Cheesecutter Madness!

[Reckless]

Hi all
We where off to the Dirt Division KB 2007 Xmas get together at Kimis Farm.
We had the Bikes on the back and the camera with us, and as I ride a shit load of road as well as Dirt. I took some pics of what I consider taking the cheese cutter barrier way to far. They are far to bloody close and its just simply madness (if this stretch of road is this bad) not have a more permanent and safer solution.

On the right they are less than a metre from the lane !!!

[Reckless]

A few more.

[Reckless]

Then they go and stick them both sides to really give you no where to go!!

[Reckless]

to close no room if a cage makes an error and you have to take evasion!

[Ocean1]

Nasty. Few stretches like that down here too.

[MSTRS]

This is precisely what we as bikers are (should be) so upset about. And why Transit are being such cocks about the whole issue of road safety and their crap about 'no room' for concrete which takes up, what? 500mm width? What HW # is this on?

[yungatart]

The rate these guillotines are going up, Transit must have got a job lot cheap from some country where they have been banned.
Utter madness!
And it is all in the name of safety and bringing the road toll down.

What utter bollocks!

Shameless plug here for Taupo protest ride tomorrow Tuesday Dec 4.
If you feel sickened by these things turn up tomorrow and register your disapproval to transit!

[Usarka]

Why are these barriers being put on the left of the road???????

The're an old saying that goes something like; if you're going to crash make it a long one rather than short and sudden.

[crashe]

That stretch of road looks like SH1 - The expressway from Auckland to Hamilton.

[Reckless]

That stretch of road looks like SH1 - The expressway from Auckland to Hamilton.

Yes around Mercer

[sunhuntin]

The rate these guillotines are going up, Transit must have got a job lot cheap from some country where they have been banned.
Utter madness!
And it is all in the name of safety and bringing the road toll down.

What utter bollocks!

Shameless plug here for Taupo protest ride tomorrow Tuesday Dec 4.
If you feel sickened by these things turn up tomorrow and register your disapproval to transit!

thats what zapf said as well, about getting em cheap.

i will be riding up in the morning via the paraparas. depending what time things wrap up, i will come home again tomorrow as well.

while last years south island trip didnt cover nearly as many k's, i can almost safely say that there werent half as many cutters as there is today. im certain the bluff road didnt have 4 stretches of it?

next year i am going to take a set of regional maps and cover as much of the islands main roads as i can, marking location, placement, length and style of wires. [some are straight, others are half braided etc]

[The Pastor]

anyone got a bulldozer

[cooneyr]

I'm an engineer and though most of you norflanders were getting abit ranty about the location of the WRB but those photos tend to indicate otherwise. There is absolutely no need for barriers on the outside of the corners AFAICT and the barriers in the middle are useless as they wont prevent what they are suppose to prevent (head ons).

With barriers like that you potentially get the both types of accidents head ons cause there is not enough lane to barrier separation and the nose to tail cause the barrier pulls the car back into your lane.

I'd be talking to transit and asking them to provide in specific detail the reports (Scheme Assessment Report) showing the justification for installing them.

Cheers R

[Ocean1]

I'm an engineer and though most of you norflanders were getting abit ranty about the location of the WRB but those photos tend to indicate otherwise. There is absolutely no need for barriers on the outside of the corners AFAICT and the barriers in the middle are useless as they wont prevent what they are suppose to prevent (head ons).

With barriers like that you potentially get the both types of accidents head ons cause there is not enough lane to barrier separation and the nose to tail cause the barrier pulls the car back into your lane.

I'd be talking to transit and asking them to provide in specific detail the reports (Scheme Assessment Report) showing the justification for installing them.

Cheers R

Dude you've got beautiful roads down there, for the most part. The original constraints dictating economically affordable road building throughout our history still exist, in geographically difficult terrain they were always narrow by international standards. It’s not difficult to see how we got here, the sheer cash required to widen some of these roads is simply unavailable. With today’s traffic those merely inadequate roads are just plane bloody dangerous, but the economy is now far less focused on infrastructure.

Nonetheless a political response to the road toll is required, and WRBs do in fact represent a minimalist solution, when installed according to appropriate standards. Minimalist, a good description of our budget for most infrastructure.

Unfortunately it seems that some questionable interpretation of those standards has been used to make WRBs “fit for purpose”, and it’s difficult to see anything other than pecuniary interests involved in those interpretations. I’ve seen recommendations from 3 to 7 metres for separation between the WRB and the traffic flow, I’m stumped as to how anyone can understand ½ a metre to be anything more than a bad joke. The fact remains that the only real solution is as it’s always been, widen the roads. Where applicable by enough to allow a generous median, but it’s not going to happen. As for the ones on the left hand side? I believe the rational is that they’re a visible barrier, with the desired effect being to cause traffic to slow down in safety sensitive areas. Again, hard to see how they can be seen to be a good tool for that job.

The Hutt motorway is shaping up to be every bit as much of a worry when they’ve completed the current bout of upgrades, and for exactly the same reasons.

[cooneyr]

Dude you've got beautiful roads down there, for the most part. The original constraints dictating economically affordable road building throughout our history still exist, in geographically difficult terrain they were always narrow by international standards. It’s not difficult to see how we got here, the sheer cash required to widen some of these roads is simply unavailable. With today’s traffic those merely inadequate roads are just plane bloody dangerous, but the economy is now far less focused on infrastructure.

Agreed - the Guberment seems more interested in commerce and sports than providing for the needs of the country now days. I'm not strongly a socalist or a liberal but I see the role of the guberment WRT infrastructure to be focused on providing and being safety conscious rather than penny pinching. I'm regularly involved in carrying out economic analysis of projects for Transit and Councils and they attitude of staff is rather worrisome. They are driven by the current policy to scrape every cent out of the guberment they can for little projects when they should be looking at the bigger picture. Not the TNZ staffers fault - the policy suxs. Changes have slowly being happening since 2003 (LTMA) but anything takes time.


Nonetheless a political response to the road toll is required, and WRBs do in fact represent a minimalist solution, when installed according to appropriate standards. Minimalist, a good description of our budget for most infrastructure.

Correct.


Unfortunately it seems that some questionable interpretation of those standards has been used to make WRBs “fit for purpose”, and it’s difficult to see anything other than pecuniary interests involved in those interpretations. I’ve seen recommendations from 3 to 7 metres for separation between the WRB and the traffic flow, I’m stumped as to how anyone can understand ½ a metre to be anything more than a bad joke. The fact remains that the only real solution is as it’s always been, widen the roads. Where applicable by enough to allow a generous median, but it’s not going to happen. As for the ones on the left hand side? I believe the rational is that they’re a visible barrier, with the desired effect being to cause traffic to slow down in safety sensitive areas. Again, hard to see how they can be seen to be a good tool for that job.

The Hutt motorway is shaping up to be every bit as much of a worry when they’ve completed the current bout of upgrades, and for exactly the same reasons.

The thing that worries me though is that the installations above managed to get past the safety audit system. Any project that is specifically based around safety improvements (such as the WRB installation above) is "suppose" to go through a safety audit. I have serious doubts that the above project would get through the audit. I do not know the area in the photos above but there appears to be no reason for much of the shoulder WRB i.e. no major drop offs and the clear zone (9m from the edge of the lane) is clear i.e. no trees, poles etc for much of it.

As for the central WRB - I cant for the life of me see what the point of them is when they are so close to the lanes other than the visual impact which may slow people down. The benefit of the visual impact vs the safety risk to road users (not just motorcyclists at risk with such a small land to barrier separation) ???????

Cheers R

[MSTRS]

....the visual impact....

In fact, any impact will be highly visual:sick:

[Reckless]

Just a note
I didn't get out and measure it. I estimated the distance by eye between the near side of a post and the white line in my lane. And in some places with my Architects/Builders eye it didn't look like the inside of line was even a metre of the post. So to make it clear, a metre, or less, in some places, off the post, each side. I'm pretty good at measurements being a designer and I didn't exaggerate for this threads sake. So I should be pretty damn close with my figures.

That centre Cheesecutter would be pretty hard on you if you where passing someone and they decided to pull into the fast lane without realising you where there.
Ouch! That would hurt (well for a minute before you died that is).

[Swoop]

That is like walking down the middle of the footpath with people slashing swords at you, all the way...

Not good!

[yungatart]

The way I see it is.....you can sit at your computer bitching and moaning and preaching to the converted about how dangerous these things are, or you can DO something about it and join the protest ride in Taupo tomorrow!

[Wasp27]

The way I see it is.....you can sit at your computer bitching and moaning and preaching to the converted about how dangerous these things are, or you can DO something about it and join the protest ride in Taupo tomorrow!

^^^^^^^^ What she said....come join the DOers in Taupo tomorrow....you'll feel real good when we win this:niceone:

[Taz]

How many times did you come close to hitting them on the drive to Kimmy's??

[rainman]

Having ridden that piece of road, just looking at the pictures makes me feel queasy - it's a very visceral fear... Shudder... :eek5:

Was going up the Northern the other day (right hand lane) and a tosser cut in front of me such that I needed to brake quite sharply. :mad: Fortunately it was dry, I had already profiled his vehicle and was watching his tyres, I hadn't been drinking, wasn't going too fast, and I was alert and on my game generally... it was at one of those sections where the cheesecutters are pretty close to the side of the road (dunno how close actually, but not where the grass verges are - a metre or two gap, maybe?). Could have been quite a different outcome if any one of those factors was changed. Scary.

[Reckless]

And maybe that's the thinking behind their installation.
Scare people into being careful! I know I behave when I'm riding through them.
Only trouble is on a bike they kill you rather then save you when you get caught in someone else's mistake!