Page 1 of 2

Gritting failure

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 6:17 pm
by Anonymous
I know its an old chestnut and there has been a lot on the telly about the failure to deal with what are not that unusual cold weather conditions but it hits home when you get the dreaded phone call that one of your kids has had and accident.
This happened in Harpenden Herts and 3 out of 4 roads to the village where blocked off due to accidents caused by ice on the roads which had not been treated.
My lad luckily survived with cuts and bruises and severe whip lash and but I understand others may not have been so lucky last night.
When will we get it together in this country?

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 6:24 pm
by Derek
OMG, hope your lad is ok Bob, was like that for days around here.

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 6:26 pm
by Pete
Wow!

Looks familiar to my daughter's shunt last year.
Good news that the lad is OK.

They will NEVER sort it out in this country, because it costs too much for the "occasional" snow shower....

And then they will try to get "Gas guzzler" 4 x 4's off the road when they are the only thing that works in these conditions.....Rant-tastic :evil:

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 6:53 pm
by Anonymous
i hope he is ok bob

this country is pathetic dealing with any sort of weather condition other countries are laughing at us

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 7:17 pm
by Anonymous
Hope he's OK Bob. I got hit in my fiesta (an old pooper I bought for the winter) last Wednesday. That was due to both poorly gritted roads and the other driver being a tit.

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 9:43 pm
by TYREMAN
I'm Glad he has escaped with minor injury's.

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 10:10 pm
by JohnR
Glad he is OK Bob

ta

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 10:25 pm
by Anonymous
Thanks guys he had slowed due to the conditions a young women in her Mums car hit the ice at speed braked crossed the center of the road and pushed him backwards and nearly of the road luckily he had his belt on. he has the bruises to prove it and the air bag went off.

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 10:29 pm
by latil
Hope all is OK,best wishes.
When will peeps realise that what they've just scraped off the windscreen is also going to be on the road and keep off the brakes?
There's been loads thru the hedges round here,they just don't take the conditions into account. There is no legal duty for any council to put down salt.

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 10:32 pm
by Anonymous
oof.

hey maybe there should be an emergency grit button fitted to cars so as you are sliding it puts sand or grit or something down to help.

Oof. Of course the other school of thought is they should not grit anywhere at all, then everyone would not try to drive anywhere, or would buy studded tyres, lke they do in the more advanced countries like oh, scandinavia.

Suppose

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 10:55 pm
by Anonymous
I suppose when you think of it we have not had this sort of road conditions around here anyway for may be 18 or 19 years and anyone passing there driving test in that time would not have experienced these conditions.
perhaps a skid test as part of the driving test would help?
we used to go to an industrial estate in the old E93a's and let rip.

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 09 11:19 pm
by newport100
Glad he,s not too badly hurt Bob- certaintly has been dodgy round Harpenden / Luton /Dunstable for the last week - think iv only seen one gritter in all that time :roll:

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 09 9:01 am
by Dave-R
The weather is the wrong way around these days. That is the problem.

Up here in the North we always got the worst frosts and we got them a month before the South and kept them a month after the South was in blooming spring.

But these days it is often colder in the South during the winter. We hardly see any snow up here now either.

As a result, we in the North have very aggressive gritting and huge stockpiles of grit. The local authorities in the South are more used to not having to grit at all and only keep small stockpiles of grit.

At one time if you wanted to buy a used car up here you were much better off buying one from down South because all the cars up here used to rot like hell with all the salt but the Southern cars used to never see it and we used to be amazed at the condition of cars down there.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 09 9:17 am
by Anonymous
glad your sons not hurt Bob

You got to sympathise a little with the councils, and I for one hate our local council with a vengeance but here we haven't had this kind of weather for 18 years or so.
If i'd have been paying council tax for 18 years for mountains of salt slowly dissolving away in the rain and 20 gritters/snowplows doing jack i'd be well annoyed to say the least.

The poor Bananarama! can't win either way.

For the record I'm in no way connected to our local council :D well except the urge to do an Arnie on the planning dept

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 09 11:38 am
by Dave-R
Dave wrote: We hardly see any snow up here now either.
Of course, having said that we just had an inch in the last hour and it is still snowing hard. :lol: