This story tells of a number of “near misses” involving workmen (link removed as now dead), where drivers have stopped to remove cones so that they can drive through roadworks instead of following signed diversion routes.
The implication is that they’re even stopping on motorways (the M60 and M56) to do it, so they can use slip roads!
Between 2005 and 2010, nine road workers were killed and more seriously injured while working on England’s motorways and major A roads as a direct result of accidents involving drivers travelling past or through works.
Obviously, the concept of safety is a little hard for some Mancunians to grasp when you read this news story..
Mind you, it isn’t just in Manchester that stupidity exists. The other day I was driving along a road which has been temporarily made one-way while gas main maintenance work takes place. As I came around a bend there was some prick driving towards me – baseball cap, face like a potato with a walnut stapled to it. He knew he was driving the wrong way – he’d either ignored the No Entry sign at the end of the road, or if he was a resident he knew full well he was going the wrong way, but he probably thought he was dead clever by not taking the diversion.
The irony is that the signed diversion is a maximum of about half a mile. In his case, judging from where he was – it would have been about a quarter of that.
The police should throw the book at prats like these. And the courts should remove their licences permanently.