OT: Motorways

There are two offences which I think should result in an automatic ban:

- Driving the wrong way along a dual carriageway or motorway, whether accidental or deliberate. Anyone can make a mistake and enter an off-slip; the sin is not *immediately* noticing that you've cocked up, and pulling over onto the hard shoulder to work out how you are going to extricate yourself (probably with the aid of the police to stop the traffic briefly).

- Pulling out from one lane to another without waiting for traffic that is going a lot faster (but still going no faster than 70) and which will hit them. When I'm overtaking a series of cars that are in Lane 1, and Lane 3 is clear, I will sometimes defensively move from Lane 2 to 3, so there is a clear lane between them. It is consideration for the car that it wanting to pull out and who may not want to go as fast as me, just a little faster than the HGV that they are overtaking.

If they're in a large vehicle and you're in a small vehicle you should consider backing up for them, irrespective of the distance to passing places. And irrespective of your prejudice against the tourists who pump money into your rural paradise.

Bill

The problem is that they never will grow up.

Nobody drives poorly *deliberately*.

Except suicides.

Mostly it's carelessness, inattention, inexperience or plain stupidity.

In my day it was an up and down wave out of the drivers window.

On my last motorway journey (250 miles on 3 motorways) I had the one car in front joining a motorway at 30 miles per hour causing problem for all behind him and for the HGVs alraedy on the motorway and another car leaving the busy motorway occupying both lanes on the slip road.

Until they invented brake lights.

I can remember my mum supplementing brake lights with an up and down arm signal when I was little (1960s) but she stopped some time in the 1970s.

Even with an "I am slowing down" arm signal, people *may* wrongly interpret it as "I am stopping and parking, feel free to go past me" as opposed to the normal "I am stopping, stay behind me because I will set off again as soon as I can".

The only time I give an arm signal these days is if I am doing (effectively) a U turn on a roundabout, and I signal right to let traffic on the last entry point before the one I am aiming for, know that I really *am* going all the way round, since this is a rare manoeuvre.

People often drive themselves into a position where they have have to pull out late onto a lane with faster moving traffic or brake hard and stay in lane as they have no anticipation and do not use their rear view mirrors.

Issue that I usually find is the people who don't know that slips roads are where you slow down abd slow to about 50mph about a quarter of a mile away.

To answer another comment, motorway training is is now given to learner drivers.

That is not necessarily lack of anticipation. It can also be keeping the speed up to enable you to pull smoothly into the next lane, but an almost solid stream of traffic being in the next lane, with each approaching suitable gap being taken by someone behind you suddenly pulling into it. Each gap taken bringing you closer to the vehicle in front, but you daren't slow too much until the last minute or you'll have no chance at all to pull out.

On I had some years ago was a driver deciding that he absolutely had to pass me (I was towing a caravan at 60mph), but then cut in front and slammed his brakes on to exit across the hatched area of a slip-road. My resultant emergency braking dropped me to below 30mph ... just at the bottom of a steep hill that I struggled to regain speed on.

Stupid kids showing off to their mates often do.

NY snipped-for-privacy@privacy.invalid wrote

When a mate of mine in front of me did it, I didn't have clue what he meant by it. Turned out that he meant that there was a cop in front of him that I couldn't see and he knew that I ignored the speed limit when charging around the garage sales at around

I never realised that you poms mean that.

We don't use that hand signal at all.

I do it with my hand still inside the car when I want to indicate to someone they are free to come out of a driveway or parking space when I am not going into that driveway or parking space.

All the hand signals have been superseded by brake lights and indicators. When I learned to drive in 1980, the signals were still taught as a "backup" in case you suffered failure of the lights (yeah, how often does that happen?). I'm not sure it's even taught or tested nowadays.

I've had both my headlights fail at night, which was bloody scary on an unlit road which was also unfenced and which it was highly likely that horses would be in the road - most of the roads in the New Forest, west of Southampton, have loose horses and a few cows grazing, and so have a blanket

Moral of that story: carry *two* spares, and preferably buy branded bulbs rather than cheap ones from Halfords (a UK motor spares shop). I bought Osram to replace them (plus two spares) and I think I'm still on that bulb about 10 years later, whereas the Halfords ones lasted about 6 months :-(

The problem with blown brake lights is that you can't tell if they've blown while you're driving (*), even if you get your passenger to check the lights before you set off. Indicators used to flash more rapidly if a bulb had blown, so you knew at least to stop and check. I'm not sure whether electronic rather than bimetallic flasher units change speed if the load changes.

(*) Unless your car has electronic monitoring of bulbs. Neither of our cars do.

NY snipped-for-privacy@privacy.invalid wrote

Nope. There is no way to do what I use a handsignal for, or when a big truck wants to tell you it is safe to overtake because he is much higher than you and can see that much better than you can. Or that there is a cop around when the one wanting to tell you that is in front of you going in the same direction.

Fark, didn't realise you were that young.

And how would you know when driving anyway.

I did have the driving examiner tell me to use hand signals when I did my only driving test, but I assumed that he did that to see how well I reacted to unusual situations.

I know it isnt here because I taught a couple of kids to drive about 10 years ago.

I did too when the alternator regulator failed.

Not much use with some cars, its a major undertaking to change the bulb and I don't bother to ensure that such a rare event can never happen again.

There are still a small number of little lanes that go directly onto a motorway with no slip road, where pulling out far too slow is simply unavoidable. I avoid those wherever possible. Similarly people can slow to 20mph before turning off the motorway for the same reason.

Put your right indicator on, then only a fool will try to pass you, but give the oncoming a headlight flash.

Including people being chased by police cars, jumping lights, crossing over into the path of oncoming vehicles, going wrong way round roundabous etc?

IMO aggressive driving is deliberate. And poor.