Flying to New York

Which is what I could have almost done yesterday in the time it took to drive home the 30 miles from my friend's house in Tonbridge.

The end of the tailback on the M25 London Orbital Motorway (referred to in a previous post as The World's Biggest Car Park, and yesterday living up to that reputation) was just after I'd passed my last opportunity to leave the motorway for several miles. The accident that caused the tailback had only happened 3 hours earlier, so there hadn't been much time to put up signs to tell people not to join the motorway. The warning signs were flashing a 40mph speed limit, to which my reply would have been, "Yes please". Actually, 4mph would have been speeding under these conditions. Passengers had time to leave cars, take a pee in the bushes up the embankment, and take a leg-stretching stroll before returning to their vehicles, which might have moved forward a car length or two. I stopped counting broken-down cars on the hard shoulder when I reached 30. Three lorries had to stop for their drivers to take what i presume was a rest break, or they would have been driving for illegal lengths of time.

I stayed in the inside lane for two reasons: I wanted to be able to pull over if my car showed signs of failing; and even before I knew the extent of the holdup, I had decided to leave by the next exit. It was only a few miles, so I thought it might take half an hour rather than the usual 5 minutes. Just add three hours to that! The cars in the other lanes were moving more quickly, which astonished me, as we were all now going to be leaving by that same exit, and my lane was the correct one for doing so.

There were a lot of cars trapped behind the accident, which happened at the exit slip after the one we had to leave by, and is the one I would usually take. Thirteen vehicles were involved, and today on Google I discovered that a 2-year-old died. The trapped cars were eventually diverted on to the other carriageway and sent back whence they had come. Then the traffic news on the radio announced that "all the trapped vehicles had gone."

Excuse me. Hello! Am I not trapped, along with all these thousands of other people travelling at slower than snail's pace and unable to go anywhere? Is that not the same as trapped?

My one-hour journey took four-and-a-half hours, and when I got home, Saturday evening was all but gone. I'm very sorry about the toddler. And I hope that for him and for all the people whose lives were made an absolute misery (including the many who must have missed flights, since the motorway delivers people to the roads for 3 airports) the person or people responsible for the mayhem suffer suitable punishment. Unfortunately, in this country, that usually means a fine and a couple of points on their driving licence.