I know this has been covered before but.........
Having had the misfortune in the last couple of months to do several weekend / Bank Holiday medium length journeys (~250-300 miles round trip) I had forgotten just how abysmal weekend driving standards are.
Middle Lane Appreciation Society out in force on the M1 today methinks.
No indicators brotherhood.
No mirrors sisterhood (just so I cannot be accused of being sexist)
Tailgaters appeared to be having a day off but casual trailer towers weaving all over the shop.
Brigade of not quite sure where I'm going so I'll make my mind up..........................now,............oops I meant to go over there, oh terribly sorry old chap!
All in all its more hazardous than a weekday with Mr Laguna rep late for his appointment 3 feet behind and on the mobile.
Or is it just me being picky?
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It's the 'no indicators' or 'late indicators' that get my goat. I'm seriously considering purchasing a Halfords Crystal Ball (dash mounting) to deal with this problem!
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the only thing we are forunately spared at weekends is the pair of 40 tonne trucks who can't quite manage to overtake each other in less than 15 minutes. I can confirm that the middle lane owners club were out in force today on the A1M
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HGVs could easily overtake except unfairly restricted in speed compared with cars. These drivers with wide experience of driving in all conditions are faced with very restricted hours. They have no choice when they travel so get my sympathy.
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I was on the a23 and m23 on saturday in light rain but otherwise good visibility and the "must have bright red rear fog lights on and dazzle everyone behind me" brigade were out in force. This is not restricted to weekends or the m23 of course. Why do some people switch on their rear fog lights as soon as it rains?
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I know its not weekend anymore but I have just driven from Dresden to Essen this morning 600km in 5 and a half hours including a quick nosebag stop.But there were no middle laners ,no truck racers and with approx 250km of the trip on unlimited autobahn people going at speeds upto anybodies guess.Apart from the never ending roadworks an uneventual journey.
On my last trip to the UK I had to travel the M1 on a sunday my god you need a crystal ball to guess where people are going next.I have never seen such selfish drivers in my life or maybe they just do not realise what they are doing.
I was worried for my own safety.Perhaps 20mph is to fast for some of the drivers I saw never mind increasing the limit.
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I feel that the speed limiters on HGVs cause more problems than they solve.
The result is that cars try to overtake, often in unsuitable places.
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Just got off the M25 with 60mph up on the gantries and had a chance to check the accuracy of my speedometer. I stayed over in the left-hand lanes with the needle pointing at 60 and, sure enough, one of Eddie Stobart's boys came easing his way past. I think Eddie insists his rigs are governed to 58mph which means I was probably doing 55 while the speedo said 60. Up to 10% under-reading is legal. So that's why you get a bumptious weekend driver prat sitting in your way at 64mph when he thinks he's doing 70.
HJ
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That true HJ, in fact up to +/- 10% plus 3mph is the legal limit of accuracy.
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That's wrong. A speedo is not allowed to under-read at all.
HJ
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All of the above horrors described and more.....
And some of you want the speed limits increased??????/.......
Alvin
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it's true that I have never seen a speeo under read, (apart from the time a friend of mine put larger wheels on his car) and manufacturers appear to err on the side of caution, but the last time I saw the accuracy of speedometers defined, it stated "plus or minus 10% plus 3mph".
Happy to be proved wrong.
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Is that not the reason why some leeway has to be given as regards speed cameras/police patrols? I was always told it was 10%+3mph which suggests the law is prepared to believe speedometers could under-read even though this is not permitted when the car is manufactured
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In answer to Michael concerning speedometers, Regulation 45 Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 states that "The indicated speed must never be less than the true speed (it must read exact or high) and between 40kph and 120kph the error must not exceed 10% + 2.5mph (10% + 4kph) high."
I recommend anyone who wants to stay up to speed with UK road traffic law to subscribe to Hughes Guide to Traffic Law for the Enforcement Officer which comes as well designed loose leaf book with 6 monthly updates or on a CD Rom. It is very reasonably priced. More at www.hughesguides.com
HJ
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You forgot to mention the "I must drive around with my front fog lights on at all times" brigade.
If these drivers have such poor eyesight that it appears foggy, they should be taken off the road and whipped to within an inch of their lives.
I'm temped to fit a pair of them in my rear window, so I can let them know exactly what the problem is.
Andy
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Not just weekend drivers..I seem to have spent a large part of the past twenty-five years travelling back and forth on the A3 between Petersfield and Guildford. I am often in slow moving traffic(Hindhead..!) and have seen:
1. Ladies applying makeup/combing and arranging their hair
2. Hundreds of drivers(men mainly) phoning whilst dangling their other hand out of the window
3. One bloke last week shaving(speed about 20mph at the time)
4. A 'road warrior'? leaning over the back of his seat sorting out papers in the back seat..
5. Two white pickups(road contractors) playing silly B*****s in a traffic queue, the one in front with his brakes on and the one behind with the front bumper against the other, rear wheels smoking and squealing as he tried to move it forward..!
I reckon that the prize should however go to the car that overtook me at about 90mph on the M4 recently with a large white cockatoo fluttering about inside.
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Problem is those front foglights are a required fashion accessory on all repmobiles. In 25 years of driving I cannot ever remember a time when I was able to drive better using foglights in pea soup weather, better to stay at home.
Maybe if the police fined a handful of drivers for the offence of using them in the wrong conditions (or however the RTA defines this), then word would get around?
Colin
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Not to mention the about 1 in 20 vehicles with only one headlight working, so that on a country road you think that it is a 2 ft wide motorcycle riding near the kerb coming towards you and only at the last minute find out that it has another 6 ft of lorry attached with the offside headlight US.
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In Rio, and Sao Paulo for that matter, there is a huge number of cars, far too many for the road capacity.
So, sometime ago they came up with the brilliant idea that whilst all the roads are two-way at normal times, at peak periods that would be one-way in whichever was the heaviest direction.
The problem is, its difficult to know when, and in which direction, since the roads are marked at either end, but they may be some miles long with other roads joining them. At these junctions the current road direction may not be marked.
In the week, this is less of an issue than you might think, given that they are all creatures of habit. However, at the weekend when all the weekend drivers come out, absolutely anything can happen.
There is carnage and chaos.
This is added to the fact their any equivalent of an MOT, which does exist, is totally ignored. Literally cars are held together with string. Lights can be missing - i.e. not broken - missing ! as can doors and other body panels.
People are carried anywhere on the vehicle they can hang on, and fall off from time to time and which time the car will stop and wait for them to jump back on.
Braking distances are measured in kilometres -effectively actual braking distance may be only two or three kilometres, but reaction time is around 3 months. Unless they are distracted of course, and then its more of a ricochet approach to danger avoidance.
Added to all of this is motorcycles, who even at the best of times totally ignore which direction a road flows and assume that if they go fast enough, even against the flow, they will be safe. Luckily with the average motorcyle here "fast enough" is around 3 kilometres every two days.
And then we get onto the subject of buses & taxis. I regularily refuse to get in some taxis since either they or not safe enough or there is less than a 10% chance of them making it to the destination. Again, at weekends this is worse because all the people with weekday jobs use old beaten up taxis at the weekends to supplement their income.
Bus drivers do not receive salaries, they are paid commission on the amount of fares they collect in a day, so they thunder around the streets fighting each other to get to the bus queue first, usually without flattening it, but not always. And especially in Sao Paulo a bus on its side having tried to take a turn to fast is not that unusual.
If you have survived so far, then you have the people who wish to deliberately harm you - stealing your watch/car/wallet while you are waiting at a junction is a speciality.
Then you have the rain. Rain is an insufficiently impressive word. It would be like calling rugby a little rougher than chess (except here, because chess can be rougher than rugby). It doesn't rain so much as large sections of sea fall out of the sky flooding everything.
I was sat in a bar in Faria Lima, a large street in Sao Paulo a little while ago on a Saturday. We arrived and it was sunny. 30 minutes later it was raining. 30 minutes after than we were sat on the tables with out feet on the chairs as the water flowed through the bar. a further 30 minutes later and we were standing on the table. About that time a VW Beetle without occupants floated down the street and ran into the bar, getting snagged on a drain pipe.
About an hour later we were sat back on the chairs, still drinking, and aside from three people trying to get the Beetle detached from the drainpipe bracket some 4ft above the ground, everything was back to normal, or at least as normal as it ever gets here.
And you lot are worried about lane discipline ?
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Mark
That is the best read I've had for a long time! Thanks for brightening up a dull week.
Ian
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Mark (Brazil)
I dont know what you do, but it must be worth it to put up with this type of c***!
Bill
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> I dont know what you do, but it must be worth it to put up with this type of c***!
oh, it keeps the baliff from the door and buys the odd ice-cream !
Actually there is the other side of life here; beaches, weather, scenery, all-night restaurants, 24 hr bars, excellent restaurants.. etc. etc. And that's just in Rio de Janeiro. Once you get outside Rio it really starts to get impressive. But its certainly a different place to live.
Some people love it, some hate it. Virtually nobody is neutral.
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