Excessive braking.....

Scania

Scania

Scania

Caporegime
Joined
25 Nov 2004
Posts
26,175
Location
On the road....
rant

As you can probably guess, I spend a lot of time on the M25 (and most other motorways for that matter!) and I am sick of the traffic jams caused for no other reason than people braking when ,frankly, its not needed.....

Ask any muppet motorist what's the first thing they do to slow down and they will invariably tell you "Brake" - Wrong! :mad:

I so wish they'd simply take their foot off the throttle, plan ahead, anticipate, leave a decent distance between you & the vehicle in front and the anchors may well not be needed.

Don't get me wrong, certain steering wheel attendant & brain-dead truck drivers could do with observing this "rule" too!!!

Alas, people are like lemmings - they see a brake light and without reading the situation, follow suit. This imo results in a "ripple effect"; traffic decelerates too quickly, bunches up and before you know it everybody has ground to a halt. Smooth the flow; take your foot off the gas, let friction & hills slow you naturally. Think of the fuel savings not to mention less wear & tear on the brake pads.

FAT CHANCE! :p

/rant
 
Yea they suck. Highly annoying especially when you get to the end of the jam and there is nothing at all in sight which looks to have caused the problem and for all you know the person that caused the problem could be well on their way!
 
Tom|Nbk said:
Yea they suck. Highly annoying especially when you get to the end of the jam and there is nothing at all in sight which looks to have caused the problem and for all you know the person that caused the problem could be well on their way!
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Indeed mate, especially when your vehicle is knocking on the door of 44tons! :eek:
 
The problem with braking is if one person does it (say all three lanes are relatively busy) it leads to a knock-on effect.

There's been many times I've had to break, not because of my planning, more because a HGV decided to change lanes almost on top of me just to try and overtake another HGV (and the third lane being busy).

Sadly not much you can do about it. Part and parcel of driving now. I'm worried more by the OAP's I see on the motorway in the wrong lane (hard shoulder) than people breaking at the moment.



M.
 
What i find more annoying is queues caused by one stupid person at the front on the inside lane overtaking a load of lorries/vans, but doing so at about 60mph. So it takes them about 5 mins to overtake 2 vehicles and then they still refuse to pull in.
 
Gotta agree with the OP.

Although the most annoying thing on the 25 recently was a crispy fried truck near the M4.

Stobart flavour :p Held me up for ages, and I was going the other direction. Rubber neckers...
 
I was stuck behind a car on an A road recently, who braked to a virtual halt every time a car came towards them in the other direction. The journey time along that road was easily trebled that day, and I was swearing at them rather a lot.
:mad:
 
Saytan said:
brakes are for stopping. slowing down can be accomplished by other means.
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Have you ever driven a car with an auto gearbox? The engine braking is far less than that of manual transmissions and at low speed translates to acceleration. I'm not condoning the numptys who stand on the brakes for no reason at all, but there's no call to be so critical the moment you see the first hint of a brake light.
 
Defo winds me up on the M62 at 530pm. Call me morbid but if I'm stuck in a traffic jam then I wanna at least see some twisted metal at the end :p
 
Crowze said:
Have you ever driven a car with an auto gearbox? The engine braking is far less than that of manual transmissions and at low speed translates to acceleration. I'm not condoning the numptys who stand on the brakes for no reason at all, but there's no call to be so critical the moment you see the first hint of a brake light.
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Yeah the only excuse for lots of brake lightage (especially on hills) is driving an auto
 
Whenever I try to leave a copiously large anticipation and braking distance for the "stop-starty type traffic" the guy behind always seems to get irate. Not that it bothers me but could explain why other people don't do it.
 
NathanE said:
Whenever I try to leave a copiously large anticipation and braking distance for the "stop-starty type traffic" the guy behind always seems to get irate. Not that it bothers me but could explain why other people don't do it.
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Yer you do get this. I find the outside lane is worse for this. It's also the most frequent lane to come to a complete halt as it's full of the type of people who do sit bumper to bumper.

People diving inbetween lanes does help either.
 
yep this gets me wound up too. Why oh why isn't motorway tuition mandatory for the driving test. That said, plenty of people do it on A roads too, I honestly have no idea what is going through these peoples minds when they hit the brake just to lose 1 or 2 mph before the tiniest curve in the road.
 
It is a pain, isn't it. I usually try and slingshot into the fast lane at this point but sometimes even that can't be done.

I have mixed feelings about middle lane drivers at the moment because in a lot of instances there is genuinely no point them moving back into the LHS lane - i.e. a slow moving truck just up in front, then another and so on.....

But yea........there are some right planks on the other hand who just drift about in the middle completely unneccessarily........Makes me feel good using all 3 lanes as appropriate! Sometimes other drivers follow suit!
 
TripleT said:
Yer you do get this. I find the outside lane is worse for this. It's also the most frequent lane to come to a complete halt as it's full of the type of people who do sit bumper to bumper.
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and conversely the inside lane tends to be the most smoothly flowing as its full of lorries who know how to drive smoothly :)
 
To be honest if i'm driving in the fast lane and I see brake lights on ahead of me I will automatically put my foot on the brake slightly, as if traffic suddenly slows I will be ready to stop quicker and also it alerts the people behind me that I may be about to stop!

I'm sure people have experienced in the past the sudden slowing of traffic ahead of them, which can be quite scary having to slam your brakes on at 70mph so I get ready on the brake a lot earlier now.

Don't care that it may cause a chain reaction - I value my safety above the slowing of traffic!
 
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