Your bad driving encounters

The number of cars today without their headlights on in the dark and the rain.. arghh. And yet they have their fogs on. It's harder to turn on the fogs than the headlights... unless they are DRLs... but then can't you tell your headlights are off!?!

/vent


Yesterday morning. Very light haze but still 100+ metre visibility yet loads of morons with their rear fog lights on.
 
Yesterday morning. Very light haze but still 100+ metre visibility yet loads of morons with their rear fog lights on.

Fog/mist can be a tricky one even in relative short periods of time it can build up or dissipate and even fairly small differences in ride height can make a big difference. I got heavily criticised, until they saw my dashcam footage, by a colleague once for my driving because in their car they couldn't see more than a couple of car lengths ahead but in my pickup I was sitting above the banked up mist/fog and had good forward visibility despite it only being a few CMs difference.
 
On this morning's journey to the office (7 miles in south London):
  • Nearly hit in the side by a woman pulling out from a side road
  • Tailgated stupidly close by 2 drivers
  • A van blocked the exit from a junction in Purley way, resulting in cars not being able to use the main road until he woke up. My guess is that he was on the phone
  • A Range Rover happily sitting over two lanes whilst in a filtered traffic queue. Sure enough, he was on the phone
  • No regard for the 20mph speed limit
  • Had a Tesla too impatient to wait for the car turning left infront of him simply drive on the wrong side of the road to make a right turn. Go to the turning point and was blocked, so just sat there
  • Most drivers unable/unwilling to let anyone out or turn infront of them, even if that means that oncoming traffic ends up stopped a queue, that prevents anyone turning right, so holding up our direction of travel
  • The usual school mummies ditching their cars wherever they feel with their hazards on
  • BMW ran a red light
It's just a complete disregard for anyone else on the road. Politeness towards others drivers is now the exception rather the rule, even when that lack of politeness is basically counter-productive.
 
Fog/mist can be a tricky one even in relative short periods of time it can build up or dissipate and even fairly small differences in ride height can make a big difference. I got heavily criticised, until they saw my dashcam footage, by a colleague once for my driving because in their car they couldn't see more than a couple of car lengths ahead but in my pickup I was sitting above the banked up mist/fog and had good forward visibility despite it only being a few CMs difference.

In this instance, to have had any visibility issues the drivers would have needed to have been 60ft above the road surface.
 
Boggles my mind quite often how people do things so completely counter-productive on the roads.

A few thoughts:
- Go checkout the videos on youtube about the Laws of Stupidity. Helps put some context on things
- IMO, the best we can do is to try to set the example that we'd like others to follow, i.e. keep to the speed limits, be polite, don't stop such that you block access to side roads and similar, do let people out when viable (but not to the extent of delaying the traffic behind you), have decent braking limits, use indicators, don't park in disabled spots etc.

The above is why I have had some debates on here from people who have naff all interest in trying to help the situation and think that being a selfish pratt is helpful to anyone.
 
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do let people out when viable (but not to the extent of delaying the traffic behind you)

Sadly few people have a filter in turn mentality to this - I let one person out on the way to work on Monday and the next person tried to push out as well despite it clearly not being a good situation for me to let them out as well with the rest of traffic, but then the person behind me who could have let them out didn't... and neither did anyone behind them while I could still see.
 
Today drove into London for a family occasion. Lovely cruise along M1, M25, M3. Then drove to my mum's also in London in rush hour - 1 hour of difficult encounters with people who didn't want to consider other road users. Plenty of blocking side roads, overrunning amber/red lights, blasting onto openings before looking to see if you'd be able to pass etc. One person failed to judge their path and ended up trapping us as I turned in from the main road - clipped their mirror which greatly annoyed them...

Sadly few people have a filter in turn mentality to this - I let one person out on the way to work on Monday and the next person tried to push out as well despite it clearly not being a good situation for me to let them out as well with the rest of traffic, but then the person behind me who could have let them out didn't... and neither did anyone behind them while I could still see.
This does my head in when people don't accommodate tbis. My commute involves a long straight main road and inevitably has some queueing most days. It's very easy to just let one person out without holding up the main traffic, and likewise when I'm let out I try to make sure I do the same for someone. Mostly I see people just pulling out from a side road to turn right and then sitting in the road waiting for that side of traffic to have an opening, blocking the opposite direction lane.
 
Sadly few people have a filter in turn mentality to this - I let one person out on the way to work on Monday and the next person tried to push out as well despite it clearly not being a good situation for me to let them out as well with the rest of traffic, but then the person behind me who could have let them out didn't... and neither did anyone behind them while I could still see.

It's the ones that are waiting to turn into the oncoming lane and will block the freely flowing lane (well would be if they'd been patient). Now 2 lanes of vehicles can't move, well done you selfish ****.
 
Just needed to post my morning counter (at 6.30am which is relevant). Driving along on a nsl road, see a car and my first though was why would you park on an nsl? Turns out they were doing 30, with no lights on. I flashed them 3 or 4 times and they still didn't realise (probably thought I was being aggressive). They had DRLs as it was a modern range rover. I caught it on video so might upload it, but it's a back road with no streetlights. I don't understand how their first thought wasn't "why can't I see far". It's worrying there's so many people like this,usy be 10% of drivers I see every day with either no lights on or pointless sidelights on instead of dipped. What's best way to share a video on here, YouTube?
 
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Just needed to post my morning counter (at 6.30am which is relevant). Driving along on a nsl road, see a car and my first though was why would you park on an nsl? Turns out they were doing 30, with no lights on. I flashed them 3 or 4 times and they still didn't realise (probably thought I was being aggressive). They had DRLs as it was a modern range rover. I caught it on video so might upload it, but it's a back road with no streetlights. I don't understand how their first thought wasn't "why can't I see far". It's worrying there's so many people like this,usy be 10% of drivers I see every day with either no lights on or pointless sidelights on instead of dipped. What's best way to share a video on here, YouTube?

The bizarre thing is, that RR will almost certainly have automatic lights.

So not only have they forgotten to turn them on when it's dark, they're so thick they don't even have it set to the "auto" setting :cry:
 
The bizarre thing is, that RR will almost certainly have automatic lights.

So not only have they forgotten to turn them on when it's dark, they're so thick they don't even have it set to the "auto" setting :cry:

Dealership will have mentioned auto-headlights and forgot that their clientele are moronic and failed to tell them they need to be activated first.
 
I don't understand how their first thought wasn't "why can't I see far".

There is only so far it goes but people have varying levels of ability to see in the dark (there is a connection with iris colour) - personally I can see quite well in the dark but more easily than average dazzled by headlights :( to see details in the dark those with blue eyes on average only need 0.7 lux vs 0.82 for those with brown eyes - though roughly linear it it isn't a directly linear scale so it is actually quite a difference.

My mum for example in the dark can read road signs with dipped headlights some people can barely make out as a shape in the dark even without main beams on.
 
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The bizarre thing is, that RR will almost certainly have automatic lights.

So not only have they forgotten to turn them on when it's dark, they're so thick they don't even have it set to the "auto" setting :cry:
Thats what worries me. The road is a country lane so pitch black. The fact they were braking for gradual turns (while doing half the limit) was worrying me too.
 
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