Who is Frank Cullinane?

ballooba

Read this article from today's Independent:
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/thousands-of-fines-for-breaking-red-lights-in-doubt-says-expert-1066671.html

This is why we need certification for driving instructors in this country.

mike65

Which bit/s are you taking issue with?

Mike.

Wishbone Ash

ballooba - are you familar with that 5 exit junction in Finglas village?

ballooba

The bit about accidents being caused by amber gamblers. As if that's the government's fault. Also regarding two sets of lights and one stop line, you stop before the stop line, not the light.

BostonB

I don't know that junction, but for sure there are many junctions around dublin with too short intervals on green. Only encourages people racing across junctions.

J_R

ballooba wrote:

Also regarding two sets of lights and one stop line, you stop before the stop line, not the light.

Correct, the lights only control the entrance to a junction with the white line as the reference point.

They do not control the exit. Once across the white line, person is no longer controlled by the lights

According to the article Frank runs a driving school and has just written a book.

Might just puirchase the book to see what other idiotic slant Frank has put on the Rules of the Road.

mike65

You can hear him talking with Pat Kenny on the radio here

www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny

Mike.

NeMiSiS

Light sequencing round Dublin is complete and utter bollix in general, in some places it makes no sense whatsoever. In your daily commute think how many times you are stopped at lights, and there is actully nothing happening, no traffic movement, no pedestrian movement, just an empty road with no one going anywhere on it..

There is a great example of this in Tallght Village .. The whole Tallght bypass is another great example of terrible sequencing, also there is a huge amount of dawdling on that road too, but that is another story..The greenhills road is another.. I could name a dozen more.

Intelligent light sequencing is not "Advanced" technology, but in 20 years when they decide that they will maybe put it in place here, that is what I would imagine they would bill it as.

I think in alot of cases lights should be turned off after a certain time of day, and motorists should use common sense. People break lights in most cases because they feel they are getting screwed by the sequencing as in "If I don't get through now, I will hit every set of red for the next 3 miles", and then of course there is the complete inability to take off at lights and turn your car left/right in this country at speed, and without jamming on at the apex of the bend. Also the "get ready" system that the UK should be brought in asap.

As for the guy in the article.. I think maybe he is promoting his book.


Edit - Two links http://www.theoxfordtimes.net/search/display.var.1471613.0.radical_idea_would_remove_traffic_lights.php
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html
TK

mike65

Curiously whenever lights go down people behave better and traffic flows freely. Maybe there is a lesson in there.


Mike.

NeMiSiS

I was going to mention the same Mike, I have been at the M1/M50 Airport roundabout.. while the lights were down.. and guess what .. no traffic!

I think it's because it makes people switch off the autopilot, and actully think about their driving, and other drivers on the road, I remember recently reading about a city that has removed a huge amount of its traffic lights. It connects the drivers, they must interact with one another in a civil manner, and with pedestrians, cyclists etc, it has been very sucessful, I just can not recall where it was...
TK

Wishbone Ash

mike65 wrote:

Curiously whenever lights go down people behave better and traffic flows freely

Sometimes it appears to flow better because the majority of motorists are on the "main" road and are therefore not held up by lights allowing egress from a side road (Naas Road being an example).

Re: the junction in Finglas.

It may be OK in a car but if one is in an articulated truck and travelling south on the Jamestown Road and wishes to turn left onto the Seamus Ennis Road it requires travelling south past the junction and then putting a 'swans neck' on the tractor unit, bring it around with the trailer and then exiting to the left.

If the lights go to amber as the tractor unit enter the junction, they will be red long before the end of the trailer enters. The lights for the other side will have turned green but he truck driver will still be going through his manoeuvre. By the time he has finished the lights will probably have gone back to red again. Frustration all around and most of it directed , unfairly at the truck driver.

J_R

Hi,

Perhaps should learn from the Indians. Watch the traffic flow. And not a traffic light, sign or cop in sight.

Indian Junction

Cionád

NeMiSiS wrote:

I think it's because it makes people switch off the autopilot, and actully think about their driving, and other drivers on the road, I remember recently reading about a city that has removed a huge amount of its traffic lights. It connects the drivers, they must interact with one another in a civil manner, and with pedestrians, cyclists etc, it has been very sucessful, I just can not recall where it was...
TK

I remember something like this was on the news a few weeks back, they removed speed signs, parking signs, road markings, nearly everything and accidents reduced dramatically as people were concentrating more, and more care was taken to avoid pedestrians etc...

Also can't remember the city, it was a trial in England anyway, and has been applied on the continent too somewhere....

BostonB

J_R wrote:

Hi,

Perhaps should learn from the Indians. Watch the traffic flow. And not a traffic light, sign or cop in sight.

Indian Junction

Its not exactly the safest place to drive is it?

Spit62500

BostonB wrote:

Its not exactly the safest place to drive is it?

90,000 people killed and 4,000,000 people seriously injured :eek:

http://www.simbaproject.org/en/simba_regions/india/

Cion&#225 wrote: »

I remember something like this was on the news a few weeks back, they removed speed signs, parking signs, road markings, nearly everything and accidents reduced dramatically as people were concentrating more, and more care was taken to avoid pedestrians etc...

Also can't remember the city, it was a trial in England anyway, and has been applied on the continent too somewhere....

Seems to have been tried inseveral countries in Europe - with enough consistency in the results to prove that it might well work. The real test might be Italy, Spain and Portugal though

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4213221.stm

BostonB

I'd say removing lights would work depending on the junction. Seems like the local councils went through a spate of putting in new junctions and lights without any really clear thinking or any stats to justify them. In a lot of cases its made the junction a bottleneck. Thats my experience at least.

mike65

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/04/ntraffic04.xml

http://archive.oxfordmail.net/2006/11/9/113375.html

It seems reasonable to suppose - Tory that he is - that the county council's traffic supremo David Robertson reads the Daily Telegraph. I wonder if he read it on Saturday when my one-time colleague David Millward, now the DT's transport correspondent, told his readers about the happy Dutch town of Drachten. Why happy? Because they have got rid of almost all of their traffic lights (the last will be going very soon) - and, in so doing, have eliminated delays and congestion. Motorists, cyclists and pedestrians, David reports, "co-exist more happily and safely".

The brains - and what brains! - behind this admirable experiment has been 61-year-old Hans Monderman, a traffic planner involved with the Brussels-backed Share Space project. He says: "We only want traffic lights where they are useful - and I haven't found anywhere where they are useful yet. It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk." In Drachten, with a population of 50,000, there used to be a road death every three years. There have been none since the removal of traffic lights began seven years ago.

If Mr Robertson was reading this article, I wonder if he then turned to the Telegraph's leader column. It stated: "On the face of it Monderman's theory sounds like something dreamt up in a certain sort of Amsterdam cafe . . . but because they were thinking about fatal accidents, Drachten's motorists didn't have any. Britain, too, might benefit from fewer traffic lights." This echoed my thoughts exactly. And I recognised at once some obvious candidates for extinction, at Oxford's nightmare Frideswide Square. But could this complicated intersection possibly function without the dozens and dozens of lights that control every movement there?

As it happens - and with astonishing synchronicity - I was to get an answer to that question within a few hours of reading the Telegraph report. Pedalling westwards from the city centre on Saturday afternoon, I arrived at the Park End Street-Frideswide Square junction just before 4.30pm, to find that every traffic light in this absurdly designed road system was out of action. I suppose I ought to have realised something was different a few moments earlier because, for once, I had not joined a long queue of cars and buses waiting at the junction. (One of the stupidest aspects of the traffic system is that the lights here only allow two or three vehicles through at a time, so there is always a long queue. A cyclist usually has to resort to wheeling his or her machine along the pavement to pass the line of buses.) Advancing tentatively into the junction, I found that other road users were stopping for me, and I was able to cross safely. Realising quickly that here was something worth watching, I took up a position in front of the Jam Factory - and marvelled at how well the system worked when the lights were off. With traffic as heavy as you might expect on a Saturday afternoon, everything was moving so much better than it usually does. From whichever direction, buses, cars, commercial vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians were arriving at the junction and going on their way with a minimum of delay - once precedence had been agreed with a signal from the hand or a friendly smile.

Even the most seemingly complicated and dangerous manoeuvres were being carried out effortlessly - a passage, for instance, from Hollybush Row, across the front of the Royal Oxford Hotel, and right, passing oncoming traffic, into Hythe Bridge Street. In no direction were queues building up. And this includes Botley Road, where traffic usually stretches over the River Thames and beyond. Twice movement stopped completely, to allow ambulances to pass through at speed, with their sirens sounding.

Wheeling my bike, I joined pedestrians crossing towards the railway station. Cars and other vehicles paused to let us on our way. On the station forecourt, I stopped to talk to the driver of the first of the line of taxis plying for trade there. He told me he was not surprised at how easily the traffic was moving. He had seen breakdowns of the lights a number of times before, and these had always eased congestion. We agreed how easy it looked for buses, leaving the bays around us, to cross towards their next stopping point on the south side of the square. It is the necessity for this manoeuvre, of course, that led to the special complications of this whole ridiculous traffic system.

At 5pm precisely, power returned to the lights. With the restoration of normal service came restoration of congestion. I rode home towards a warming cup of tea, leaving Frideswide Square in its usual mess.

Earlier in the year - in the morning rush on Monday, March 21, to be exact - the 25 sets of lights around the square suffered a similar failure, lasting two hours. The Oxford Times reported: "Road campaigners and traders believe the power cut hitting traffic lights at Frideswide Square helped reduce congestion for early morning commuters. Video footage shows motorists freely passing through the square, where seven busy roads meet, during the blackout. The photograph on this page was taken at the same time. But minutes after power was restored, traffic was queuing."

A pretty powerful case, then, for removing the lights. Not so, in the opinion of the aforementioned David Robertson, who might be wondering why I introduced him into the first sentence of this article. His explanation for how well the junction operated that morning? The Oxford Times stated: "David Robertson, the county council cabinet member for transport, said: 'Across Oxfordshire the flow of traffic was much better. We don't know what that reason is; it was not just Frideswide Square.'"

So what was his explanation for the situation on Saturday afternoon? Don't tell me - it must have been the crowd of 8,000-plus off the streets watching Oxford United. In March, Mr Robertson said the council could not judge the success of removing the traffic lights on one day's evidence. Well, now he's had more evidence - and the result of the Dutch experiment. Why not switch off the Frideswide lights, for a controlled test?

Mike.

BostonB

Good article. I've experienced the same in Dublin.

Vikings

BostonB wrote:

I'd say removing lights would work depending on the junction. Seems like the local councils went through a spate of putting in new junctions and lights without any really clear thinking or any stats to justify them. In a lot of cases its made the junction a bottleneck. Thats my experience at least.

Definitely. For some reason some bright spark though it would be a good idea to try and control the flow of traffic entering Celbridge by putting lights here there and everywhere around the bridge in the village, they were turned off after a day or two as tailbacks were massive!

Then not to mention the current mess in Lucan, for some reason they decided to remove he roundabout on Ballyowen Road and now that junction is a royal pain in the ass.

Frank 07

ballooba wrote: »

Read this article from today's Independent:
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/thousands-of-fines-for-breaking-red-lights-in-doubt-says-expert-1066671.html

This is why we need certification for driving instructors in this country.

I wrote the article in the Irish Independent dated 27 08 2007 and it appears to have been misunderstood by some. The purpose of the article was to show that Sully and others in similar situations are wrongly reeceiving penalty points for going through red traffic lights while others on driving test are wrongly failing dirivng tests on grade 3 faults.

The amber traffic light is set to a time of 3 seconds in 50 and 80 km/h areas in Ireland but 5 seconds in Italy. In Ireland there is a Variable Intergreen: The standard period between the end of the green display for one phase and the start of the green display for the next phase is normally set at 5 seconds, comprising 3 seconds amber and 2 seconds all red. It is during this 2 second all-red that drivers in Ireland are failing driving tests on grade 3 faults and receiving penalty points for failing to comply with red traffic lights.

The Road Safety Authority state "We dont have any influence or expertise on the sequencing of traffic lights," "Their timing is up to councils. The only reason a red light is on the far side is so motorists can see it". If this information is correct then Sully should have her penalty points recinded, her eighty euro refunded and the information included in the rules of the road and circulated to all police stations.

Sully take your case to court if it was as you have stated

Frank

ballooba

I did indeed misunderstand you Frank. My apologies. There is no probelm with the junction then? Just the interpretation of what consitutes breaking the light.

J_R

Frank 07 wrote: »

I wrote the article in the Irish Independent dated 27 08 2007 and it appears to have been misunderstood by some. The purpose of the article was to show that Sully and others in similar situations are wrongly reeceiving penalty points for going through red traffic lights while others on driving test are wrongly failing dirivng tests on grade 3 faults.
Frank

Just to clarify, do you believe that all driving test examiners or is it just the few, will give a grade 3 fault under the heading "Traffic Controls" sub heading "Traffic Lights", if:-

The candidate on test enters a traffic controlled junction on green, then for whatever reason is unable to clear the junction before the lights go red. ???

Stark

J_R wrote: »

Just to clarify, do you believe that all driving test examiners or is it just the few, will give a grade 3 fault under the heading "Traffic Controls" sub heading "Traffic Lights", if:-

The candidate on test enters a traffic controlled junction on green, then for whatever reason is unable to clear the junction before the lights go red. ???

Happens all the time when you're turning right, so can't imagine them giving you a Grade 3 fault for it.

The one situation where I'd imagine you could get a Grade 3 was if the traffic was backed up ahead of you, and you ended up being stuck in the junction after the lights went red.

ballooba

Stark wrote: »

The one situation where I'd imagine you could get a Grade 3 was if the traffic was backed up ahead of you, and you ended up being stuck in the junction after the lights went red.

Which shouldn't be a problem unless it is a box junction. In which case you shouldn't be there.

I still think Frank's article is flawed. The issue is the interpretation of the purpose of the second set of lights, not with the duration of the amber signal. The purpose of the amber light is to tell the motorist to prepare to stop before the stop line if it is safe to do so..

Padraig Mor

ballooba wrote: »

Which shouldn't be a problem unless it is a box junction. In which case you shouldn't be there...

Same rules apply. Every junction has an 'invisible' yellow box.

Regarding the article: what he seems to be taking issue with is situations where people legitimately enter a (clear) junction just before the lights change from green to amber, and where this junction is sufficiently big that they *cannot* get all the way through the junction before the lights go red; also at issue seems to be the status of traffic lights at the 'far side' of a junction - whether a red has any bearing on a motorist crossing the junction.

ballooba

Padraig Mor wrote: »

Same rules apply. Every junction has an 'invisible' yellow box.

No they don't. Why have yellow boxes at all then if they are implicit.

Padraig Mor wrote: »

also at issue seems to be the status of traffic lights at the 'far side' of a junction - whether a red has any bearing on a motorist crossing the junction.

The red light never did have any status other than as a light. The stop line has always denoted the entrance to the junction. Only in the absence of a line does the pole for the luight (or stop sign as the case may be) denote the entrance to the junction.

Stark

ballooba wrote: »

No they don't. Why have yellow boxes at all then if they are implicit.

They have a phrase in the UK: "Yellow boxes are an insult to good drivers". The lack of a yellow box doesn't mean you should enter a junction knowing you can't clear it and end up blocking traffic wanting to travel across the junction when the lights change.

Padraig Mor

ballooba wrote: »

No they don't. Why have yellow boxes at all then if they are implicit..

Yes they do. The yellow boxes are for morons. As Stark points out, it's illegal to enter a junction which you cannot clear (when going 'straight through'), regardless of the presence of a yellow box.

ballooba wrote: »

The red light never did have any status other than as a light. The stop line has always denoted the entrance to the junction. Only in the absence of a line does the pole for the luight (or stop sign as the case may be) denote the entrance to the junction.

I think that was his point.

ballooba

I would love to see evidence of this implicit yellow box in the Rules Of The Road.

wil

ballooba wrote: »

Which shouldn't be a problem unless it is a box junction. In which case you shouldn't be there.

I still think Frank's article is flawed. The issue is the interpretation of the purpose of the second set of lights, not with the duration of the amber signal. The purpose of the amber light is to tell the motorist to prepare to stop before the stop line if it is safe to do so..

Common sense doesnt require you to have a box junction to tell you not to enter a junction when traffic is backed up such that there is a good chance you wont be able to clear it before crossing traffic starts to move.
Many drivers use this sort of aggressive approach entering an obviously backed up junction, blocking crossing traffic but knowing they can bludgeon their way through often as the lights end up going red again for the crossing traffic. Doesnt take long before it becomes an accepted bad behaviour.

Dublin has way too many lights, many badly positioned, or with nonsensical sequencing. Council engineers make little or no attempt to solve issues with them, sticking to textbook (possibly ancient) rules but little use of common sense. They shouldn't have sole responsibility for the safety aspect of lights, markings and signs., this should be capable of being overruled if not up to a suitable safety standard

ballooba

wil wrote: »

Common sense doesnt require you to have a box junction to tell you not to enter a junction when traffic is backed up such that there is a good chance you wont be able to clear it before crossing traffic starts to move.

The problem with common sense is that it is not that common. The issue is whether it is an offence to block a junction which has no box. If the yellow box is implicit then yellow boxes actually have no legal standing.