4 Tips To Reduce Car Accidents With Young Drivers

Driver in a Mitsubishi Galant using a hand held mobile phone  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Almost every young driver believes that they have mastered the art of moving two or four motor driven wheels effectively across the U.K.’s motorways as well as A and B roads. Fortunately, parents and guardians do usually know best and offering tips to help young drivers drive safely might just save lives.

Highway lighting, safety signage and lines on the road are all designed to help make the driver’s life easier as well as safer for all those around you. Nevertheless, young people have less fear because they haven’t experienced trouble on the roads, but you do hope that your guiding influence will win through.

Could No Signposts Work Safely In Your Village?

Traffic lights can have several additional lights for filter turns or bus lanes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you drive through Britain’s villages, towns and cities or across the giant motorway network, you are bombarded with signs which are there to provide information to make your journey safer for you and everyone else using the road. What would you do if  the signs went away?

Hans Monderman was a Dutch road traffic engineer and he thought of himself as an innovator, especially when he designed an area of road where there were no road signs so people had to find their own way, negotiate with other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and perhaps use their brains a little more than usual.

How Temporary Traffic Control Signs Can Save Lives

Traffic Sign I (Photo credit: Reverend Pain)

You can drive through the same town twice every day on your way to and from work and know every single traffic control sign that you’re going to pass by, but from time to time, perhaps due to some maintenance or a traffic accident, some temporary traffic control signs will be installed for your safety. How will these affect your day?

Passing and seeing those same permanent signs regularly, means that you can often take them for granted and it’s only when a speed limit is changed that your mind is able to react to the information being passed through to your brain.

The History of Traffic Cones

You will meet a high number of traffic cones during the course of your lifetime and there is a good chance you might find one or two in your garden, often leaving you to wonder how they arrived there in the first place.

Statue of Hume. Edinburgh. May 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The purpose for traffic cones on the U.K.’s roads is well known and observed, but did you know they were invented by Charles P Rudeebaker in 1914? Unlike today’s plastic models, the original models were made completely of concrete. 

As materials have changed over the years and technology has rapidly increased, manufacturing and materials of traffic cones have change considerably. Today’s traffic cones have added a reflective collar so that when light from a car shines on them in the dark, drivers can see them from a long way off.

Their use was increased during the 1950s in the UK,  because the police force started placing them extensively across the road systems. At that time, traffic cones were made of wood. 

Why Safety Signs Are Located To Help You

When a child is knocked over and injured, close to their school, people often jump to the conclusion that the child was either inconsistent with their use of the Green Cross code, or the driver must have been speeding.

60KM/H Speed limit sign in Australia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Driving around Britain’s roads, you will see plenty of safety road signs offering you information to help you decide how to drive on those roads.

Nevertheless, some drivers believe that they can drive faster than the safety signs suggest and these types of drivers are those that cause death and destruction on our roads.

Speeding drivers that disregard the actual or suggested speed limits for a road risk not only their own safety, but everyone else in a vehicle, on a bike or on foot, on the same roads.

Drivers that do consistently disregard the speed limits across the UK run the risk they will be caught on speed detection cameras, driving too fast, which will cost them a fine and points on their driving licence. Where they do this too many times, their driving licence will be taken away from them.

How Road Safety Affects Everyone On The Road

Almost everyone will know someone who has been greatly affected by an accident or personal injury on Britain’s roads. It’s not just the consequences of a dent in a vehicle or a broken arm, but the long term effect on a person’s health and the ability to work effectively and drive again on roads where they were once confident, but are now scared.

Bulb outs at a midblock crosswalk in Canada (likely in British Columbia) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The cost to the medical profession as well as the days of lost work, the benefits system kicking in for a number of people and the lack of tax for the government because people are off work, are all direct results of people failing to act safely on our busy roads.

Welcome To The Roads And Motorway Services Blog

We all use roads, with varying degrees of success, but the advent of GPS has helped many people find the best route from A to B. Through this blog, we aim to bring you as much up-to-date information about roads and motorway services as we can, from a commercial and business point of view, to help you navigate these busy places.

We will talk a lot about highway lighting because this forms such a large part of road and motorway services. Without effective lighting, it will be difficult for people to find their way safely around Britain’s roads and motorway services.