Matt62 wrote:Interesting response, but what if the 'convention' contradicts the highway code? An example would be the hard shoulder queuing mentioned in an earlier thread.
Safety should always come before law. If, due to forced circumstance, breaking the law is required for safety reasons, then I think the law has a way to deal with this (?) So if cars are already queuing on the hard shoulder and this means I'm at significant risk by not doing the same, I would argue that by not doing so I'd be putting myself and others in danger.
Where convention overtakes law, and the law is deemed unreasonable or unenforceable, then the law is changed.
Where convention has happened but should be quashed, then a combination of advertising and heavy penalties are employed. If monitors were fitted that generated automatic fixed penalty tickets for hard shoulder queuing, and advertised this widely (e.g. on the news), I'm sure the practise would soon stop.
In the case of hard shoulder queuing, this has started to happen because motorways are carrying too much traffic for the junction design. So I don't think it is the law or the driver's actions that need to be addressed, but rather the junction design that needs to change to allow drivers to stick to the law.