I cross the 483 on a daily basis. Don't use it though. I stopped when they changed its junction with the A55 (NOT for the better!). Found a cross-country route that knocks 8 miles a day off my commute - Important as I have a limited-milage lease for my car!
I think it's the "I'm more important than everyone else because they're not me" mentality. Every single day I see people undertaking to get one car ahead in a queue, using the wrong lane to cut across anything up to four lanes to get one or two cars ahead on an island with clearly marked lanes. I just hope one of them hits me so it's all on camera and they get some happy points.
Fun fact - until recently, the person responsible for planning Newcastle's road layouts couldn't drive.
Road works and accidents are the biggest motorway annoyances that I regularly encounter. Usually the roadworks slow the speeds to 40-50 which causes havok with the flow during peak periods. That or 3 lanes are reduced to 2 or 1. Motorways weren't designed for that, they're supposed to have cars going at 70 and 3 or more lanes. Reduce the speed and/or lanes and you get a big problem. Accidents are really bad too, a single one somewhere on a busy place like the M25 basically shuts the road down for almost a whole day. One side gets restrictions and the other side rubbernecks, pure traffic generation. Not much to do about it either, people don't plan to have accidents or break down in bad places. These are inevitable exceptions to the rules that the road should be following, so it's almost impossible to engineer around them.
Grr. Getting home today was fun. As usual some ***** somewhere decides that just because the heavens have decided to unleash Armageddon, this is no reason to drive more carefully, resulting in feckhueg tailbacks due to the inevitable smashy-crunchy. Yup, see that every day - then I cruise past them because I had the patience to just stay in my lane. Fun fact: the person responsible for planning Stoke's road layout is technically brain dead.
As a foreigner, I have to say the only place in the world where traffic makes me almost as sweary as New Delhi is England. Y'all really need to do (much) better than the third world. On the plus side, the views are (generally) nicer so taking eleventy billion hours to cover two miles is a little more pleasant.
Only piece of annoyance regarding traffic around here is the Gibraltar-Spain border, and the runway you cross to get there sometimes compounding the issue. When cycling/walking/motorbiking the only hold up is the runway on occasion, but at the height of summer I got stuck in a two hour queue once on the motorbike...in full gear, car queues can exceed that too but it's thankfully uncommon. At least in the UK politics aren't directly fuelling individual traffic jams! It's one of several things I'm not looking forward to on returning to the UK.
On this morning's commute, there's a car that is constantly changing speed. 65 through speed cameras and tailgating other cars at 80+. Even undertook another car then slowed right down to go through a gantry. Motorway traffic jams are caused by drivers like that. Driving as they please and not keeping constant speed. *sigh* Although between M25 junction and M1 J10 Luton I can still see the car a few cars ahead. I wasn't least surprised when he then proceeded to turn into Luton centre. Somehow most bad behaving drivers I see seems to turn into there.
If I'm in the car with the other half then I'm an angry sweary motherf'er, yelling and gesturing at all the idiots out there. Very different story when I'm on the bike however, most of the dick moves that people pull don't really ruffle my feathers at all. Even when someone does something bordering on dangerous - and there have been one or two - it might piss me off for a moment but it's forgotten about just as quickly. Nothing focuses your attention quite like the possibility of being hit on a motorbike when you're doing 50/60mph or more
Living in LA right now. I would kill for the opportunity to sit in British traffic again. You feckers have no idea what real traffic is like - trust me.
I have to disagree. I lived in LA for 4 years, and traffic was pretty manageable, despite being regarded as one of the worst (THE worst?) in the country. The only perennially shitty thing about LA is the 405, and that's VERY easy to plan around. Not so for the vast majority of inter-city routes in England. Your motorways are a JOKE. City traffic is awful. I say "English" because I haven't driven anywhere else in GB and don't want to risk foot in mouth disease. Examples: London-Manchester (a drive I've made a few times in the past) is a 200 mi journey that's never done in under 4 hours. LA-Vegas (a drive I've done MANY times) is a 270 mi journey that's never more than 4 hours. Okay, except maybe around spring break time. Shorter trips? Sure. London-Cambridge is a 60 mi journey that takes about an hour and a half. I've done this one by car and by bus, and curiously, the bus was quicker, even with a couple of stops along the way. Go figure. LA-San Diego is a 120 mi trip (DOUBLE the distance) and takes about an 1h45m (15 min more). LA-Santa Barbara is a 95 mi trip (35 mi longer) and takes about the same time as London-Cambridge. TL;DR Driving in the USA -- particularly inter-city -- is better than England.
Problem is that most inner city roads are historically the busiest roads with shops, so traffic has to slow down to 30 and even completely stop to let people park. For example, getting to N11 area from M25. J23 takes me through Barnet, J24 takes me through Cockfosters. There are no dedicated quick car cut-through. I suspect America doesn't have such problem, by pass a lot of the busy chokepoints. UK is similar if you pick your destinations carefully, you'll find it's actually just as fast, for example Luton airport to Brent Cross shopping centre (M1 J10 to J1) only takes 25min for a 26 mile trip, when not during morning rush hours.
