So your village is a rat run
12-May-2008
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So your village is a rat run

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The derogatory term "rat run" used to describe a road when used by traffic to avoid congestion. Well then, maybe we should all sit in the jams like good little clones and not have the temerity to consider or even use an alternative route?

This term is typically used by people who, when they bought a house, were too stupid to notice that it had a highway in front of it and are now shocked that said highway can actually be used by traffic. If you don’t want others to drive by your house, then move to a place that doesn’t have any roads!

Traffic Calming Measures and the Rat Run

To combat such rattish behaviour, local councils happily install nonsensical "traffic calming measures" (read roadblocks and hazards), one way systems and bollards to make Mr. and Mrs Suburban happy again that their personal road cannot be used by anyone but themselve.

This is pure and simple just a case of:

  1. Anti-vehicle political correctness gone way beyond mad.
  2. Such politically correct activity being legitimised by local government and the media, by gleefully proliferating the term "rat run".
  3. A quashing of any expression of individuality - i.e. "just know your place, conform and sit in the queue with the rest of the plebs."

Here’s the bottom line. We pay road tax and we want to (in fact sometimes need to) drive our cars. Who are you to tell us what roads we can and can’t drive on?

If the main roads become congested and there alternative routes there will always be a “rat run”. I would have thought it was obvious blatantly obvious that if you solve the congestion problem, you at least go some way to reducing traffic cutting through the villages.

By: Angry Git


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If the villagers think it is bad now then imagine what it would be like if the governments charging per mile came in to effect. Everyone would be using the back roads and rat runs to keep the cost down. Towns and main routes would be empty. Another example of our politicians moving a problem instead of solving it.
*Freddie  21-Feb-2008 22:32

 
Sod off cutting through the villages, use the main roads which were built for the traffic! I live close to a village and it is a very pretty area, yet it is spoilt by these idiots driving excessive speeds and cutting through the village using its narrow lanes! It's dangerous, noisy and pollutes the area. With the growth of a nearby town, the traffic has increased badly over past years, it's just not on, it's not as if the main road isn't close by! I think what you have said in your paragraph about "people being too stupid to notice the traffic when buying their house" is false, elder relatives of mine have lived in the village for over 30 years, it was a quiet lane until people found out they could cut through and with the growth of the nearby town, so I think that is a stupid assumption to make. I expect you're one of these people who speed through a village without any reagard for anyone else, yet you'd be pi**ed off if people rat ran through where you live!
*dan  21-Feb-2008 10:19

 
Similar sort of situation, is when people buy houses next to railways and then complain about the train horns and maintenance work. There's a nearby village with traffic calming measures, probably the worst i've seen they literally stuck a jutting out kerb in the middle of the road! And get this, its still wide enough to fit 2 trucks though.
*Matthew  25-Oct-2007 14:38

 
You miss the point - traffic calming is designed not to reduce traffic but to calm it. It doesn't prevent people travelling through a village, merely attempt to enforce the speed limit.... mind you with a name like angry git I doubt you'll ever be satisfied.
*ano  16-Oct-2006 08:40

 
I wish all the townies would sod off and leave us villagers alone - pollute your own neighbourhood, not ours.
*lozza  23-Aug-2006 18:53

 
I dont see how a wife could be 'snotty' if her husband owns a 'mondeo' , she may be 'embaressed' she may be wondering what her life has come to, but 'snotty' she wont be.
*michael caine  11-May-2006 10:40

 
Don't worry, the mother nature / petrol companies / taxman are dealing with this issue. Soon the sweaty man in his mondeo and housewife snob going to school avec brats in the 4x4 will be a bizarre posting in history. Just sit it out, it will end within the next 10 years.
*Nadcrunch  09-May-2006 17:49

 
WHO the HELL is JOE. I post under my name and nobody else
*Willy  04-May-2006 20:22

 
Get a grip, there is nothing wrong with Rats, they are nice people, and friendly as well.
*Roland  02-May-2006 08:18

 
Joe: this thread is not about horses, it is about rat runs in villages. Do try to stick to the point. I know when you are a bear of very little brain, it is easy to become confused and stray off track, but take a deep breath and you might just be able to focus.
*Nikki  30-Apr-2006 23:03

 
Uh oh, it wont be long before WillyAKA Joe AKA Hans has the intestinal fortitude to post comments in just one name!
*Michael caine  30-Apr-2006 08:39

 
OH OH,

It won't be long before Nikki is on about her bloody horses AGAIN,and the M/bikers doing 100MPH on corners,and etc.etc.etc zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
*Willy  30-Apr-2006 05:37


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