Latest news with #trafficjam
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Wall Street Journal
How You Can Turn a Traffic Jam Into a Backroad Adventure
For the longest time I believed that you should always stay on the highway during a traffic jam because taking alternate routes would simply slow you down. The conventional wisdom stipulated that the shortest route between two points was the route you were already on, so you should just grin and bear it. Resist the temptation to leave the highway because you'll either get lost or you'll end up in yet another traffic jam caused by all the other drivers who allowed GPS to redirect them.
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
Lorry leaves behind scene of destruction after swerving over M11 central reservation and flipping over sparking huge tailbacks near Stansted Airport
A lorry has overturned on a major motorway bringing traffic to a standstill as motorists complain of four-hour delays near Stansted Airport. The M11 in Essex is closed in both directions between Stansted Airport and Harlow after a heavy goods vehicle crossed the central reservation before overturning and coming to rest on its side. Emergency services rushed to the scene after the lorry swerved from the northbound carriageway at around 3pm today, with the air ambulance reportedly present. Pictures from the scene show the lorry on its side with debris scattered across the motoway, while another two vehicles have been left damaged following the collision. Essex police will carry out investigations and closures are expected to remain in place throughout the evening and into the night, the National Highways said. The force has warned that the closures will affect people travelling to Stansted Airport in the coming hours. Motorists have taken to social media vent their frustration after waiting in traffic for more than fours and following a series of crashes on the same stretch of the M11. One user on X said: @NationalHways how can people be left in their cars for over four hours with no sign of anything happening. 'Understandable that an accident has happened but you can turn cars around near the junctions. People have children and dogs. No shade and no water left.' Another added: 'When, in the name of God, will something be done about this deadly stretch of the #M11? Another serious crash, air ambulance, huge delays. 'Constant cost of disruption must be in the millions—average speed cameras would've paid for themselves.' National Highways said: 'The M11 in Essex is closed in both directions between J8 near Stansted Airport and J7A near Harlow North due to a serious collision involving an overturned heavy goods vehicle which has crossed from the northbound carriageway onto the southbound carriageway and has subsequently overturned and come to rest on its side. 'Essex police will be carrying out collision investigations throughout the evening. 'The closures are expected to remain in place for several hours throughout the evening and into the night. 'National Highways Traffic Officers and service providers are in attendance and are assisting with traffic management.' Traffic caught within the closure is currently being released via rearward relief and diversion have been put in place. Motorists wait outside their vehicles as some report being stationary for four hours Emergency services rushed to the scene after the the lorry swerved from the northbound carriageway at around 3pm today, with the air ambulance reportedly present A spokesperson for Essex Police said: 'The M11 is currently closed in both directions between junctions 8 and 7 following a serious collision. 'Emergency services are on the scene and the road will be closed for a number of hours. 'Please avoid the area if you can and find alternative routes This will affect people travelling to Stansted Airport. 'We will issue an update when we are able. Thank you for you patience.'
Al Bawaba
4 days ago
- Politics
- Al Bawaba
Video: hundreds of Iranians flee Tehran
ALBAWABA - A video of a huge traffic jam on the highway was shared online, showing hundreds of people trying to escape from the Iranian capital of Tehran towards a safer place. Also Read Video: Israel targets Tehran's Mehrabad Airport This comes amid Israel's constant warning to Iranians to evacuate areas near all nuclear facilities in the country. The Israeli army spokesman, Avichay Adraee, released an evacuation warning that includes all weapons factories and their supporting facilities in Iran. "For your safety, we ask you to please immediately evacuate the areas of these facilities and to not return until further notice," Israel Army's Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in Farsi in a statement on X on Sunday. He added: "Being in the vicinity of these areas endangers your life." The warning came following an exchange of attacks between the two countries over the weekend, during which Tel Aviv killed key ranking Iranian military leaders, including Esmail Qaani. On the other hand, Iran also launched over 300 missiles, attacking Israel and announcing direct hits in Haifa and Tel Aviv, in addition to other areas.
Malay Mail
09-06-2025
- Malay Mail
Missed by 15 minutes: Traffic jam spares UPSI student from deadly Gerik bus accident
KOTA BHARU, June 9 — A traffic jam caused a Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) student to miss boarding the bus that was involved in a fatal accident on the Jeli-Gerik East West Highway early this morning. Rosyidah Husien, 50, said her daughter Nur Adilah Mohd Rusdi, 20, the fifth of seven siblings, was supposed to board the chartered bus transporting UPSI students from Masjid Hadhari, Jerteh at 9 pm yesterday. She told Bernama that the car driven by her husband, Mohd Rusdi Ramli, 55, to send their daughter to the pick-up point arrived after the bus had already departed. 'When contacted, the driver said the bus would stop in Machang, but my husband refused to send her there as it was quite far. In the end, my daughter hitched a ride with her uncle, Mohd Nizam Husien, who coincidentally was also travelling to Kuala Lumpur last night,' she said. Rosyidah said her daughter left their home in Kampung Gong Bayor, Besut around midnight with her uncle. She said her daughter tried calling her friends who were on the bus around 1 am but received no response, before one friend contacted her around 2 am to inform her that the bus had been involved in an accident. 'What shocked us even more was when the police contacted my daughter and informed her that her name was listed as one of the bus passengers. 'In fact, the seat that my daughter was supposed to occupy was seat number nine, but last night it was taken by her friend,' she said. Rosyidah is grateful her daughter is now safe in Temerloh, although still traumatised and unwilling to be interviewed. Before departing last night, Rosyidah said Nur Adilah managed to chat with her grandmother and bid her farewell, expressing worry that an accident might happen. 'I did scold her for saying such a thing, but she only smiled. Who would have thought her words would come true? I am so thankful that fate spared her last night,' she said choked with emotion. Rosyidah added that apart from Nur Adilah, another of her daughter's friends was also spared after not boarding the bus, having been admitted to Besut Hospital due to fever. The tragic accident near Tasik Banding, Gerik involving the bus and a Perodua Alza MPV claimed 15 lives and left 33 injured, 27 of them seriously. — Bernama
Daily Mail
06-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
TOM UTLEY: Mrs U has a self-imposed hosepipe ban. But I don't know why she bothers when Thames Water wastes more than half a BILLION litres every day
When it comes to conserving water, my darling wife is a veritable eco-fanatic. She can't bear to see a single drop go to waste. To take one example: the hot tap over our kitchen sink runs cold for about 30 seconds before the warm water reaches it from the tank in the airing cupboard upstairs. But rather than let the water run down the drain until it warms up, as many of us would (I must plead guilty there), she collects every last teaspoonful in a jug. She then pours this into a bucket, which she keeps on the floor by the sink. As the bucket fills up in the course of the day, she takes it outside to water her beloved garden, which has been having a hard time of it lately (though the unusually long dry spell appears at last to have come to a sopping wet end). As for the reeled hosepipe I bought for her years ago, perish the thought that she would ever use it! Out of the goodness of her heart, she labours under a permanent, self-imposed hosepipe ban. All very virtuous, no doubt. But (don't tell her I said this) I reckon it's also completely futile – as she ought to have learned from something she experienced only last Sunday. Having gone through that jug-bucket rigmarole in the morning, she set off for church in the car, only to find herself stuck in a traffic jam just around the corner from our house. For the umpteenth time, Thames Water was digging up the road, at the very same junction where the company seems to have dug it up every few months since we moved to our South London suburb in the late 1980s. Temporary traffic lights were in operation, yet again, and water from a burst main was gushing in torrents down the road, as it has so often in the past. I can't say exactly how much was going to waste, but it was certainly enough to fill Mrs U's jug in the kitchen many millions of times over. What I do know is that the latest figures I can find say water companies in England and Wales lost more than one trillion litres through leaks in 2023. Meanwhile, Thames Water was named and shamed as the worst offender, having contributed 570,400,000 litres per day to that shameful total. To be fair, Thames is by far the biggest water firm in the country. It is also true that it inherited a great deal of crumbling Victorian and Edwardian infrastructure at the time of privatisation in 1989. It was only to be expected, therefore, that it would top the table for leaks. But there my sympathy runs dry and cold fury takes its place. For under a series of rapacious foreign owners and private equity firms, out to make a fast buck, Thames Water has made such a disgraceful hash of serving its customers that it has achieved what many of us might have thought impossible: along with other privatised water companies nationwide, it has succeeded in becoming more unpopular even than the banks, whose greed brought the country to the brink of ruin during the credit crunch. When there's too much rain, they pump revolting raw sewage into our precious rivers. When there's too little, they simply preach to their customers about the need to save water, imposing hosepipe bans (of the non-voluntary variety). Meanwhile, our bills go up and up. I note, incidentally, that this year's race to become the first company in the country to impose a hosepipe ban was won this week by Youlgreave Waterworks, which serves a mere 500 households in Derbyshire. But at least Youlgreave can argue that it's served by a single natural spring, which tends to dry up in sunny weather, as does the back-up supply from a disused mine. There's no such excuse for Thames, with its multiple reservoirs, which would have plenty of water to go around if only it didn't allow so much of it to leak away. So greedily has the firm behaved, indeed, that for decades it has poured into the pockets of its executives and shareholders the millions that should have been spent on preventing those leaks, keeping bills down and our rivers clean. In the process, it has accumulated staggering debts, variously estimated at between £15 billion and £20 billion, while picking up the odd fine and penalty from Ofwat, the regulator – the most recent being a record £123 million for pollution and paying excess dividends. But nothing seems to make a blind bit of difference to its conduct. With that mountain of debt hanging over the company, it's no wonder that potential rescuers have looked at the books and decided that it's not for them. On Tuesday, indeed, the American private equity firm KKR became the latest to pull out, abandoning its plans to inject £4 billion into Thames to keep it afloat. It's said that after ten weeks of due diligence, including several visits to wastewater treatment works, the firm found that the state of some of the Thames assets was worse than it had initially imagined. It was also nervous about the political risks associated with any deal, such as the possibility that the public's anger would lead to a stricter approach from Ofwat and the Government, with massive fines wiping out any potential financial gain. Quoted in The Guardian, a ministry spokesman says: 'The Government makes no apology for tackling the poor behaviour we have seen in the past, where too many people were rewarded for failure. But we welcome investors who want to work with us to rebuild this vital sector and clean up our rivers, lakes and seas.' Well good luck with that. After the depredations brought about by its owners, Thames Water looks to my untrained eye like a most unattractive prospect for any private buyer. God knows, I'm no fan of nationalisation. Indeed, among its many egregious sins, I count the fact that Thames has given capitalism a bad name among the firm's most grievous. But from where I'm sitting, ignorant as I am of high finance, I see little alternative to forcing the company into administration, which is after all a temporary form of takeover by state appointees. If so, it's true that many of its creditors – some of whom bought Thames debt at a discount in the hope of making easy profits – are likely to get their fingers seriously burnt. But I can't see Thames Water customers shedding too many tears for them. Whatever happens next, I dare say Mrs U will carry on saving every last drop of water she can. But with all those billions of gallons draining away, don't the few pints she saves look as pathetic as the Government's ruinous efforts to reduce our paltry emissions of CO2, while China and India belch ever more billions of tons into the atmosphere?
