The clot in Britain's transport arteries

I have long pondered the reasoning of the half-baked intellect that came up with the idea of the Highways Agency's army of dayglo-ed wannabe traffic cops. I mean, what did they think they were going to achieve by employing legions of pea-brained jobsworths to patrol the highways and byways of Britain. Whatever the intention was, the results have been all too predictable - even more traffic chaos, as eloquently illustrated by the sublime Barry Beelzebub writing on Devil's Advocate.

Once the high visibility-jacketed muppets of the Highways Agency were recruited to take over many of the responsibilities of the low-visibility motorway police, the situation deteriorated into something resembling farce. Now, every time you set off on an important journey – perhaps to win a new order for your firm or negotiate a job-creating contract – the chances of you actually arriving at your destination within eight hours of the due time depend upon a sad group of men who live with their mothers, carry emergency Yorkies in their jacket pockets and who can recite clause number 72b (section C) of the 1995 Road Traffic Act verbatim.

So what are they supposed to do? Wikipedia has this to say...

In April 2004, Highways Agency Traffic Officers began working alongside police on motorways in the West Midlands. They work alongside the police in England in an attempt to reduce congestion caused by incidents. Overall it was estimated to cost the UK economy £3billion a year with the closure of one lane estimated at up to £400,000 an hour. The introduction of the officers was aimed to reduce the 25% of delays caused by collisions by around 5%. The roll out of traffic Officers was completed on 18 July 2006 and they now cover the whole of the English motorway network using high-visibility patrol vehicles.

So the idea was to reduce traffic congestion after minor accidents. Now this is interesting. Most experienced drivers know only that the major cause of congestion is "rubber necking". So what's more likely to cause rubber necking? the sight of a dented car, or the sight of a dented car, surrounded by flashing disco lights, arm-waving pillocks in dayglo jackets and 4 x 4 pretendy police cars? Hmm...that's a tricky one.

And then there is the major cause of accidents on motorways - rear end collisions. Caused largely as a result of...you've guessed it..rubber necking.

So here we have it: More congestion, which leads to more minor collisions, which in turn leads to more congestion and so on.

The net result is - as anyone who has travelled on a motorway knows only too well - traffic congestion has become so chronic after even a minor incident, that disruption is measured in tens of hours. So who was the pillock behind this masterstroke?

Why, it's our old friend Alistair Darling - fuckwit extraordinaire.