Queensway drivers talking on the phone
Time for a bit of a rant about drivers on the Queensway. I haven’t grumbled about them (in my blog anyway) since March 11th of last year, so it’s probably time.
I often get on the Queensway using the eastbound on-ramp at Parkdale. For reasons that escape me, people seem incapable of getting up to highway speeds before the end of the ramp. The ramp isn’t particularly short like some of the ramps on the Queensway, so there’s really no excuse for this.
On at least two occasions in the last month, I’ve been heading up the ramp only to find a pack of cars at the end of the ramp with their brake lights lit up and doing 60 km/h (or less). (On another occasion there was a bunch of police cars that looked like they were dealing with the aftermath of a failed merge.) Needless to say, this causes a huge problem for the drivers trying to merge properly, like me. Tuesday night’s chaos saw cars slamming on their brakes because someone in front of them failed to merge properly. I had to merge earlier than I would normally have done, though I was more or less at highway speeds, and then try to get one lane over with causing an accident of my own to avoid the chaos. And when I managed to get past the car that seemed to be the root of this pocket of chaos what did I see but the driver with his cell phone clamped to his ear!
Talking on the phone while driving has been illegal in Ontario since October 26, 2009, yet I regularly see drivers talking on the phone almost every time I’m out on the roads. I’ve even reported a couple of drivers to the police, including one who was texting while navigating the Nicholas off-ramp on the 417, and the driver of a taxi I was in who was on the phone for the entire trip. Clearly more enforcement of the law is needed because there are a lot of drivers out there ignoring it.
And while I’m talking about Queensway drivers: If you are driving on the Queensway and are driving less that 100 km/h, there is no reason for you to be in any lane other than the one on the extreme right. And you definitely should not be in the second lane from the left! If you’re not comfortable travelling at the speed limit on the Queensway then you have no business being there as you’re a danger to the other drivers on the road.
AKA Keeper of Maps, I'm a geocacher who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
Amen. I use that ramp too, and have the same problem with the speed in the different lanes. In a storm I can understand slowing down, but on a sunny dry day, do the speed limit or better.
If the conditions are such that travelling at the posted limit is unsafe then obviously one should slow down, but the number of people toddling along the 417 at 80km/h is something I blogged about last year, too.
I had the exact same problem going to the gym tonight only this was on the Carling east bound ramp. The car two ahead of me decides that driving and merging on to the hwy at 60 km/h is ok. To top it off he cuts off another car during his merge. Ridiculous.
There’s some driver etiquette that on the part of drivers on the highway that often is missing. Generally, I try to move over a lane if I can when I’m in the righthand lane and there’s someone coming up an on-ramp, but I’ve encountered my fair share of inconsiderate drivers who don’t or who have actually switched lanes into the righthand lane and just about hit me when I’ve been merging. When I was in the UK last summer, I noticed that there were often paint markings encouraging drivers to move over one lane where on-ramps merged with the motorway. I’ve often wondered why they don’t try something like that here.