Motorways part 5 - The hard shoulder and the emergency phone

The temperature gauge is rising, it looks like we might have a problem with the vehicle. Hopefully we can reach a slip road or services where we can leave the motorway and get the fault fixed. It is important to do vehicle checks before a long journey as constant speeds increase the risk of a breakdown(remember this). Ahh, to bad, the engine is overheating, there is an emergency refuse area ahead so I am going to pull us over. The hard shoulder on motorways is there for emergencies and breakdowns only(remember), unless an ATM specifies otherwise (we will get to that later) right now we must put on our hazard warning lights to let other drivers know we are broken down and a potential hazard, (after-all, we don’t want a sleepy coach driver or truck driver who has exceeded his/her legal nine hours a day driving allowance from drifting onto the hard shoulder and side swiping us) For this reason also it is important to leave the vehicle (through the passenger side) and await the breakdown recovery truck from the embankment.

Now we are pulled over and at a safe distance from the vehicle with the hazard lights on I need to ask if you are a member of an emergency breakdown recovery service? Ah, Ok, not a problem. Now we have a choice of how to proceed, most people these days will have a mobile phone with them making the emergency breakdown phones less important than they used to be, however, mobiles do tend to run out of battery life just at the worst time. Motorway emergency phones have other advantages, they can tell the police (In some area’s emergency phones are now linked to the highways agency, remember this) your exact location. If you definitely wanted to use your mobile then you would need to take note of the number on the nearest marker post to identify your location (remember this). In this instance, as you are not yet a member of a breakdown recovery service, I will walk to the nearest emergency phone and call through our position, the operator can then take care of a call out truck for us. Wait here while I follow the arrows on the marker posts to the nearest phone...

Ok, that’s taken care of, a local recovery service should be here within half an hour, did you see how i used the emergency phone by the way? When using emergency phones on the motorway always stand facing the direction of the oncoming traffic so that should one of those aforementioned sleepy drivers (or a driver distracted by talking on his mobile) drift onto the hard shoulder we you will see it coming and get out of its way before it takes you out. Do you remember how many times using a mobile whilst driving increases the risk of collision..? Phones 4 U. I would hate to live on only in somebody else’s guilty conscience, how about you? www.facebook.com/TheoryTestNovel http://twitter.com/theorytestnovel