• The first stage of the forum upgrades has now been completed but they remain in a degraded state and are still being worked on. Normal posting/reading should now be possible.
    Please read this thread for more details.
    New user registrations are currently disabled.

Really minor annoyances

Morrisons fresh pizzas. If you wait in the queue and get them to make it for you they're really nice. If you're pushed for time and pick one up that they've already made there's not enough sauce and cheese on and it just tastes dry.
 

I can't permanently switch off the lane assist and speed warnings in my new car. It has to be manually switched off each journey.

Not that I needed the speed warning stuck behind someone weaving all over the road at 40mph in a 60 this morning and then refusing to move at the give way for a roundabout forcing me to go right from the left hand lane just to get round the dopey bastard, but that's for the major annoyance thread.
 
I'm mildly annoyed that i pay for a landline, and we both don't answer it when it rings.
In the past, i was programmed to answer it. I think i've now programmed myself to be annoyed and just let it ring. It's just rang there next to me, and i can see the number display. Fuck you 0122469563.

Edit. Mrs R seems to think the closed garage door is the best thing to stop the car. We must save a fortune on brakepads.
 
Last edited:
monkeytassle said:
There's a new electronic sign been installed near orpington. It switched from one advert to another as I was driving passed. Honestly I would have been less blind had I been hit by lightning. Absolutely ridiculous
Click to expand...

the one on chester road just by hastings hill as you come off the A19 is a bit daft. its a massive giant video screen in the middle of the roundabout facing up the dual carriageway, its clearly aimed at advertising shite to people driving cars towards a roundabout. i'm not sure how it passed planning. its not exactly in the way of your view, but it is extremely distracting and if you are driving correctly you shouldn't have any time to even look at it
 
Sgt Pepper said:
The end of junctions or at entrances to roundabouts where your view is obstructed by either long weeds or, even worse, an advertising sign attached to a post that has clearly been placed there by someone. There’s one like this at the moment at the bottom of the sliproad off the 1231 near the Galleries where you turn right to head to the Galleries/Glebe or can turn left for Albany. Don’t know if it’s always been there and I’ve missed it, or if the wind has blown it around, but it’s current position attached to the no entry post massively hinders your view to look right and check for traffic.
Click to expand...
That Galleries round about where it meets the A182 is annoying. I had never really known long delays there, but they put in traffic lights and now there is always a queue. For ages they had broken or been turned off, and traffic flowed again, then back and you have delays.

Especially annoying is going through at quiet times. I have come down the slip road and from a distance you see the light is green. As you get there it has turned to red. So you sit and wait, and wait and wait. Eventually something comes around the roundabout, gets to the lights just before my entrance and they turn to red for them, letting me go.
 
DaveH said:
That Galleries round about where it meets the A182 is annoying. I had never really known long delays there, but they put in traffic lights and now there is always a queue. For ages they had broken or been turned off, and traffic flowed again, then back and you have delays.

Especially annoying is going through at quiet times. I have come down the slip road and from a distance you see the light is green. As you get there it has turned to red. So you sit and wait, and wait and wait. Eventually something comes around the roundabout, gets to the lights just before my entrance and they turn to red for them, letting me go.
Click to expand...

Kind of similar general annoyance that there's a few traffic light systems - e.g. Asda Benton and Beach Road before you get to Tynemouth where there's a point where cars to the left of you are turning right and there's no safety issue in letting you turn left, but the lights stay red anyway.
 
DaveH said:
That Galleries round about where it meets the A182 is annoying. I had never really known long delays there, but they put in traffic lights and now there is always a queue. For ages they had broken or been turned off, and traffic flowed again, then back and you have delays.

Especially annoying is going through at quiet times. I have come down the slip road and from a distance you see the light is green. As you get there it has turned to red. So you sit and wait, and wait and wait. Eventually something comes around the roundabout, gets to the lights just before my entrance and they turn to red for them, letting me go.
Click to expand...
Aye I’ve always thought that roundabout flows better when they’re turned off and was better before they even got put in a good few years ago now. I can only presume they’re there to give fairness to those coming off the slip roads of the 182, such is the volume of traffic that flows east to west and west to east. At busy times I can imagine it would be hard finding a gap to pull out.
 
S.S.R.. said:
Kind of similar general annoyance that there's a few traffic light systems - e.g. Asda Benton and Beach Road before you get to Tynemouth where there's a point where cars to the left of you are turning right and there's no safety issue in letting you turn left, but the lights stay red anyway.
Click to expand...
Some people are crap at implementing traffic lights. For a while there were some in York I had to drive through (end of Lord Mayors Walk/Bootham for anyone who knows the area). It was a large T junction. Each cycle they would give around 10 seconds to let 2-3 cars out. Then take 30 seconds to let the junction clear and let the next lane out. I sat bored counting the cycle of them on a couple of mornings.

I think their intention was by quickly rotating between the 3 roads, everyone would move quickly. The result was that 75% of the time no traffic at all flowed over the junction and the whole place ended up gridlocked at rush hour.

Another pair by the racecourse, going into town merged a car lane with a bus only lane. You had lights on a junction then about a bus length back, lights on the bus lane next to lights on the car lane. What happened was the junction would go red, the bus lane would still be green. A bus or a couple of taxies would fill the holding area before the junction. Then the car lane would go green and red again with no traffic moving, because there was something in the holding area. Then the junction would go green, let out the one or two vehicles and start the cycle again. What happened there was cars could only approach York when there was no traffic at all in the bus/taxi lane. You could regularly sit for 5 cycles of the lights, right at the front and not move, with very little traffic actually getting through.

It always amazes me that nobody seems to measure congestion levels and looks at these things, and can see them as a fixable problem. In both those examples a change of sequence would massively improve traffic flow. They even have simulations you can use for such things.
 
DaveH said:
Some people are crap at implementing traffic lights. For a while there were some in York I had to drive through (end of Lord Mayors Walk/Bootham for anyone who knows the area). It was a large T junction. Each cycle they would give around 10 seconds to let 2-3 cars out. Then take 30 seconds to let the junction clear and let the next lane out. I sat bored counting the cycle of them on a couple of mornings.

I think their intention was by quickly rotating between the 3 roads, everyone would move quickly. The result was that 75% of the time no traffic at all flowed over the junction and the whole place ended up gridlocked at rush hour.

Another pair by the racecourse, going into town merged a car lane with a bus only lane. You had lights on a junction then about a bus length back, lights on the bus lane next to lights on the car lane. What happened was the junction would go red, the bus lane would still be green. A bus or a couple of taxies would fill the holding area before the junction. Then the car lane would go green and red again with no traffic moving, because there was something in the holding area. Then the junction would go green, let out the one or two vehicles and start the cycle again. What happened there was cars could only approach York when there was no traffic at all in the bus/taxi lane. You could regularly sit for 5 cycles of the lights, right at the front and not move, with very little traffic actually getting through.

It always amazes me that nobody seems to measure congestion levels and looks at these things, and can see them as a fixable problem. In both those examples a change of sequence would massively improve traffic flow. They even have simulations you can use for such things.
Click to expand...

It's my pet peeve because you just know someone is getting paid a mega salary to take care of these things and not rectifying problems any idiot - even me - can solve.

To busy wasting money on daft things no one needed or asked for.
 
c032745y said:
Dog whisperers, with their mutinous hounds running amok while they shout his/her name or worse, blow a whistle. Black lab came bounding up to us today so I had to scoop up the rage monkey & sling him under my arm, looking like Spit the Dog. Lab jumps up towards the mini velociraptor so I ask nicely "Can you call your dog in please"
"He's only trying to say Hello!"
"Listen pet. If you've seen Mona Lisa with Bob Hoskins when he goes to see his ex after getting released from jail, has a scrap with the new boyfriend, then rants at the closed door "I only came to say 'Ello! F*cking 'Ello!" as he launches the wheely bin at the door, that's how my dog sez Hello!"

I actually only thought that last bit. I actually said "Sorry pet but mine's a little bastard & if your dog jumps up at him again he might lose some of his snout!"
Click to expand...
There are plenty of airheads just don't get that.
 
S.S.R.. said:
It's my pet peeve because you just know someone is getting paid a mega salary to take care of these things and not rectifying problems any idiot - even me - can solve.

To busy wasting money on daft things no one needed or asked for.
Click to expand...
People assume that, but doing a quick google asking what a council traffic planner earns, it is coming back with links to say £27k, max of £40k with Kent one of the highest at £37k.

Average national salary is reported to also be £37k, and graduates starting on £32k.

To me that suggests they are not picking the cream of the crop and are most likely recruiting from people who have done ok at general office admin. I doubt they are getting people with a background in engineering, computer science, data analysis etc, who can bring that analytical approach to problem solving.
 
Ruleigan said:
I can't permanently switch off the lane assist and speed warnings in my new car. It has to be manually switched off each journey.

Not that I needed the speed warning stuck behind someone weaving all over the road at 40mph in a 60 this morning and then refusing to move at the give way for a roundabout forcing me to go right from the left hand lane just to get round the dopey bastard, but that's for the major annoyance thread.
Click to expand...
Ditto about the lane assist. Plus the kind of bloke who, when he sees an alert on the dashboard, doesn’t ignore it and feels a duty to check out what the alert is about. And every single time it’s an alert to tell me that ‘internet is not available’. That’s probably coz I don’t have mobile data turned on in my iPhone settings. I get quite enough mobile data and keeping it off unless I really, really need, ensures that I continue to pay about a quarter of what everyone else I know pays for my monthly phone charge. But the car insists on telling me that it can’t access the internet, every time I turn the engine on. And I just know that the ONE time I DON’T check and delete the alert will be the one time that it’s something important like ‘get out of the car, it’s about to explode!!’
ivanthereasonable said:
I'm mildly annoyed that i pay for a landline, and we both don't answer it when it rings.
In the past, i was programmed to answer it. I think i've now programmed myself to be annoyed and just let it ring. It's just rang there next to me, and i can see the number display. Fuck you 0122469563.

Edit. Mrs R seems to think the closed garage door is the best thing to stop the car. We must save a fortune on brakepads.
Click to expand...

We used to have a landline phone because two people - count em - called us on it and wouldn’t think of calling our respective mobiles. One was my mother. She’s 92. She eventually got the hang of calling my mobile for two rings and hanging up. I’d then call her back. She was technoterrifed of calling a mobile coz she didn’t understand them and couldn’t use them. No matter how many times I tried to explain that by calling a mobile phone, she wasn’t actually using one. But then she got worried about the charges. So we developed a system. Now the only person who calls us on the landline in a bloke called Paul. He doesn’t like mobile phones. The major part of his conversations consist of how he hates technology and all this modern stuff like mobile phones. Sometimes he calls us on the landline simply to tell us how much he hates mobile phones. (May have made that bit up). He’s my age by the way. There’s no risk he’ll read this. He hates the internet.
 
Last edited:
Android notifications, particular from my banking app.

They show half a message usually saying that a certain amount had been added or taken from my account. Sometimes it is low balance alert, your balance is now..... It looks like you should be able to see a bit more, but can't. if you click on it, it takes you to the banking app where it usually is not easy to see what the notification was. Pretty much saying "Here is half some information, work out the rest yourself". If the full info was there (and I think that does show if you happen to be using your phone when the notification comes in) then I could normally not even bother launching the banking app and just ack it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top