No.
I dont indicate when there /is/ no one there to see it.
I would not have survived this long if I hadnt learnt to tell whether the road in front or behind me was clear of cars rather than I /just thought/ it was.
In urban situations you never know who is where. So I always indicate
Because I the chances of no one seeing it are infinitesimal
I didnt say 'if I didnt see' I said 'there is no one to see it'
Try and do asome basic Emnglish comprehension.
A crossroads in the middle of empty land with no trees or hedges at 5 a.m.
A motorway exit with no one visible nehind you in any mirror.
If you have missed someone in such circumstances you shoukdnt be driving.
That is not my policy. # My policy is nothing to do with thinking. Its to do with fact.
If you dont know the difference between thinking a car is not there and it being there I suggeest you stop driving immedialetly
Ther are cars that you know are there, and there are cars that cannot possibly be there.
The third category, cars that could well be there but are not currently visible do not belong to the previous category
Yes, yours.
>
It will be your problem when they hit you.
Prior to getting my licence many moons ago I went on a Police driving course where we were told, with quite some emphasis, that we should signal every move. Including at midnight in the middle of nowhere.
Omniscient or merely all-seeing? Clearly untrue. How could you possibly know what you haven't seen? You are simply wrong. Get over it, move on.
There are others who have 'survived' as long as you without the benefit of such omniscience, some of them are possibly even stupider than you, yet still probably know when to stop digging.
Cheers
No one is infallible.
The fact that every single commercial driver and not a few privateers like myself use it, is neither here nor there
Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.
I'd rather break the rules than end up 6 feet under the moral high ground.
I drive an auto 'left foot braking' all the time. I am sure its verboten in someones book. For me it gives far better conmtrol and fat faster reaction to problems
Plods are rather dim bulbs. And they like giving Orders
Its to get them in the habit
It also helps keep you alive.
Precisely: good drivers anticipate the needs of others and do things that they are not compelled to do if, at little cost to themselves, they can make it easier for someone else. That's on the basis that what you do to other people, you hope other people will do to you.
If I am approaching a junction, I usually look to move out into Lane 2 as I am passing the exit slip so as to leave Lane 1 clear for any traffic that wants to join at the entry slip. This is particularly important for lorries which have much poorer acceleration and so will need the full length if the slip road to accelerate if they have to stop and wait for a gap because there is nose-to-tail traffic in Lane 1.
The difficulty with joining a motorway is that you may have traffic behind you on the slip road which may expect you to keep going at your existing speed and not slow down so you can slot behind a car that's in Lane 1. Their fault if they hit you because they have not read the road correctly, but being in the right doesn't prevent damage to your car if they rear-end you ;-)
There are/were some slip roads on the A1 which are/were exceptionally short, and when you first get a good view of the traffic that you are about to join, there is very little accelerating distance before the sliproad ends. The trick there is the stop as far back as possible, indicating right, and wait until there is a gap (or someone moves from Lane 1 to 2 to let you in) and then accelerate as fast as possible to go from 0 to 70 by the time you meet Lane 1. If you are *very* lucky you may get enough advance view to determine that it is safe to join without having to slow down too much.
Examples were:
- where the Masham - Thirsk B6267 used to join the A1 before it was upgraded to motorway
- some of the petrol stations on the A1 between the M18 and the M62 junctions (in the days when the A1 was non-motorway for the whole of that distance) and on the non-motorway sections around Welwyn and Biggleswade
Likewise, if I see a car waiting to turn out of a side road and I can see that it is clear for them in the opposite direction, but not in the direction I am going, I will flash them *while I am still some distance away* and reduce speed slightly, in the anticipation that they will have pulled out and gone long before I reach the junction, and without having to slow down very much. I only do this if I can see a) that they will be able to pull out (ie no traffic in opposite direction), and b) if there are cars behind me (if I'm the only car, the one on the side road can wait till I've gone past and then pull out).
I didnt say I 'knew' it. I said 'there is no one there'
Like there is no one in this room
Do you drive out into te middle of the road with your eyes closed and claim 'you didnt see him coming'
No you drive to what is *there*.
You are simply wrong. Get over
You are simply wrong. get over it, move on.
There are cars that you can see that are there. There are cars that you can't see, that *might* be there There are no cars that you cannot see that CANNOT be there.
For example, if you are indicating to a car that is *possibly* going to come busting through a wood with no road, or out of a lake, or through a brick wall, I suggest to you that that you stop driving and wait till the drugs wear off.
If we are going to include cars falling from heaven, rising out of lakes, and in general coming from other places than the road parking lot or driveway. may I suggest that indicating to them is the least of the issue?
Ah, but is it "a move", you have no alternative so I don't really see it as "a move".
They get their knickers in a twist about the *concept* of letting another motorist know that you will wait for them although you have priority over them, quite independent of the fact that headlamp-flashing can be ambiguous (is it an "I will let you pull out ahead of me" or is it a visible horn "watch out - I'm here").
I remember asking my "observer" (instructor) what he would recommend in place of the ambiguous headlamp flash and he was horrified - I'd asked the wrong question. His answer was that you should not give any formal of signal, even if it is non-ambiguous; instead you should slow down and be prepared to stop as a "signal" that you were letting them pull out. But ideally you should simply not let anyone pull out from a side road - he said.
I'm glad I did the IAM test and I still try to look further ahead and anticipate what other cars might do, preparing a mental "escape strategy" if the unthinkable happens. And I fairly quickly go into the habit of approaching a junction in top gear and then changing into the appropriate gear to accelerate away when I've seen the traffic that I will be joining: this was in direct contradiction to what I was taught for my normal test (in the early 80s - things have changed since then). My instructor for my normal test was a retired Police Class 1 driving instructor. After I'd passed, when he was giving me a "how to drive properly, not just to pass the test" lesson, he confessed to me that it took a lot of will-power to teach people for the normal test to change sequentially down through the gears and to brake linearly (constant braking force) instead of "progressively" (gentle braking at high speed, gradually increasing as you bring the speed down, and then come almost off the brakes as you come to a halt, which is what the IAM teaches.
But there are some things, like not flashing drivers to communicate "I will wait for you" and only indicating if you can see someone who needs to know, which have not kept up with modern traffic. The official police/IAM handbook "Roadcraft" at the time I was taking the IAM test still recommended double-declutching, completely ignoring the fact that in any car that has synchromesh it is virtually impossible to learn the skill because the gear lever will go into the new gear just as easily no matter whether or not you have correctly matched the engine speed to the new gear. I can *sometimes* change gear clutchlessly, and you can learn that skill because you get feedback as to whether or not it's worked and you do it by feel (increase/decrease engine revs until it slips in), but a true DDC (clutch down, move into neutral, clutch up, vary throttle to match new gear, clutch down, into new gear, clutch up - what a palaver) is considerably slower and is completely hit-and-miss because you've no way of knowing whether you've got it right until you try to engage the new gear. Thankfully synchromesh has made that obsolete.
Of course, even though DDC is obsolete, you still try to increase/decrease the engine revs as you are changing gear, not to aid the selection of the new gear but to avoid the lurch when you let the clutch up if the speeds of the plates are not the same. I once had the misfortune to be a passenger in a car driven by someone who had been driving for a while (not recently passed) and who always took her foot right off the accelerator, changed gear, let the clutch up on an idling engine and then accelerated. The life of her clutch must have been measured in weeks ;-) I very tactfully suggested that there might be a different (I avoid the word "better"!) way of doing it which was a bit smoother.
why would THEY hit you...it is you that is merging...
>
Only if you are going to swerve across all four lines into the fast lane :-(.
Happened to me as I was tarvelling along the M27 towards Havant and a large merc did this at about 4PM one saturday, coming out of Portsmouth. I assume it was a footballer or coach hurrying home.
Mirror, Signal, Manouvre
and for news postings,
Engage Brain, Type, READ and correct spelling, Post.
come on the only time you can use the cruise control is when there is nobody about...and why should I slow down or speed up WHEN IN SCOTLAND THERE IS NO BUGGER ABOUT apart from the burd that thinks I should get out of her way as she joins the motorway......and anyway I spend my life avoiding wummin drivers that is why the appear to be safer drivers.....I have also noticed wummin think putting on her indicator means it is safe to change lanes.....bloody useless the lot of them......
bloody pedants ....
I agree with the first, because the roads will all be in your field of forward vision, maybe with your eyes scanning from one side to the other.
A motorway exit with no-one visible in any mirror isn't necessarily foolproof if there are any blind spots that are not covered by any of the mirrors, or (what I find) you can see a car in one of the mirrors but you aren't *certain* where it is in relation to your car.
When I'm joining a motorway at a slip road, I check in my door mirror and rear view mirror, but if I don't see anything, I also look over my right shoulder and move my head from side to side to pan the mirror over a wider field of view.
But I still indicate, partly because it has become an automatic part of the process of changing lanes and partly because I cannot be *certain* (only highly confident) that there isn't someone who needs to see me. Joining a motorway is a debateable case, because as other people have said, the only thing traffic on the slip road can do is to join Lane 1. But that's not the case when you are already on a motorway and plan to change lanes: if you haven't seen someone and don't indicate, they have no way of knowing whether you intend to stay in your current lane or move to another lane, until you start to move. If you indicate and there is a car in your blind spot, you hope that he will hoot to alert you that he is there, so you can abort the manoeuvre until he's gone past.
The thing that annoys me is when I can see there is a long stream of traffic in the lane that I want to move into, so I indicate my intention or desire to join the lane *when it is safe*, in the hope that someone might just make space for me, but people interpret this as "I am going to move right NOW" and so give me full-strength horn / headlamps / wanker handsignal. The alternative is not to indicate until it is safe, but then no-one knows that I want to pull out so no-one will invite me to do so.
There is a type of motorist who approaches fast in the lane that I want to join, then slows down and crawls past me, and then speeds up again. What's that all about? I see it a *lot* with cars that are overtaking HGVs: they are going at 70 mph and I'm doing the same, a few seconds behind them. As they approach an HGV (maybe doing 60) in the lane on their left, they slam on the brakes until they are going at 61, take ages to get past him, and then accelerate back to 70 once they are past his front end. Given that lorries *might* pull out without noticing traffic on their right, I want to spend the *least* time alongside them, and not prolong it any more than necessary.
I never use left-foot braking in an auto for one simple reason: my left foot is conditioned to the fairly gross down-up movement of a clutch in a manual. I would not trust myself to brake *gently* if I used my left foot. Maybe those who never drive a manual car have chance to unlearn the instinct of a heavier left foot than right foot, and then both feet are used to the more delicate control of braking.
Generally I do in an automatic what I would do in a manual, with the exception of changing gear: I still brake with my right foot, I put the car into neutral (or park) when I'm stopped in traffic and hold the car on the handbrake. What I will *never* do - one my "unbreakable rules" is keep my foot on the footbrake once I'm stationary - in either manual or automatic - because I don't like other people glaring their brake lights continuously in my face, so I won't do it to them.
You mean Motorways air coming apart and need joining? Brian
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