ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Metric threads

Well "metric thread" makes some sense so it's kind of still on topic... it just reinterpreted the word thread.

Ireland obviously ignored that international treaty in 1994. I think we maintain that as we drive on the opposite side of the road to the rest of Europe that our roads should look physically different to remind European drivers that they aren't at home anymore!

Our hardshoulders and road edges are all marked out with yellow lines and yellow reflectors.

There are a few other quirks:

The yellow edge reflectors turn to green for 200 meters before all junctions and change to read ahead of sharp bends.

Also, (recent change) all junctions are marked out by a pair of large green reflective plastic posts on either side of the ajoining road.

The NRA (National Roads Authority) are progressively moving everything towards this unique standard.

All warning signs remain the US-style yellow diamonds too and there are absolutely no plans to change to European / UK style triangles.

Ireland had a lot of problems with inconsistant road markings and signage as each county council tended to take their own slightly different interpretations of the national rules. That has changed drastically as there are now Irish standard numbers for each sign and various regulations about how they can be installed. The county councils also had responsibility for most of the main roads in the country removed from them when the NRA was established in the 1990s to manage the national road network and construct the motorway network.

I've seen similar arrangements in the States, particularly, as I recall, around the Appalachians where the roads are somewhat less straight than usual and with more limited visibility. You find it in England as well in places, most noticeably on hills where two lanes going uphill makes it easier for faster traffic to get past the trucks and trailers.

Britain used to have 3-lane roads in which the center lane was for passing from [b]both[b] directions all the way along! It was up to anyone moving from either outside lane to make sure the center lane was clear enough to complete the maneuver. They've all gone now, which is probably just as well in today's heavier traffic.

Yikes, 160kph is 100 mph! Sorry, but in my opinion that's getting much too high. 70 to 80 mph is probably about as high as it should go.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 03-21-2005).]

The National Roads Authority in Ireland's "rolling out" quite a lot of those "1+2" roads.. A lot of our newer N-Roads (national primary routes) are wide single carriage way with wide hardshoulders. They're just redesigning the lane layout and installing a centre crash barrier along the entire route. The extra lane alternates from side to side every few KM to allow cars to pass safely, but it's impossible ot pass (due to the crash barrier)when there is no passing lane.
The idea is to eventually completely eliminate all single carriage way roads and hopefully any chance of headon collisions which are almost always caused by dangerous overtaking on single carriageways.

160 kph is about the limit where people tend to end up if there is no limit as the fuel consumtion is skyhigh at this speed and it is also getting somewhat uncomfortable in most cars. Sure, a few will go much faster, but not those with a lick of common sense.

We had those too, and it led to frequent frontal crashes. Now these roads have 2 extremely wide lanes.

Reflectors are red on the right-hand side and white on the left-hand side here.

The delimit sign is quite common here, it just means all previous limits end and the general limits (50/100/130) apply.

One note on the line colors: the white paint tends to wear off rather quickly and the yellow paint frequently reappears... even today. Roads that were reconstructed after the introduction of the white lines tend to have no lines at all. They either wear off or turn the the color of tarmac

Oh, and by the way, I just had a look at the big box store recently. All threads I could find were PG21... and the pipes are metric.

Well then,
Seems we've got onto road signs and other such things, here is the LTNZ Travellers Guide

From: http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/roadcode/giving-way/the-give-way-rules4.html


Yikes! That would take some getting used to. Over here the car turning right has to yield to the one turning left.

Yeah Paul,
It's a mine-field on the roads here.
We've always given way to the right here, but to add to the already confused state of things, Parliament want's to change the rules so that you give way to your left now.
Some people (I would reckon most) here can't even use the current rules, let alone bring in new ones.
Like for instance, how do you know a vehicle is going to turn anyway, if the driver doesn't use thier indicators?.

There should be a "normal" way of doing the fundemantal things and those shouldn't be changed... E.g. rules on who yeilds to whom on a junction.

Why is the NZ parliament trying to change the rules? To bring NZ into normal international standards?

If it's moving away from the usual way of doing things all that will happen is loads of tourists won't have a clue and you'll have rental cars being involved in nasty accidents. It's bad that many tourists have to cope with driving on the opposite of the road to what they're used to, couple that with weird rights of way on junctions and you've a very dangerous situation.

I remember getting off a flight from the USA at Shannon Airport in the west of Ireland and seeing all these little old ladies from LA picking up their low budget tiny manual (stick shift) Renault Clios and driving to the Southwest (single carriage narrow highway mostly, and really narrow countryroads if you get off the beaten track) at 5:00am on a mistly foggy morning with extreme jet lag.

(they were all wearing stripy green clothes and singing Irish eyes are smiling.. even more worrying!!)

The perfect recipe for disaster!

We regularly have head on high speed collisions in rural areas caused by US and European drivers who have completely forgotten themselves and are driving at full speed on the right!! It can happen in rural areas that you won't meet very much other traffic, particularly early in the morning so it's quite possible to drive for several KM without meeting anything.

Or, more commonly, US / Euro drivers who turn a corner and end up driving straight into on coming traffic as they end up on the wrong side of a junction.

or on the wrong side of a road driving at speed when a tractor / local resident turns out of their driveway looking in the direction they'd expect on-coming traffic to be moving!

There are regular signs reminding (in several languages) that you need to drive on the left! complete with pictograms.

European drivers tend to cause more accidents in general as they are more likely to actually drive here (via the car ferry from France) so will be driving their own left-hand drive cars.

Overtaking in a car with the driver on the wrong side is both difficult and very dangerous!

(Unlikely scenario in NZ!!)




[This message has been edited by djk (edited 04-03-2005).]