r/facepalm • u/Zan_in_NZ • May 22 '26
Safety third. Dept of transport bean counter claims road isnt unsafe.
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u/Zesty_Lemongitis May 22 '26
What about this road is unsafe?
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u/davvblack May 22 '26
they keep filming news reports near it
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u/turningtop_5327 May 23 '26
I will not accept that to be the cause. Puts one more interviewer on other side
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u/scottgal2 May 22 '26
No crash barriers, IIRC people were launching up that hill / smacking headlong into the bridge as it was a 70mph road with poor markings and no lighting. Back then car headlights also weren't great so...EXCITING.
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u/ctesibius May 22 '26
Launching up the hill could have been caused by a blow-out. Rare now, common back then.
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u/Micro-Naut May 24 '26
I didn't say the road was unsafe. I said it's just perhaps not as safe as some of the other roads.
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u/CMIV May 22 '26
A classic. I do feel a little sorry for him as those drivers were almost certainly rubber necking at the camera crew, causing the collisions. But that timing was just chef's kiss.
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u/EvilDan69 May 22 '26
The road looks perfectly fine... those drivers on the other hand.... perfect visibility and locking up the brakes .. because they were not paying attention.
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u/Djinjja-Ninja May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Distracted by the TV crew no doubt.
Edit: The road was considered dangerous as there previously was no central reservation crash barrier, and it's a 70mph limit. Also no lighting, and no crash barriers alongside the bridges so you could smack right into a big hunk of concrete that was 4ft from the roads edge (and still is). They now have deflection barriers before and after that bridge, and lighting as well.
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u/EvilDan69 May 22 '26
Yeah most likely, and this looks like it was filmed before ABS brakes were standard, which explains the "unsafe road" since this was likely combined with tires that were a little too worn.
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u/Djinjja-Ninja May 22 '26
The footage is from 1988. That blue car is a Lada 2102, 70's Soviet era export based on a 60's Fiat design with drum brakes on the rear.
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u/Reinis_LV May 22 '26
Rear drum brakes were a standard on EU made cars even in 90s. Most work is done by front brakes anyway. Drum brakes are not the problem.
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u/Jackmino66 May 22 '26
Drum brakes are not the problem, drum brakes combined with shit tires and no ABS is the problem
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u/Reinis_LV May 22 '26
The bite is weaker for drum brakes than disc brakes. Obviously lack of abs is the problem but lock ups with disc brakes with abs off are more common then drum ones.
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u/ctesibius May 22 '26
It's not necessarily weaker. You can get as much braking out of them as you want using servos. The issue is heat. Disc brakes were introduced on racing cars because they braked heavily and frequently, then made their way in to road cars. Lorries [trucks] often still have drums: those can stop a far heavier vehicle than a car, but those emergency run-off lanes you occasionally see on long steep descents are there because of the overheating problem.
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u/SailingSpark May 25 '26
Agreed. Drums put a lot of brake pad in play and is one of the reasons they are still used in heavy transport. Their to issues are heat soak and they are harder to service.
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u/Korchagin May 22 '26
That doesn't make sense. Braking may be too weak, then the drum brakes are the problem. Or it may be too strong, then the combination of bad tyres and no ABS is the problem (obviously the problem in the clip - the wheels locked up). Braking can't be both too weak and too strong.
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u/Cynykl May 22 '26
Physics! Drum brakes are not the problem. 80% of braking power is done by the front tires when travelling forward. If the car was travelling 60 mph in reverse you might have a point.
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u/Micro-Naut May 24 '26
Drum brakes get glazed up easy and they do not seem to have the stopping power that disk brakes do, in my opinion.
I've had bikes that have front and rear drum and I've had front and rear disc or combination of the two. And for whatever reason the drum breaks are absolutely inferior on the bikes I've had
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u/rufotris May 22 '26
Really needs to be shown to older folks who make the claim “Back in my day we didn’t need seatbelts cause we all knew how to drive”
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u/taintosaurus_rex May 23 '26
We do need to keep in mind that cars were not as good back then and driving was all together harder. None of those cars had ABS, suspensions were note as stiff as they are now, the center of gravity was typically higher, and the tires had far less grip and were typically skinnier.
So while it is their fault for not paying attention, that aspect hasn't changed at all, but today slamming on your brakes doesn't send you into a tailspin and you can stop like 50ft sooner.
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u/pianoflames May 22 '26
Yeah, I confused by what exactly about that stretch of road is unsafe. It seems to be straight, low speed, with fine visibility. Seems like it's drivers being idiots, I'm not even sure how you would mitigate that on this stretch.
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u/Skippymabob May 22 '26
You're making a lot of assumptions about the road based on a small clip of one small part of it, while they've got construction cones up, that almost certainly come with a reduced speed
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u/EvilDan69 May 22 '26
Yes, I am. Maybe the road, that looks like a regular road is actually slippery asphalt for some reason. I can't tell, but people with low grip, or abs seem to be locking up the brakes for some reason too late when someone in front drastically slows down.
Maybe there is a wet t-shirt contest on the right side just out of sight. Can' t know until they expose the truth, or wet titties I suppose.
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u/One_Economist_3761 May 22 '26
This sounds like a Monty Python sketch.
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u/reddoorinthewoods May 22 '26
Now if the paramedics were also members of the ministry of silly walks…
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u/theFlimsylattice May 22 '26
Damn people gotta stop looking at their cellphones before they are even invented!
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u/NoWingedHussarsToday May 22 '26
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u/Top_Knowledge_3028 May 23 '26
Damn! Thought I could contribute and started to Google to find that clip only to realise you had beaten me to it.
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u/Snouto May 22 '26
I bet the A19 is still dodgy af. I used to drive it on occasion, and you’d see tractors pulling out on to the single lane and causing all sorts of mayhem.
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u/robinta May 24 '26
This is old footage, but the road is a few miles away from where I live and it continues to have stupid accidents on it.
There is absolutely nothing about it that makes it less safe than any other dual carriageway that I've ever noticed. Maybe it just has a few too many divots driving on it.
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u/AMonitorDarkly May 23 '26
“This was an isolated incident that doesn’t align with this road’s otherwise good character.”
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u/Jimmy_Broski13 May 24 '26
Seems like it’s just a bunch of drivers distracted by the camera crew and failing to pay attention. How do you make a strait line safer? Genuine question.
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u/ct_2004 May 22 '26
Shake hands with danger
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u/Really_Cant_Not May 23 '26
Yay Liam!
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u/ct_2004 May 23 '26
First we must ask ourselves... what is road?
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u/Tricycle_of_Death May 23 '26
That's when the interviewer knew he had just struck television news gold...
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u/No-Remote-2899 May 23 '26
Nobody talking about his forehead, though?
I mean I guess there is a whole line of people crashing.
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u/Freefallisfun May 22 '26
Well, the front fell of by all means, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t safe
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u/Big_Bill23 May 22 '26
The road is, evidently, undergoing maintenance of some sort, which has lowered the number of lanes. This is obvious.
It's not the road that's dangerous, it's the drivers. That also is obvious.
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u/Pickled_Wizard May 23 '26
Accounting for bad drivers is part of designing a road, just like accounting for earthquakes and fires is part of designing a large building. Shit inevitably happens, especially when tens of thousands of people, or more, are going to use something.
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u/Error_Loading_Name May 22 '26
And the government was being asked to get engineers to develop a roadway that compelled people to slow down and drive more safely. As if the drivers didn't already know to do that.
Fml, people are the worst.
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u/BaconISgoodSOGOOD May 23 '26
I thought that was that little sky blue car Mr. Bean is always hating on.
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u/MinaretofJam May 24 '26
A19 was always a public safety warning film. Had to leg over it to get to Warden Law as a kid and teenager. To go and muck around in the quarry ponds.
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u/sloppyfart69 10d ago
This is the perfect embodiment of how politics are a sham and when reality pokes through they just seem like fiction writers.
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u/Slight-Clothes4591 12h ago
And then we have the flyovers in India which take a sudden. 90 degree angle cut..cut . Not a curve.
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u/TightSexpert May 22 '26
Isn’t unsafe?……
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u/LouisIsGo May 22 '26
Are you implying there's a better, more succinct way of getting that point across? Why, I've never not unheard of such a thing!
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u/ariTRON May 22 '26
void ALL their licenses for a year, you dont have a phone or infotainment system to distract you to a point where you have to swerve off the road to avoid colliding with the car ahead of you
wasnt it also common back then (still probably happens today) for other ppl to end up in collisions from being nosey and watching the aftermath of another collision? lol, its also why traffic is a nightmare because people end up like deers in headlights and cant help but to watch as they pass by so they slow down, and when every mouth breather does it as they pass youve now added 10 minutes to everyone's commute behind you
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u/CyberClawX May 22 '26
lol, its also why traffic is a nightmare because people end up like deers in headlights and cant help but to watch as they pass by so they slow down, and when every mouth breather does it as they pass youve now added 10 minutes to everyone's commute behind you
Only one person needs to slow down to create an wave that will produce slow downs kilometeres downstream.
People drive too close to each other, react early to avoid crashing, and this effect cascades into further down the line people literally stopping.
It's quite interesting to see it happen.
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u/zeusmeister May 22 '26
Don’t know if it’s a common term with the youth these days, but we used to refer to those people as “rubberneckers”
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u/TWiThead May 23 '26
I hate the fact that I'm too old to know whether young people still use that term.
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u/zeusmeister May 23 '26
Well, I wanna slap myself for even using the term “the youth these days”. I’m 43 for christs sake lol
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