this side of the Atlantic -- we use roundabouts or gyratories instead) that everybody travelling through it gets confused. Oh, and there's the third motorway feeding in half a mile upstream to add to the amusement. If you're American, layer "Boston-style drivers" on top of that.

[artela.livejournal.com]

I've used it a few times - never had a problem (apart from the "everything crawling at 15 mph one junction either side of the interchange, but I guess that's bound to happen in "rush hour"...)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yup Snake Pass in the dark - much scarier than the M8!

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, the first time I went over Snake Pass, my future first mother-in-law was driving, going to Glossop to spend Xmas with that family for the very first time.

It was dark.

It was snowing sufficiently hard that shortly after we entered, they closed it to any more traffic.

And we were in a VW beetle.

(For extra fun, MiL-to-be actually had a prosthetic for one hand, but since she'd been coping with life with only one real hand since a child, that wasn't something we tended to note most of the time. She managed to raise both a set of triplets, and a son who managed to be president of the Oxford Union before reaching his current position with BBC Newsnight, so a pretty capable woman.)

If it hadn't been dark, I might have actually seen how scary that trip was, but at the time, we were so relieved at getting away from Derby, anything looked good.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

First time I drove from Embra to Sheff the satnav took me over Snake Pass. in te dark. At the end of a long day. With TWO HOWLING CATS PISSING IN THE BACK.
Not keen to repeat that..