Genuine question, curious if there is an official/legal answer.
Driving to West Country, inevitably stuck in bad traffic jams on M25, DD9 suggests she may need a wee at some point but we’re only about an hour away from our lunch stop so I tell her ideally we’ll push through.
What I didn’t realise is that she’d drunk half her (large) bottle of water before we left home. She admits this just as we’re joining the M3 where there are seemingly permanent roadworks, no hard shoulder and emergency SOS lay-byes only.
I check and we’re around 25 minutes from the next services and at least 15 minutes from the next junction. Daughter at this point starts to cry because she’s so desperate so we decide to pull into the SOS lay-bye and hubby takes her behind the crash barrier for a wee. From what he reports it’s clearly not the first time this spot has been used in this way….
I don’t like using the lay-bye for this purpose and appreciate there are dangers to stopping there but I’m not sure what else we could have done. With the M25 traffic and the M3 roadworks I think it was at least 50 minutes between the previous M25 junction and the next M3 junction and literally nowhere we could stop between. So what else could we have done?
Am hoping they don’t fine people for using these lay-byes in a non-emergency, but given daughter literally about to wet herself isn’t it arguably a medical emergency anyway?