[binand]

Originally Posted by Arch-Angel

Soon that entire stretch will become like a go-kart track . Barrels and obstacles everywhere.

Then it will resemble the "New Airport Road" (aka Bellary Road) of Bangalore. :-)

[headers]

Originally Posted by supremeBaleno

Way to go, CTP !!! Line them up all over OMR every 500ms.

Yup thats the way CCTP think easy and fast to control speeding traffic, avoiding / reducing fatalities as well as trying to answer their baabus


Got a smarter way to stop people jumping road dividers? Share them - Help reduce accidents while keeping up road speeds.

[supremeBaleno]

Simple and smart - make the dividers so high that they are unscalable.

But ofcourse who needs smart solutions when there are available ancient techniques involving dirt-filled barrels which are not only condoning a crime (jay-walking), but also supporting it by providing them a supposedly safe option to commit the crime.

[anachronix]

One of my friend works for ALU in TVH park which is between the two points where these chicanes are built. He gave me information about life lost every week between the SRP Tools to Kandhanchavady, either a pedestrain or a biker. A week before the chicanes were placed, a biker who joined the main road from the service lane was hit by a car and then run over by a bus, died on the spot.

Jay-walking is a crime, speeding vehicles is a crime too... easier solution to avoid personal injury or casualty is to slow down vehicles. I think the chicanes makes a little sense to me now. I am glad, CCTP decided against speed humps.

Originally Posted by supremeBaleno

Simple and smart - make the dividers so high that they are unscalable.

But ofcourse who needs smart solutions when there are available ancient techniques involving dirt-filled barrels which are not only condoning a crime (jay-walking), but also supporting it by providing them a supposedly safe option to commit the crime.

[supremeBaleno]

Originally Posted by anachronix

A week before the chicanes were placed, a biker who joined the main road from the service lane was hit by a car and then run over by a bus, died on the spot.

While pedestrians crossing the OMR are definitely at risk due to speeding vehicles (even ignoring the fact that they should not in the first place be crossing it), if a biker merging onto OMR from service-lane got hit, in all probability he did not look out for vehicles coming his way while merging. This is a standard biker-trait in Chennai - point the front wheel to where the biker's mind is and just proceed without checking for other vehicles. And in most instances you can see that they are not "merging" into OMR, but just getting onto it at right-angles, atleast at the following 2 junctions that I see daily :

1) Lifeline hospital, Perungudi : Bikers coming from the TVS service/centre ride on the wrong side of the service lane and just cross perpendicular to traffic onto OMR so that they can take the right into the RMZ road. Ofcourse they will be hit by cars/buses or even other bikes who are crossing the junction when green for them.

2) The Jain college junction where Chennai One road meets OMR : Again bikers and even cars drive down the wrong side of the service lane and just get onto OMR at right-angles and then attempt to get across to the fast lane quickly so that they can take the right to Chennai One road. Again they are putting themselves to risk - can't really blame the cars/buses that are moving on the correct lane and crossing the junction at a green-light.

Originally Posted by anachronix

I am glad, CCTP decided against speed humps.

Won't speed humps have been a better option ? Cars / buses would have to slow down which would help achieve the objective and at the same time you won't have the chaos seen with the chicanes due to 3 lanes suddenly shrinking to 1 and then again widening into 3 lanes.

[anachronix]

Agree!

Originally Posted by supremeBaleno

And in most instances you can see that they are not "merging" into OMR, but just getting onto it at right-angles, atleast at the following 2 junctions that I see daily :

I have this allergy for speed humps after spending close to 7 years of driving in Bangalore. I love chicanes over speed humps

Won't speed humps have been a better option ? Cars / buses would have to slow down which would help achieve the objective and at the same time you won't have the chaos seen with the chicanes due to 3 lanes suddenly shrinking to 1 and then again widening into 3 lanes.

[DWind]

Originally Posted by anachronix

Jay-walking is a crime, speeding vehicles is a crime too... easier solution to avoid personal injury or casualty is to slow down vehicles. I think the chicanes makes a little sense to me now. I am glad, CCTP decided against speed humps.

While chicanes might slow down / bunch up traffic in peak hour they still are not going to help if somebody wants to speed in the night. They can still straight-line it and hit a biker who is not anyways going to look before merging. And yes! very low chance of biker surviving in the night with nobody around to take him to the hospital and a high chance of the vehicle hitting it scooting from the spot.

[bala80]

I read somewhere installing these speed restrictors/barricades are not allowed on toll roads, context of discussion at that time was the ECR - I don't know if there is any truth associated with this statement, but I feel OMR is the biggest rip off for a toll road. Half of the time it will be only one lane in operation due to whatever reasons....the only time I enjoyed the drive was when driving beyond sholinganallur junction towards siruseri...but even there, cops used to play the spoilsport...why have toll roads in the first place? sigh!


Still....chennai rocks!

[anachronix]

So its ok to remove the chicane and watch people die without doing anything about it?

The chicanes are safe option, the speed humps do more bad than good!

Originally Posted by DWind

While chicanes might slow down / bunch up traffic in peak hour they still are not going to help if somebody wants to speed in the night. They can still straight-line it and hit a biker who is not anyways going to look before merging. And yes! very low chance of biker surviving in the night with nobody around to take him to the hospital and a high chance of the vehicle hitting it scooting from the spot.

[Gansan]

These "chicanes" can now be found in the Airport - Tambaram stretch too.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by anachronix

So its ok to remove the chicane and watch people die without doing anything about it?

The chicanes are safe option, the speed humps do more bad than good!

Compared with speed humps, car breakers, chicanes are better - I agree.

Speed humps don't always slow the traffic down. The other day I saw a Tata Sumo went over a hump without slowing down. For MUV/SUV, speed humps are no big deal. You can't try any stunts with chicanes.

[esteem_lover]

Non-scalable is not a word in the Indian dictionary. Every peak is surmountable for an Indian. May work in US, Japan, or even in Serbia and Herzegovina, not here. The L & O system works differently here in India simply because we deal with Indians.

As Indians we need to be lawed and lawed over to even protect our own head being banged into a windshield or onto a road and for some truck to run over it. How can we be expected to stop or slow down to protect another Indian (moron) who has no sense of the law and pokes his bike in our way ?? Hell, we wouldn't even check to see if he lived or died.

We need cops to stand over every turn and signal to keep us honest about the traffic laws (Sometimes even this does not work and the cops get the blame for creating nuisance or being rude).The educated are the most law evading in this country and since they have the power of the keyboard, go virile over the cops and the laws without a hint of self introspection.

I am not in support of the barrels or against it. But I believe it should be the best option available since there must have been a lot of thought and experience put into it by the concerned authorities and me being no traffic expert would not want to belittle them.

[supremeBaleno]

There should be some other way this issue can be resolved, without having to create traffic-jams, wasting time / fuel. Today, it took close to an hour to travel from Ashok Nagar to Kathipara flyover, which would be a distance of 2-3 kms. All thanks to these chicanes including some that were scattered all over the road away from their original position. On OMR there are pedestrian overbridges, but no one uses them. Some have been put up at wrong locations too, leading to further unuse. Eg, the one at Perungudi tollbooth, which should have ideally been located near/at the bus-stops. How about pedestrian subways every 500ms or so on OMR ? People use these a lot at Central Station thus reducing jay-walking there.

Originally Posted by esteem_lover

How can we be expected to stop or slow down to protect another Indian (moron) who has no sense of the law and pokes his bike in our way ?

Every car/bus/truck driver who drives on city roads does drive anticipatively, slows down and saves countless biker lives on a daily basis. Lives that the bikers themselves don't seem to give a damn about given how they drive. This won't happen anywhere else in the world - a pesky biker darting in & out of lanes between speeding cars and just cms before the nose of heavy vehicles would be history in those countries.

[sjcherian]

Originally Posted by supremeBaleno

Every car/bus/truck driver who drives on city roads does drive anticipatively, slows down and saves countless biker lives on a daily basis. Lives that the bikers themselves don't seem to give a damn about given how they drive. This won't happen anywhere else in the world - a pesky biker darting in & out of lanes between speeding cars and just cms before the nose of heavy vehicles would be history in those countries.

Whole heartedly agree with supremeBaleno.
I have had two bad incidents where bikers came and dashed on my vehicles(where I couldn't move out of the way) and then had the guts to make a scene, gather a crowd and then play the usual "car vs bike = car automatically at fault" argument that the crowd that shows falls for !

Have yelled at many morons on bikes who were doing stupid things(overtaking on turns/riding in blind spots/overtaking on narrow bridges and told them they lived another day because I stopped and because I was not driving a bus or lorry that would run over them and keep going.

[headers]

Guys - Peace:

time to accept the barrels and move on - You wanna have fun, use the barrels as a slalom.

No point cribbing while nothing much can be done about it. So enjoy it while it lasts.

The fact is human lives on the road ought to be not killed by anyone whether a bike, car or a lorry.

If you are worried about fuel costs because of traffic jams, time to get into public transport.