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#2038680
So yesterday, a water main about 100yd from my place bursts. Road is blocked of course but we're actually a well used country lane and well used rat run rather than a street in a town so 'Road Closed, No Entry ' signs are posted about half a mile away leaving, of course, a gap for those people who like me can still access their homes. From this sign to the blocked section itself, there are just farm tracks and drives off them, none of them lead anywhere.
So today I've had fun watching the idiots who drive straight past the 'Road Closed' signs until they are suddenly confronted with a barrier, when they have to turn round and go back. They're mostly largish cars like BMWs, Audis, Range Rovers, X5s; strangely the ordinary medium/small cars don't come along. I saw one Audi estate where they stopped, white haired occupant got out and prowled back and forth across the barriers, gawd knows why.
There was no sign of anyone doing much work on the road surface today although there was a solitary car parked there so I dare say it will take several days before they get round to fixing it so my rat run will be quiet for a few more days, then when they fix that, Surrey CC will be carrying out work to clear a blocked culvert a few yards away which constantly floods the entire road
By XX
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#2038961
I suspect it’s because there are - in Kent and Sussex at least - numerous ‘road closed’ signs springing up where the road is NOT actually closed, with the sign remaining in place for several days before and after work has begun/finished.

It would also help if ‘Road closed’ signs had additional information saying WHERE the road is closed. If it’s 5 miles from my current position, the closure may be irrelevant to me.

A mate also reckons there is a technical difference between ‘Road closed’ and ‘Road ahead closed’, one (can’t remember which) meaning ‘a road turning off this road is closed’.

And then when you follow the tortuous diversion route, it’s often either incorrectly or incompletely signed, or just muddled in with all the other diversions in the same area, :roll:
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#2038963
It seems that both county councils and utilities follow the same sort of model where one or more contractors dig holes and fill them in and a completely different contractor does “traffic Management “ so while there is necessarily communication at the start, during and after is a rather different story.
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By stevewarbs
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#2038995
I live on a narrow road about a mile long and came across a road closed sign at one end so went round a 3 mile diversion only to find a road closed sign at the other end so I ignored it and found the road closed just before my drive so I had to go all the way back around and ignore the other road closed sign.
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#2039022
That's nothing.

Try following "deviation" signs in France. I'm convinced that those tasked with putting them up at 9am, deliberately place them randomly to the most irrelevant and remote spot then, because its about 11:30am at this point, decide to go for lunch early at a restaurant conveniently around the next corner, and by the time they're finished around 4pm, look at other, say "bof", and with a gallic shrug, go home... :mrgreen:
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#2039163
Not long after the wall came down, I was driving to a job in East Germany. My colleague was navigating by road map. Our route took us past Karl Marx Stadt. Mile after mile went by and we'd yet to see a sign for it. Pulling into a petrol station, we asked directions, showing the attendant the map.. He told us to buy a new map. They'd changed the name to Chemnitz, and it was miles behind us.

On the same trip we discovered why there were several signs to Umleit, but no such place on the map. :roll: Ich spreche jetzt viel besser Deutsch.
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By kanga
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#2039165
Flyingmac wrote:.. Our route took us past Karl Marx Stadt. .. They'd changed the name to Chemnitz, ..

..


er, changed the name back to Chemnitz

See also St Petersburg, Baikonur, Podgorica, Dushanbe, Bishkek, .. :wink:

[I recall problems for HM Forces and UNPKF in a number of domestic conflicts, eg Cyprus ('70s) and the Balkans ('90s), because mixed communities with different languages at mutual loggerheads had long had different names for the same place, but the only 'official' printed maps used only one of them (or sometimes, even, yet another)]