Driving home

Nicola persuaded me to go with her to an event at Wembley Arena. She was originally going to go by coach, but there were certain ... problems (of which I may write more another time). So, being the big softie I am, I said to her that, if she gave me £20 for fuel, and bought me a KFC, I would drive her down and go with her to the event (tickets were free, so that wasn't a concern).

The journey down was predictably dull, especially when the traffic stopped in the big roadworks on the M1 near Luton. Just as predictably, the traffic to get to Wembley was awful; why on earth they have decided to rebuild the national football stadium in somewhere as dingy and inaccessible as there is beyond me (for the record, I thought it should have been built on a brownfield site between Coventry and Leicester i.e. the middle of the country!).

The event was also dull, but don't tell Nicola I said that. I was tired (not slept well the night before) and hungry (due to aforementioned traffic, had only had a bit of fruit for my lunch en route). So when it finished at 5.30, we went back to the car and in search of my promised KFC - incidentally, I luckily knew a street where I managed to park for free, rather than paying Wembley Arena's £8 for three hours' worth of parking. There was nowhere to park outside KFC in Hendon, so I backtracked onto the A5 and went to the one in Edgware. After taking a short stop to munch on some tasty chicken, we hit the road.

This is the point of this post - successive local and national administrations have scratched their heads and gnashed their teeth about the problem of congestion on the motorways. The major roadworks on the M1 near Luton (scheduled to be three years from start to finish) are to add extra lanes, and there is talk of a similar plan in the East Midlands; the M42 near Solihull is opening up the hard shoulder during rush hour.

For me, the solution is simple. If you want to cut motorway congestion by at least half, make those idiots who stay in the middle lane move over!!! This is a real bugbear of mine, it holds so many people up. I have heard people say that they don't like staying on the inside lane because of the lorries. As far as I am concerned, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen - or in this case, if you are not confident driving on the motorways, don't do it!

This opens up a whole other range of issues, such as whether we need motorway driving lessons etc (yes please). But to illustrate my point, it is rare to see motorway congestion in Germany, even on a two-lane carriageway - this is because everyone has lane discipline, and know to stay on the inside lane unless they are overtaking (and also are less inclined to stamp on their brakes to stare at accidents).