Just read the recent thread about someone jumping a red light. I was driving about a week ago along a tri carrageway (a road with 3 lanes going in the same direction. By definition I can't say dual.) I just slipped through just as the lights were changing to amber and looked in my back mirror. A cop car having stopped at the now red lights just set off with all their lights on. Someone had jumped a red light promptly stopped when they saw the police were after them.
That made me feel sooooo good, I hope they do get points on their licence. Backroomers usally complain about the lack of cops on our roads. What other good deeds have people seen cops do to control traffic recently?
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After me and many others whingeing about chavs speeding round my fair town like idiots, the police hid last weekend in a nearby garage forecourt and pulled LOADS of people. Most of them as you'd expect were spotty Burberry-clad oiks who "knew their rights"..... it was class.
And, no, I am not a grumpy NIMBY old man, and I think anyone who's read my views on speeding will know I am not anti-speed, but if you saw some of the idiocy perpetrated by inexperienced but hormonal prats near me, you'd cheer too.
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mk124, are you related to audiaudi by any chance?
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: )
It read a bit more lucidly I think! Also, he didn't know everyone in the queue, and the policeman.
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mk124, are you related to audiaudi by any chance?
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lud, leave the guy alone. it is pure coincidence that they joined the forum within two days of each other.
mind you, it is possible because dualaudi has so many friends and relatives !
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i'm not anti speed either, far from it....... but......... i live near the end of a road, where the crown of my side road joins the 'main' road and causes a bump in the road (albeit the main road is still subject to 30mph).
I'm not joking, even with double glazing, you can hear the exhaust note coming down the hill and then the engine note rise as the wheels become airborne, before the exhaust on the tarmac noise at the end of it....and it's always a hot hatch, with a bucket on the back for a 'back box', fog lights on regardless of any fog, tinted windows etc
in a 30mph road, that kids use to cross the road to the shops!
Most pleasing when on the odd occasion the traffic cops park up and police it...........but few and far between nowadays
am i sounding like Meldrew?
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Not recently but a few years ago - Making my way back round Victoria towards the A4 they had some road works right at the junction causing 2 lanes to be reduced to 1. Some Yuppie (I did say it was a few years ago) decided he was going to try and squeeze in, me being in 38t of artic had nowhere to go so he had to sit and wait behind me, this for some reason gave him aggro and he decided to let off steam by shouting at me out of his window, Now I am sure I did not help matters by laughing at him, so that made him even more angry, needless to say because of his blinkered vision he failed to see the police bike slowoly making its way up on the outside of him, as the lights changed I moved forward and just made them before they went to amber, he came through behind me when they must have been on red, floored it and came past me like a bat out of hell at well over 60 - needless to say very closely followed by the Police bike which pulled him up just before Harrods - oh how I chuckled and waved as I drove past watching him try to expalin his actions to the nice Police Man.
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Once had a the misfortune to let my motorbike fall over at the services just north of Bristol on the M5 southbound (in about 1987 from memory).
The girlfriend pillion at the time decided to help in the panic, by grabbing the exhaust pipe (gloveless)...........ouch ....(it would have probably glowed if it had been dark).
Two traffic cops at the services had no first aid facilities and the toilets only had hot water, so the police suggested I drive into the "nearby" hospital at Bristol.
Well it was rush-hour and I don't know Bristol, so I ended-up going nowhere fast.......until I managed to follow a patrol car for about half a mile when it pulled into a small local police station. I explained our predicament to the driver and he promptly put the girlfriend into the passenger seat and told me to follow him!
It was quite fun tailgating the old SD1 Rover at interesting speeds through Bristol until we arrived at the A&E. I'll never forget that copper.
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Driving back into Lagos from Ibadan one early evening rush hour in 1973 a famous musician's Opel Kapitan estate, eight up, slowing reluctantly to the shunting, irritable 30 mph pace of the traffic, was overtaken by a uniformed motorcyclist on a gleaming white-painted Triumph 650. Falling in ahead of the car, the rider looked over his shoulder and made a vigorous beckoning gesture, then shot forward between two cars snaking violently back and forth to force one out into the traffic and the other onto the verge, so that the car driver could accelerate through the gap. As he did so the motorcyclist was repeating the manoeuvre on the next two cars, this time with both hands above his head, steering with hip movements only. At 50 or 60 miles an hour he led the musician in this way, to a rolling chorus of blaring horns and enraged cries from the upstaged traffic, a couple of miles to his house at Moshalashi roundabout. On the way he relieved the boredom of merely intimidating the traffic, which he did with practised ease, by doing things like standing on one leg in the saddle and riding hands off, even at the closest quarters: a whole circus repertoire, but riskily done in the real world. It looked dangerous, mainly because it was.
At the house, the biker was identified as an off-duty member of the elite squad of performing outriders kept, as a harmless and rather charming conceit, by the then Nigerian head of state General Gowon who went in for two-mile-long motorcades. He shook hands with the musician, a bit stiff and shy, a military man pleased to have done a service for someone he admired. There may well have been the Lagos convention of a financial bung, but it wouldn?t have been enormous and wasn?t the real point.
I witnessed the entire episode with what had by then become rather jaded amazement, having done many miles in that all-too-noticeable car bearing the band's logo whose other passengers, including the musician himself, often embarrassed me by bawling ?MATTRESS!? at woman passers-by.
Not a cop, I know, and not British, but pretty astonishing. Remember it to this day.
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Lud, are you related to audiaudi by any chance, after the last post?
I jest of course Lud, but it is amazing how civilised UK roads are in comparison to world standards even with those speeding chavs in their hot hatches! The first time I went to Turkey in 1999 I was amazed by the behavour of motorists. I just hope if I ever visit Lagos the traffic will have changed.
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Apologies mk!
I was put in mind of that occasion by the previous post, about the cop in the Rover asking the poster to follow on his bike at 'interesting speeds'. A sort of inverted British version of my story.
Every word of it is true, although I probably can't remember all the biker's circus tricks.
But I confess I had written the story for another purpose and cut-and-pasted it as the post, removing names and so on.
By the way, I imagine the traffic is similar in Lagos now but less cheerful. However I haven't been there for 17 years, so am out of touch.
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well i read it lud and it could be any large conurbation in england these days most saturday nights i reckon,oh and it was funny as well
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My Dad was a mild eccentric in his later youth (late 50s), and had a 1920s Rolls Royce 20 saloon. Soon after my parents married they moved to the Portsmouth area as he was in the Navy. My mother would sometimes drive the RR into Portsmouth, which still had policemen on point duty. Whenever she was in a line of traffic the policemen would always wave her through, and stop the car behind her.
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My Dad was a mild eccentric in his later youth (late 50s), and had a 1920s Rolls Royce 20 saloon. Soon after my parents married they moved to the Portsmouth area as he was in the Navy. My mother would sometimes drive the RR into Portsmouth, which still had policemen on point duty. Whenever she was in a line of traffic the policemen would always wave her through, and stop the car behind her.
AND THAT I don't doubt. B. good on them.
vbr....................MD.
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I just found a video on youtube which is relevant to what has been said in this thread. The cop must really like Gumball rallys!
www.youtube.com
/watch?v=bbbtK90LZ9E
I have hopefully split the internet adress into 2, so meaning it can not be clicked on. For those who don't like profane language don't watch the video.
The country looks to be european (spain?). I am just glad that UK cops don't behave this way, if they did nobody would bat an eyelid about the 159 MPH cop testing his new patrol car.
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www.youtube.com
/watch?v=bbbtK90LZ9E
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I watched 3 minutes of tedium, the average London plod would have made better progress.
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On my first foray across the channel many years ago I inadvertently pulled out of a side road into the middle of an enormous military convoy. Took about 2 minutes for m/cycle gendarme to pull alongside me, realise I was "un rosbif" swerve around to my side of the car and with some expressive gallic gestures tell me to follow him. He escorted me out onto the opposite lane and then to the head of the convoy at breakneck speed ignoring blind summits and bends. I assume he was getting radio info from the head of the column, either that or he was psychic!
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I was driving about a week ago along a tri carrageway (a road with 3 lanes going in the same direction. By definition I can't say dual.)
As I understand it, the 'dual' in dual carriageway refers to the fact that the road is split into two, not to the number of lanes on each side of the split. So, assuming it wasn't a motorway, what you were driving along was still a dual carriageway.
It would only be a tri carriageway if there were two lots of bollards/verges splitting the road into three seperate carriageways.
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Would have to be 1973 for Lagos traffic to be travelling at 30 mph.
Last time I was there was about 6 months ago and it was full stop gridlock 24 hours a day.
Got from the airport to VI and stayed there until I had to leave except for one nightmare trip to Apapa.
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Just read the recent thread about someone jumping a red light. I was driving about a week ago along a tri carrageway (a road with 3 lanes going in the same direction. By definition I can't say dual.)
Yes you can, because there are only two carriageways, each consisting of 3 lanes. I find it amazing how many people don't know what a dual carriageway is...some only have 1 lane each way, on two separate carriageways (sorry to be pedantic...)
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