DD has been stuck on the M5 for 6 hours

[GinForBreakfast]

I know there's been a serious incident but you can't leave people stuck on a motorway for 6 hours. That will include elderly people and tiny children. In other countries they manage to clear the roads far quicker.

No sign of anything moving and even once she does she's still 4 hours from home.

This thread is bizarre. All these people who wouldn't seem to mind being trapped in a traffic jam with no food or toilet facilities for hours through no fault of thier own.

I bought a shepee and keep in my dashboard for just this type of emergency. I've been stuck on the M5 myself before for many hours travelling down to Devon to visit family.

Oh FFS.

What is your problem? Increase in people on an already crowded area adds to these sorts of problems and many others like delay in medical care, etc.

Let's also remember that countries like France have the same population as the UK, but spread over a significantly larger area. So when a tragic incident like this occurs, they don't have the huge and immediate build up of traffic we do.

I spend most of my driving life on the M6 and M5 (and across Europe, for that matter). I have nothing but respect for the Highways and emergency services who have to deal with the immediate aftermath of a tragedy, before (and yes, that definitely comes before) re-routing us inconvenienced but ultimately safe drivers. And it's why I always carry water, blankets and snacks. If you choose not to, that's on you.

Neither of you obviously are the mother of a young woman stuck in gridlocked traffic!!

Even if some of these immigrants are working for the emergency services, as they likely are??

Jesus!

This is one of the reasons why "smart motorways" are anything but smart.

I know there's been a serious incident but you can't leave people stuck on a motorway for 6 hours. That will include elderly people and tiny children. In other countries they manage to clear the roads far quicker.

Not here in my country. If we get stuck on motorways it tends to be several hours in most spots as we have a lot of water and bush so it’s not really possible to put in escape routes off motorways between exits without having to introduce infrastructure equivalent to the motorway itself. What we do have are services that bring in bottled water if it’s a hot day (we are a hot country). Most people leave their cars to see if they can find any shade (generally bush on either side) as you don’t know if you are going to be stuck for several hours and can’t justify keeping the car going with air con chewing up the petrol.

The water is problematic though as they can only bring it to either side of the queue and then people need to walk down with it to make sure it gets to the centre of the queue which in itself can take several hours depending on the queue.

A girl has fallen off a motorway bridge and you thought that this was an appropriate time to spread your xenophobia? Jog on.

Many of the NHS staff working to keep that girl alive will be immigrants and the children of immigrants. A lot of the Windrush immigrants settled in and near Bristol.

It's not the time or the place to push an anti immigration agenda.

It’s a comment on a forum. It’s no one’s business to tell me what I is not the time or place and it’s not an agenda, it’s an opinion, (that I think is obvious to most). I’m sick of people trying to shut down anything they don’t agree with. If anything, it’s them that have an agenda.

It’s not xenophobia. What is wrong with you? It’s an observation as to why things like this are more of a problem here - because of the size of population. Nothing to do with xenophobia, so you jog on with your fact twisting.

to me smart motorways are not smart due to human error

Did you miss the word “controlled”? And no need to blaspheme.

Trust me, I wouldn't like being stuck on a motorway for six hours. But there's more important things than my comfort, especially as I can mitigate the worst outcomes by carrying emergency rations. The proper treatment of injured people, respectful removal of the dead, and thorough investigation of the cause of the incident all trump my comfort.

What I find bizarre is all the "me me me" types who seem to think that their ability to resume their journey is more important than other people's actual lives.

Well it sure comes across as xenophobic!!!

I had surgery a couple of years ago. It was performed by my Romanian consultant ably assisted by his Chinese colleague. The nurses were from several Asian countries, and one of them was German.

We would be in some fucking mess if we didn't have immigrants!!!

I'll fucking blaspheme if I want. It's allowed on MN.

I don't care what terminology you use. Your bias is clear.

I agree. What an idiot.

Erecting the "foreigners keep out" signs is pretty much as xenophobic as I can think of. Immigration is already tightly controlled here, with visas needed, so the only way to tighten it further is to close the borders.

And before anyone says "small boats", trafficked people tend not to have cars to drive on the motorway, so they aren't contributing to the traffic queues during incidents like this.

I don’t see how it came across as xenophobic unless you are putting your own spin on it. As others have pointed out, France has less people per square meter so therefore less of a problem of delays. Less people in an area means less crowding, traffic problems, service shortages of all kinds per person, unless there are more roads and services added to cope with the extra people, which isn’t possible with roads and doesn’t ever seem to happen with services. It makes no difference if those people are Chinese, black, white, whatever and I didn’t say it did!

The feeling is mutual.

Yeah sure. You tell yourself that.

I didn't need to put a "spin" on it.

It was a totally inappropriate comments.

All them furreiners cloggging up the roads...

It isn’t that controlled or there wouldn’t be a need for thousands of new homes in places that already can’t cope with basic services for the current population. It’s nothing to do with people being foreign and nobody but you mentioned boats, which is a small fraction of immigration.