An article on the BBC News website features two people who regularly do a 350+ mile, six hour return journey to work by car. We ask our readers whether they consider this to be safe, and the sort of article that BBC News should carry?
The article feature five “readers tales of extreme commuting”, including Gary Egan who commutes from Porthcawl in South Wales to Watford by car “at least five times a week”.
The journey is 181 miles each way and Mr Egan says on average the round trip takes six hours. Mr Egan says his alarm goes off at 3.30am each day and that he aims to be in his office by 6.30am. He says that his working day “can last as much as 12 hours” before he sets off on the return journey, which takes on average between three and three and a half hours.
Mr Egan describes his job as stressful and says he uses the journey home to “make a plan for the following day”. He also says he takes hands free calls and that his car “reads out text messages and I can send messages back again by talking via the Bluetooth connection”.
Malcolm Howe says that for 18 months he travelled from Brussels to Paris by car four times each week, a distance of 188 miles each way. On the fifth day he made the journey by train to “break up the monotony”.
Mr Howe admits to doing “a lot of conference calls while I’m in the car” and “competes with himself to reach a village 10 minutes earlier than the day before”. He says he now lives in the French Alps and works in Luxembourg. He says he crosses four national borders on his journey to work, which “takes six hours”.
What’s your view on this? Please tell us by using the comments box below.
As far as distance and mileage is concerned, it seems like a pretty normal day when I was a rep. The advantage a rep had is that the route varied a lot from day to day. I would suggest that boredom leading to inattention is likely to be a potentially bigger risk than straight forward tiredness for those repeating the same route on a daily basis.
Pat, Wales
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1. Yes the BBC should carry it as its factual.
2. The people doing this run a high risk. Network Rail advocate a “door to door” day of less than 14 hours for staff and supply chain. The Highways Agency has similar plans coming soon (as guidance). By “door to door” I mean home-work-home total period.
pete, liverpool
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