Cross Hatching on road

[davepoth]

Driving my Mother to IKEA today (the glamour!) and I was stuck behind a gentleman who was probably called Reginald (not Reg, that would be too familiar) travelling at 22mph in a 40mph limit, on a wide single carriageway road with a cross-hatched section in the middle as wide as the single running lanes; at points it turns into a turn lane but not on this particular section. Here's a Google Street View link:

http://goo.gl/maps/SFU5U


I make the pass, bags of room before the traffic island up ahead (due to the slow speed of the KA) and I didn't even get up to 40mph. A car travelling the other way honks their horn, and Mother chided me for making the pass there.

Was I wrong? I was pretty certain it was allowed.

Edited by davepoth on Monday 2nd December 16:07

[LordGrover]

I'm with you, but await advice from more knowledgeable types.
If just hatchings yes, not so much if near lights, junction, etc. though.

[S10GTA]

I was always taught to treat them like a brick wall. I'd be interested to know if this is correct?

[Dave Hedgehog]

i thought cross hatching was a special lane installed just for me

[MartinQ]

If bounded by a solid white line, it's a no go. Since these have a broken line, you can enter but only if necessary. Whether that includes overtaking, I would guess not.

[Pothole]

It all depends on your definition of necessary. I see passing slowfks as very necessary. Plod's MMV.

[R0G]

Chevrons with broken white lines can be used just as any other part of the road but the more the paint means the more the danger

It is not illegal to use them and a driver can only be done if they cause a danger to others just as with anything else such as passing using lane 1 of a 3 lane road for example

[davepoth]

LordGrover said:

I'm with you, but await advice from more knowledgeable types.
If just hatchings yes, not so much if near lights, junction, etc. though.

My understanding too - treat it as a very wide dashed line.

[Munter]

davepoth said:

LordGrover said:

I'm with you, but await advice from more knowledgeable types.
If just hatchings yes, not so much if near lights, junction, etc. though.

My understanding too - treat it as a very wide dashed line.

I treat them as an area where if anything should "go wrong", it'll be assumed it's my fault regardless.

Here for instance http://goo.gl/maps/XfgkT it's easily wide enough for an overtake while someone go's the other way. And most people keep well left to allow for oncoming cars straddling the hatchings. But should I clip a non local who is determined to stand their ground and run along up against the hatchings. I'd expect some serious consequences in court.

[p1esk]

I find the rules on this sort of thing are confusing. It all depends on what is meant by 'necessary', and that never seems to be made clear.

Where a hatched area is bordered by broken lines, I would readily enter it to do an overtake, and so long as the overtake can be done safely, that would be good enough for me.

As for "more paint means more danger", I'm not sure that is as good a guide as it might be. It sounds plausible, but I'm not sure I would necessarily let that override my own judgement. It can be useful to have warnings relating to hazards that may not be readily apparent, but quite often the road safety and traffic engineers go a bit overboard with signs and road paint, and I do wonder if we would be better off if they were to be a bit more sparing in their use of signs and road paint; but that's just my feeling, and as usual YMMV.

[SK425]

Diagram 1040.2

"Length of road along which drivers should not overtake by passing through the marking unless it is seen by the driver to be safe to do so."

davepoth said:

Was I wrong? I was pretty certain it was allowed.

It is if you can see it's safe. Which is a pretty good thing to check before any overtake .

[FunkyNige]

So what about when the 'stop overtaking' arrows that appear before hatching without a solid white line?
Like here for example -

https://maps.google.co.uk/?ll=52.392023,1.007652&a...

(I know it's not a good place to overtake, just the first I thought of)

[SK425]

FunkyNige said:

So what about when the 'stop overtaking' arrows that appear before hatching without a solid white line?
Like here for example -

https://maps.google.co.uk/?ll=52.392023,1.007652&a...

(I know it's not a good place to overtake, just the first I thought of)

Do any of the five meanings under Diagram 1014 apply?

[FunkyNige]

SK425 said:

FunkyNige said:

So what about when the 'stop overtaking' arrows that appear before hatching without a solid white line?
Like here for example -

https://maps.google.co.uk/?ll=52.392023,1.007652&a...

(I know it's not a good place to overtake, just the first I thought of)

Do any of the five meanings under Diagram 1014 apply?

Looks like it, ta.
1014 (the arrow) says "Direction in which vehicular traffic should pass a road marking shown in diagram ... 1040 [the cross hatching] ..."

[p1esk]

Good grief, just how much good is all this variety and complexity of road marking achieving?

The vast majority of drivers will not notice a good deal of it, let alone understand what it means and be helped by it.

We could probably get rid of 90% of this crap, and nobody would be any worse off.

[LordGrover]

... probably better off.
There is far too much paint and too many signs - most of which are simply ignored because they just fade into the background as they're too commonplace. I know it's not right, but I'm sure that's what happens.
I consider myself to be a fairly good driver, though plenty of room for improvement hence IAM. It alarms me when my observer asks me what the sign was we just passed and I barely even noticed it - and I'm sure I'm concentrating much more than the casual driver, especially when being observed.
Hopefully it's just me, but I fear it isn't.

[7db]

LordGrover said:

what the sign was we just passed

"centre-line marking" is a good fall-back.

[p1esk]

7db said:

LordGrover said:

what the sign was we just passed

"centre-line marking" is a good fall-back.

Do you mean the difference between a plain centre-line, and a hazard line; because TBH I don't derive any benefit from the hazard lines. I would prefer to just have a centre-line and leave it at that. We can then concentrate on looking for actual hazards, rather than linework that suggests there is a hazard, but gives no clue as to what it is.

[7db]

Hazard lines I actually find useful, Dave, but my point was that when smug Observers ask the "last sign" question they are usually referring only to upright signs. The paint on the road is a traffic sign and so the last sign you've passed is usually the paint in the road, not the tin on the stick. That's more often than not the centre-line, but you could go for "carriageway edge marker" if you prefer.

If they can't tell if you've seen the sign by your driving, then they really have no business polluting the air with the question, is my humble opinion. One of the delights of co-driving in the 7 is that you can hear and feel everything the driver is thinking.

[johnao]

7db said:

Hazard lines I actually find useful, Dave, but my point was that when smug Observers ask the "last sign" question they are usually referring only to upright signs. The paint on the road is a traffic sign and so the last sign you've passed is usually the paint in the road, ...

Ha, Ha, very funny. A bit too clever by half if you ask me. You won't catch me out with that one! Oh, No! This "smug" observer always asks... what was the last warning triangle we passed?

7db said:

If they can't tell if you've seen the sign by your driving, then they really have no business polluting the air with the question, is my humble opinion.

Not true. If you ask this question having immediately passed (say) a "Right Hand Junction" warning triangle, which itself refers to a junction that is not yet visible, what you are really trying to find out is whether or not the sign has registered in their brain and are they actively seeking out the junction and mentally preparing to deal with emerging vehicles etc. In other words is their driving plan incorporating what can be seen, what can't be seen and what might reasonably be expected to happen. Indeed, are they using warning triangles etc, to properly initiate the information phase of IPSGA? This is not something that is usually obvious when driving with relatively new associates for the simple reason that even if they've seen the warning triangle they don't build the potential hazard in to their driving plan.

Edited by johnao on Wednesday 4th December 13:43