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I’ll make no apologies for what follows. Over the last 3-4 weeks, I’ve driven about 1,500 miles, from Glasgow to Somerset, to Gatwick, to Somerset, frequently to Bristol from Somerset, and finally back home - yesterday - to Glasgow. Consequently, I’ve spent more time on the roads than I normally do.

As I also keep this here website, I’ve a few frustrations to vent about the state of our roads, and - more importantly - the state of driving in the UK. It’s been some time since I’ve had a rant, and I’ve had a lot of time to, as it were, think it through. So, in no particular order:

• What on earth has happened to “Mirror, signal, manoeuvre?”. I was taught this, and think being aware of your surroundings at all times, making clear your intentions, and being considered when you do, are hallmarks of safe driving. Yet the roads these days are chock full of drivers who simply manoeuvre, with no indication. Pulling out to overtake, pulling in after having done so, all without flashing yellow lights. Indicating before pulling in has always been poor, but the swerving (for that’s what it is) across lanes with no warning is almost endemic in motorway overtaking manoeuvres, and speaks volumes - I think - to the standard of driving and consideration some people show to others.

• Aggressiveness of ‘luxury’ cars: Motorways have always had aggressive ‘fast lane’ drivers who tail-gate in an intimidating way, but there now seems to be a ‘class’ system on the roads. Fast lanes are full of expensive BMW’s, Jaguars, Audi’s and such, who simply floor the throttle as soon as the rest of us get out of the way. Whilst their cars are frequently more capable of it, and self-selecting in a way, the outside lane is almost always the default place for the muppets who almost exclusively drive these cars and show no awareness to safe motorway driving.

• ‘I Must overtake’ - I have cruise control on my C3, and use it a lot. I set a speed I’m comfortable with, and off I go. Doing this makes you realise how inconsistent the speed is of other drivers, and how difficult it is for many drivers to resist the need to overtake drivers in the inside lane. I may well be doing something around 75mph on the inside lane, but, well, I’m on the inside lane, so must therefore be overtaken. Such is the law of the road. Zoom, past they go. Only as soon as they pass (few of which then move into the inside lane themselves), they back off. Then I have to do one of those time consuming and unnecessary three lane overtaking moves to overtake them as they back off having sated their need (and forgotten, no doubt, why they found themselves doing 80mph+). Now, I certainly don’t always travel at 75mph, and don’t sit on cruise control all the time (it’s downright dangerous with heavy traffic), but it’s the seeming inconsistency of speed many drivers show, and the compulsiveness to accelerate in order to overtake for it’s own purpose, that puzzles me.

• Driving to the conditions. It’s raining heavily, spray is in the air, requiring fast wipers. So why do so few drivers actually back off and drive more carefully? You simply can’t brake as quickly when it’s raining, assuming you can see as well. So slow down you fool before you kill yourself and, worse still, somebody else.

• Lorries and overtaking. So many of them on the roads these days, and the silly speed-limiting-overtaking thing that happens (They’re constrained to a certain maximum speed in many cases), eating up two lanes of the motorway for minutes on end, and causing small tailbacks (Which themselves go on to cause those bizarre long tailbacks with no apparent cause in heavy traffic). Here’s a piece of news to you all: You’re supposed to back off when being overtaken (See Rule 144 of the highway code). But there’s me thinking people care about that document after having passed their test.

• Averaging speed cameras. Bring. Them. On. There are a number in use on roadworks these days, and boy do they cause adherence to the speed limit. They are in use up here in Scotland (see here for my earlier comments). The sooner they’re introduced nation-wide on our motorways and A roads the better, because the futility of speeding will be safely, effectively and fairly enforced. The most aggressive drivers are almost always those who speed. Ensuring they are all penalised would improve road safety significantly. But I do think the speed limit on the motorways should be reviewed and refined upwards to 75mph or 80mph, to reflect the ‘normal’ speed of most drivers. Although the original speed limit was introduced to ’save fuel’, and there are reasons to stick with that in these times, I’d suggest higher petrol prices are actually doing a great job of making us all think about their driving and car use.

OK, so the above is very much a froth-in-the mouth rant about other drivers. The policy I take, and recommend, is that ‘every other driver is an idiot‘, and it has served me well. I know full well I’ve done silly things, and broken my own rules a few times. I even have a few points for a speeding offence from a few years ago that I’m not particularly proud of (indeed, it served it’s purpose in making me more aware of the speed enforcement rules around London).

Yet I am still truly despairing about the seeming ubiquitousness of idiots on the major roads, and until the perceived ‘benefits’ they presumably feel to be gained from aggressive, speeding, idiotic and outright dangerous road behaviour, is taken away by a decent speed and driving standard enforcement regime, it will only get worse.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Personal, Rants, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.