Motorways are the safest road we have in the UK. It's said people are afraid of them and I quite accept that. I quite accept that it is often tricky to chose from fairly widely spaced service stations and the temptation to press on beyond fatigue to a 'next one' that turns out to be more distant that suspected is great and dangerous.

However, there is a problem with relative speed as opposed to absolute speed.

Some people may think that the more 'driving' a driver does the more alert they will stay. This sort of activity equals safety concept had it's zenith in the Ford Motor Company's 'excuse' for putting rubbish seats into cheap cars in the 1960s. They reckoned that if the driver was uncomfortable they would stay alert.

Now we seem to have an undercurrent of a similar concept. The unspoken idea seems to be that if the 'average driver' spends their whole journey weaving in and out between lanes 1 and 2 they will remain alert and concentrate on their driving.

I tend to doubt this.

Quite clearly motorways are roads on which steering is more important than braking. In city centre traffic we see a hazard and we apply brakes then engage brain. There's nowhere else to go. On a motorway we should know that there is nothing closing on us from behind with a closing speed exceeding 10 miles per hour and so if a problem arises in front of us it isn't 'brake, think' it's 'mirror change lane'.

Clearly if we are in the centre lane - usually lane 2 - then we have two choices of lane to switch into.

That's why people drive down the middle.

They drive down the middle at around 75 mph. Anybody closing on them at more that ten miles per hour in the right hand of third lane is clearly speeding. They may be justified in speeding. They may be getting the curries in for the local cop shop.

What is actually happening here is that the 'experts' are saying that despite the fact that lanes 2 and 3 are reserved for speed restricted vehicles - big heavy ones - and light vehicles are the only ones allowed in the right hand lane, they want to use the right hand lane as a sort of run off area and have traffic that's doing 75 mph or less weave in and out of speed restricted heavy traffic in lanes one and two so that traffic traveling at 90 mph plus can have that added safety margin of driving in the middle lane and using lane 3 as an emergency gravel trap.

It's people who use 'brake think' on motorways who cause 'phantom road blocks'.

When I was a kid we used to live on a main road. As time went on it got busier and busier. Normally we had to make a right turn to get into our driveway. My dad used to drive me mad because he always pulled over the the kerb to wait for a gap in traffic. He hadn't adjusted to the idea that if he wanted to make a right turn he was entitled to pull into the middle of the road and let following traffic undertake him.

In an emergency - define emergency - undertaking on a motorway is both illegal and safe. However, When motorways were first provided there were no top speed restrictions but classes of vehicle 'clearly' incapable of at least 50 mph were specifically excluded.

Motorways were for 'fast traffic' and so they were designed with that in mind.

I understand that it can be dangerous to have two streams of traffic in opposing right hand lanes closing on each other at a relative speed of nearly 200 mph with a strip of Armco between them and that's why the right hand lanes of the motorways of Yorkshire are rubble strewn.

In pure engineering terms it would undoubtedly be safer to swap the lanes and make overtaking illegal and undertaking legal. i.e. 'overtake on the left and restrict big heavies to the centre and right lanes but then .... tow heavies closing the 100 mph do more damage in a crossover that two lights closing at 200 mph and how the hell would you design the interchanges?

The answer would have been built opposing carriageways at least 500metres apart...

Of course that's a solution to the disposal of scrap tyres, pack 'em in behind the Armco.They would be a fire risk but it would be very easy to stop a fire by removing some to create a fire break and perhaps build fire breaks into the yyre walls.

Remember though, no sharp bends on Motorways and so no matter why you hit it the Armco should work. Don't always but it made a huge difference. Shame there isn't more on an near railways bridges.....