Safe highway merge

I was cruisin on the 401 with about 50 others at 120 kph.

Some-one gets on the entry lane and speeds up to 60 kph and merges.

Now I am amidst 50 cars that have to avoid hitting this a--hole.

I don't know?

Any ideas?

Cheers

Viper1

I know and we complain about those who travel at 151 in the middle of the night with no cars on road.

I know what you mean these people wreak havic. They enter a 400 series highway not even doing 80 km/hr then everyone else has to change lanes at the last second and slam on the brakes cause of them.

This is a big problem and unfortunately i think it has something to do with our poor lane discipline. People wont drive in the right lane if they have to deal with this all the time.

I am not sure they are hard to catch. Even if you had an officer watching the on ramp they would likely follow the rules then properly. Plus there isn't to much you can do or places for the officer to sit to watch this.

In the GTA i don't even know where you would safely have room to do it...

Sometimes in and around Toronto i have no idea how HSD deals with lane discipline, speeding etc. The roads are so crammed as it is with so much traffic and there is no room to sit and watch this kind of stuff. I dont know how they pull people over and with so many motorists they cause everyone to freak out in a marked car or if they have their lights on.

I find in the GTA HSD does alot of speed and this style of enforcement on the weekends where there is less volume and they can actually pull people over on the shoulder.

It bet it takes alot of cuts to pull people over on a 3 lane packed highway with people all flying by your car over a 100 km/hr and they only care what time they get to work.

Mind you in and around Toronto as well these guys when they do give out tickets are usually for 30 over. So many people cruise at around 120 including the officers.

But at 30 over the accused is going to go to court. When your talking 3 points, a few hundred, insurance increase theyll go to court.

So it is my guess that in Toronto with all accidents, construction, traffic problems, accidents, broken down cars these HSD officers have so much on their plate lane discipline and speed enforcement is hard to do.

I have no idea how much time these guys spend in court but im guessing its alot. I have no idea how many they run per shift on say the Toronto HSD unit but they don't seem to have the resources. And like i said i would guess these officers spend alot of time in court because if your gonna ticket people for 30 over chances are they will take it to court.

No court on sundays perhaps why so many officers out on the 400's??? Last sunday i was on the QEW in about a 10 km stretch i must have seen 3-4 officers. 2 had customers, another with a laser gun, another waiting on an off ramp.

I have never seen it like that during the week or rush hour....

Back to the point how these guys even have the time or patience to deal with this kinda stuff i have no idea....

I bet it must be hard to pull people over to on a packed highway with so much traffic with everyone going 80 km/hr riding the next guys bumper cause they are so angry to be going this slow.

Speaking of poor lane discipline and people entering lanes at the wrong speed. The 401 with that collector/express system is a total mess. Right where 400 and DVP meets it gets wild. People switching lanes at last second the fast lane of the collectors meets the slow lane of the express....

Maybee we know why Cam wooley retired!

tdrive2 wrote:

I know and we complain about those who travel at 151 in the middle of the night with no cars on road.

I know what you mean these people wreak havic. They enter a 400 series highway not even doing 80 km/hr then everyone else has to change lanes at the last second and slam on the brakes cause of them.

This is a big problem and unfortunately i think it has something to do with our poor lane discipline. People wont drive in the right lane if they have to deal with this all the time.

I am not sure they are hard to catch. Even if you had an officer watching the on ramp they would likely follow the rules then properly. Plus there isn't to much you can do or places for the officer to sit to watch this.

In the GTA i don't even know where you would safely have room to do it...

Sometimes in and around Toronto i have no idea how HSD deals with lane discipline, speeding etc. The roads are so crammed as it is with so much traffic and there is no room to sit and watch this kind of stuff. I dont know how they pull people over and with so many motorists they cause everyone to freak out in a marked car or if they have their lights on.

I find in the GTA HSD does alot of speed and this style of enforcement on the weekends where there is less volume and they can actually pull people over on the shoulder.

It bet it takes alot of cuts to pull people over on a 3 lane packed highway with people all flying by your car over a 100 km/hr and they only care what time they get to work.

Mind you in and around Toronto as well these guys when they do give out tickets are usually for 30 over. So many people cruise at around 120 including the officers.

But at 30 over the accused is going to go to court. When your talking 3 points, a few hundred, insurance increase theyll go to court.

So it is my guess that in Toronto with all accidents, construction, traffic problems, accidents, broken down cars these HSD officers have so much on their plate lane discipline and speed enforcement is hard to do.

I have no idea how much time these guys spend in court but im guessing its alot. I have no idea how many they run per shift on say the Toronto HSD unit but they don't seem to have the resources. And like i said i would guess these officers spend alot of time in court because if your gonna ticket people for 30 over chances are they will take it to court.

No court on sundays perhaps why so many officers out on the 400's??? Last sunday i was on the QEW in about a 10 km stretch i must have seen 3-4 officers. 2 had customers, another with a laser gun, another waiting on an off ramp.

I have never seen it like that during the week or rush hour....

Back to the point how these guys even have the time or patience to deal with this kinda stuff i have no idea....

I bet it must be hard to pull people over to on a packed highway with so much traffic with everyone going 80 km/hr riding the next guys bumper cause they are so angry to be going this slow.

Speaking of poor lane discipline and people entering lanes at the wrong speed. The 401 with that collector/express system is a total mess. Right where 400 and DVP meets it gets wild. People switching lanes at last second the fast lane of the collectors meets the slow lane of the express....

Maybee we know why Cam wooley retired!

we were going 120 the entrant was going 60????????????????

The entrant had at least a 1/4 mile more to speed-up.

I thought it was dangerous to do this.

Cheers

Viper1

viper1 wrote:

Some-one gets on the entry lane and speeds up to 60 kph and merges.

Now I am amidst 50 cars that have to avoid hitting this a--hole.

In an ideal world, that driver would have been pulled over and charged with an unsafe merge and impeding traffic. But then you mentioned that everyone was doing 120 km/h... so he could have been charged with unnecessary slow driving... or since he cut off several vehicles... maybe even careless driving.

People get weird ideas about driving. They merge onto expressways at slow speeds because they're afraid of the high speeds and possibly hitting something ahead; however, the biggest risk is being rear-ended. So you get people attempting to merge at 60, 50 or even 40 km/h onto a 400-Series Highway. The other thing is, often they don't start accelerating until they're at least a kilometre down the road. People don't like the idea of having large boulders stuck in the middle of the road but they have no problem driving well under the speed of the traffic or merging into high-speed traffic too slowly "because everyone else is going too fast," effectively creating the same problem. Oh well...

Radar Identified wrote:

viper1 wrote:

Some-one gets on the entry lane and speeds up to 60 kph and merges.

Now I am amidst 50 cars that have to avoid hitting this a--hole.

In an ideal world, that driver would have been pulled over and charged with an unsafe merge and impeding traffic. But then you mentioned that everyone was doing 120 km/h... so he could have been charged with unnecessary slow driving... or since he cut off several vehicles... maybe even careless driving.

People get weird ideas about driving. They merge onto expressways at slow speeds because they're afraid of the high speeds and possibly hitting something ahead; however, the biggest risk is being rear-ended. So you get people attempting to merge at 60, 50 or even 40 km/h onto a 400-Series Highway. The other thing is, often they don't start accelerating until they're at least a kilometre down the road. People don't like the idea of having large boulders stuck in the middle of the road but they have no problem driving well under the speed of the traffic or merging into high-speed traffic too slowly "because everyone else is going too fast," effectively creating the same problem. Oh well...

If you are the cop how do you catch them?

Usually they are gone after the shite happens.

It just freaked me out slowing to 60 at that speed.

Cheers

Viper1

I can't find anything in the HTA specifically targeted at merging, so I guess it would be "unsafe lane change" under s. 154 (1) (a) or "unnecessary slow driving" under s. 132. Maybe even "fail to keep right" under s. 147 (1) due to how much merging lane was left.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves, just below "fail to signal". I find that most of the idiots drive economy cars. On some of the shorter ramps, I have to floor the Escort in order to properly merge in, but they're afraid to go more than 50% throttle because it might hurt their precious engine. The second type just baffles me. They'll merge in at 80 km/h or so, then suddenly rocket away at 130 km/h - but only after they have forced me to brake and turn off cruise control.

It's also one of the issues I bring up about increased speed limits - if we have so much trouble with it now, what will happen if the right lane is going at 140 km/h? Very few economy cars will be able to reach that speed within 250 m - the Escort can barely get over 110 km/h by the end of most of the shorter ramps, even with the SPI engine (American V-TAK, yo!).

Simple - Unsafe Lane change

Combination of many factors produces this congestion:

- length of ramp

- merging vehicles not coming onto thru hwy at speed of 100km/hr

- others on the thru highway following too close

- others on the thru highway exceeding the speed limit (knowlingly that the merging vehicles can never get up to that speed to safely merge)

Not to mention drivers that exit at ramps slowing down on the main artery, rather than slowing once on the ramp. Now that would be unnecessary slow driving.

ps...don't have a bleeping clue what a 1/4 mile is......never have seen an odometer reading in MPH to even know how far that is.....Canada went to metric in '77.

I have yet to come across a single ramp that didn't allow the Escort to merge at the speed of traffic (in good weather conditions). Even the really short 'American' style of on-ramp which gives you maybe 30 m to merge will have enough straight road before the dotted lines for me to unleash all 110 HP.

Following too close on the highway does present a problem for novice drivers trying to merge, but it didn't take me long to realise that I had to get my speed up before the halfway point of the merging lane, so that I would have enough time to signal and squeeze my way in. In my opinion, the main factor is drivers believing that giving too much gas will cause their engine to explode. This means that base model Civics, Fits, Escorts, 4-cylinder SUVs, etc. will have problems on many of the on-ramps. Changing that kind of thinking is as likely as getting rid of the 5000 km oil change, so I'm not holding my breath. Any attempt at education would just be met with "The MAN just wants me to break my car and buy a new one! I'm not falling for that!"

I think I read a story about a month ago where a woman died on HWY 400 merging from a service centre. From the story it sounded like she was travelling too slow and a pickup hit her from the side.

Now how about this scenario - say there is something wrong with your car that prevents it from exceeding 80 km/h; plugged cat converter, misfire, whatever. As far as I know, there is nothing to legally prevent you from using a highway with a speed limit of 100 km/h. How do you merge? Does s. 154 simply mean you can't use the highway unless traffic is light?

PS: A mile is 1.6 km, so a quarter of that is 400 m, which I think is around the length of one of the longer 400-series on-ramps.

hwybear wrote:

.don't have a bleeping clue what a 1/4 mile is

Silly police man. It's what marks the start and finish of a race! Haven't you ever seen those white lines painted on the road by the locals of rural hick towns??

Example: (see white line?)

Perhaps a minimum speed limit would have to be applied here? I mean slowing down even from 100 to 60 because someone afraid of going 100 is still quite a bit. In Europe minimum speed limit is quite common on their roads. There are plenty of alternative routes to be considered if one is unable to go the speed limit of 400-series.

What is worse though is what I saw when traveling on hwy 24 (in Cambridge) - someone went on the 401 with an emergency spare tire. That's just playing Russian roulette with yourself, except you are aiming at not only your head, but at someone else's too.

There is certainly some bone head ramps designed from way back.....one near London....think it is to hwy 4.....travelling EB, have to go merge into the exit ramp, go under the bridge and curl around to go north...that part makes sense.......but if you are SB on Hwy 4, and want to go east, you merge back around and use the EB exiting ramp as your merge ramp....that is just a mess!

ps...don't have a bleeping clue what a 1/4 mile is......never have seen an odometer reading in MPH to even know how far that is.....Canada went to metric in '77.

you must be a youngster.

1/4 mile is 440 yards.

My old Kawasaki used to reach 100 mph in that distance.

It is close to 400 meters.

I know what you mean though I rented a car with a speedometer that had a switch for either and when I first went out it was in mph.

I was only going 100 and passing everyone.lol

Honest mistake.

Cheers

Viper1

Not quite a youngster....37.... was driving in 1987....10yrs after MPH was gone! I don't know what "F is either for temperature...

Imperial makes no sense at all. No simple multiples of 10. When temp is 0C that is the point of water freezing and above and below tha point rise accodingly....then you get "F" where the freezing is a little way up...just messed up

That's ok most don't know what kelvin(degrees) are either.

We learned all that in school.

Cheers

Viper1

Haha, I was just going to suggest switching to Kelvin. Who cares when water freezes; I want to know when EVERYTHING freezes.

I hate the imperial system, too. We had to be somewhat fluent in both systems in engineering, but I never got the hang of dividing by 12. I still don't know the relationship between an ounce, a quart, and a pint, or know what a yard is. The TTC had the idea of converting their tunnel chainage numbers to metric with the SRT, but never followed suit with the rest of the system. That was annoying when I wrote a computer program to track work orders.

Ask people their height or weight and they will likely state it in imperial. In Europe you'll get a metric answer.

If you buy a bag of potatoes, carrots or onions, do you think in pounds or kgs?

Getting back to the original point of the post, the on ramp to Eastbound Gardiner at Jameson is about 3 car lengths and then concrete barrier. You've got maybe 2 seconds to check your blind spot and decide whether to merge or stop while driving down a hill and on an S curve. Brutal.

That's one of two of those shorty ramps that I know of - the other in Orillia. If I remember correctly, you can see traffic while still on the downhill portion and pick your spot before the dotted lines. The only time I remember having a problem on that ramp was when the car in front of me failed to speed up and I had to merge at around 70 km/h. Granted, I only use that ramp maybe once or twice a year.

Oh, and I'm 173 cm and I buy my onions by the kilogram.

ticketcombat wrote:

Ask people their height or weight and they will likely state it in imperial. In Europe you'll get a metric answer.

I'm 183 cm and weigh 82 kg.

This is not just Europe. Anywhere outside the North America (except, perhaps, the UK), you will get a metric answer.

ticketcombat wrote:

the on ramp to Eastbound Gardiner at Jameson is about 3 car lengths and then concrete barrier

The westbound on-ramp isn't much better, both of them are suicide ramps, probably why they close them during rush hour.

this one was east-bound at leslie it is about 1/2 mile long(About a kilometer)

Challenged youngsters may need this comparison.lol

As to Europe

Way back when I took a trip on Freddie Laker 747 to Gatwick.

It took about 10 hours and we landed and got in our rental car.

That first MILE or TWO was quite an adventure.

Cheers

Viper1