Your bad driving encounters

So not bad driving as such (though the old woman on the horse would likely disagree and say I was driving badly) but unreasonable horse riding imo.

on way to work today on a straight road i saw a woman approaching me on a horse, she was to the right of a dismounted horse that she was escorting...... all ok so far.

Road was a 50 mph however i grew up in a horsey area so i am (i thought) respectful of them..... i slowed down in advance and I thought she had put her hand up to wave a thankyou - as most do - I even waved back, only to realise she had her phone and was videoing me and giving me stink eye.

thanks to the HUD in my car i can say i was doing 22mph and my car was pulled to the left. Am not sure what speed she wanted me to go past but if her horse or the horse she was escorting (one handed at this point) was too jumpy for on coming cars to pass at 22mph then they are not fit to be on the road imo.

it wouldnt have been engine noise which annoyed her either, its an EV!. So not sure what it was i did wrong or was meant to do! :/
 
Last edited:
"Supposed" to be 10MPH for passing horses, potentially both ways, but in a lot of situations just slow is reasonable IMO. Going to be frank, even as someone who comes from a rural area and more on the other side of the fence on it, a lot of horsey people are I can only describe as *special* and not at all reasonable people and won't give the same consideration the other way around as they expect from other people.

I've had to bite my tongue a few times (I have several of them on Facebook) with people who'll take nervy horses onto main roads at busy times of day and then kick off at the car drivers when they have trouble with their horse (one of them going sideways around a corner on the wrong side against traffic because it was spooked and should never have been put in that situation in the first place), when they have other options but don't exercise them...
 
i just checked you are correct 10mph... that is surprising, I genuinely do not remember that being the rule .

10mph is not realistic imo ........ 1) on a fast road at rush hour that will cause mayhem but 2) half of the time the horses are not even going that much slower than 10mph anyway so that would make overtaking them from behind impossible in any practical sense as it would take far too much a distance on the wrong side of the road to safely get past.

seems like a number plucked out of the air without much consideration to whether that is workable.

that said by the letter of the highway code i guess i was in the wrong then..... however before i am judged i wonder how many people actually go that slow? I genuinely think any slower and the cars behind me would have been really peed off and may have even chosen to overtake me which really would have scared the horse
 
Generally only come across them when I'm out on the bike rather than in the car but I don't think I've ever slowed down that much. Generally scrub a decent bit of speed off and clutch in, never had anything other than a thank you nod or wave from the rider.
 
bigmike20vt said:
i just checked you are correct 10mph... that is surprising, I genuinely do not remember that being the rule .
Click to expand...

I should know, but not 100%, but I think it came in recently with the new hierarchy of road users stuff and personally I don't think the highway code is the better for those changes, though that area of the highway code in general needs updating.

There seems to be far too much agenda lead changes of late when it comes to the highway code and speed limits over what actually works best.

EDIT: Great one for passing horses with double-white lines - you can pass on double-white if you are passing a horse doing up to 10MPH, but you aren't supposed to exceed 10MPH if passing a horse...

EDIT2: Actually it doesn't say that - says you should slow down to a max of 10MPH when encountering a horse but simply that you should pass "wide and slow" which doesn't specify a speed :s
 
Last edited:
I think wide and slow was what I always thought it was, and indeed i would say an indicated 22 - which is gonna be 20mph in reality in my car, WAS slow when on a 50mph road (that up until recently was national speed limit and tbh not sure why that was reduced either but that is another issue for another time!)

either way i cut my speed by over half which personally I think was reasonable if the horses are fit to be on the road.......
 
Last edited:
That is pretty much my approach regardless - wide and slow with speed what I consider, rightly or wrongly, appropriate for the circumstances. Sometimes it really isn't safe to stick strictly to the letter.
 
tom_e said:
It's not like the good old days where everyone could get into the school 10 minutes walk away though, we're lucky my step daughter literally just has to cross the road for school.

We're also unlucky that we're just across the road from a school but it's generally relatively short periods of time where it's not worth trying to get in and out of the road and very predictable so easy to plan around if needed.
Click to expand...

10 minutes walk is nothing, My father walked 3.5 miles to school each wa as a kid. Thats at least an hours walk for a kid. kids today don;t know they are even born they have it so easy
 
Rroff said:
EDIT2: Actually it doesn't say that - says you should slow down to a max of 10MPH when encountering a horse but simply that you should pass "wide and slow" which doesn't specify a speed :s
Click to expand...

The highway code always uses 'should' for guidance and 'must' when there is an associated law.
 
Last edited:
Brun said:
The highway code always uses 'should' for guidance and 'must' when there is an associated law.
Click to expand...
I was wondering about that....... ie much of the highway code is a guide and not legally enforcible so if she was to send a video to the old bill of me doing 20mph past her, i am hoping they will tell her there is nothing to do about it.

of course maybe i will show up on her youtube channel but i can live with that.
 
bigmike20vt said:
I was wondering about that....... ie much of the highway code is a guide and not legally enforcible so if she was to send a video to the old bill of me doing 20mph past her, i am hoping they will tell her there is nothing to do about it.

of course maybe i will show up on her youtube channel but i can live with that.
Click to expand...

Unless you cut in dangerously, or blasted past music blaring at 70MPH, etc. very unlikely the police will do anything.
 
Greebo said:
10 minutes walk is nothing, My father walked 3.5 miles to school each wa as a kid. Thats at least an hours walk for a kid. kids today don;t know they are even born they have it so easy
Click to expand...
Back in the day the world was a much quieter, safer place. Sending kids on a hike across town, to the next town or wherever these days isn't quite the same.
 
tom_e said:
Back in the day the world was a much quieter, safer place. Sending kids on a hike across town, to the next town or wherever these days isn't quite the same.
Click to expand...

That is true, I had an almost precisely 1 mile walk from doorstep to the school gates, over 20 years ago, and you rarely had to wait to cross the roads then, very different story now.
 
This is a new one to me.

Stop start traffic, but stopped for just a few seconds. Every time I stopped and held the brake the car behind put their beams on. I get that it’s annoying with bright brake lights, especially on my car that has a strip across the entire boot, but we were moving again a few seconds later. What’s funny is that a) auto dim eliminates the problem b) instead of stopping I made a point of rolling continuously on the brake because yes, I am that petty :D
 
Last edited:
CaptainRAVE said:
This is a new one to me.

Stop start traffic, but stopped for just a few seconds. Every time I stopped and held the brake the car behind put their beams on. I get that it’s annoying with bright brake lights, especially on my car that has a strip across the entire boot, but we were moving again a few seconds later. What’s funny is that a) auto dim eliminates the problem b) instead of stopping I made a point of rolling continuously on the brake because yes, I am that petty :D
Click to expand...

It is a bit of a complicated one, I've not had anyone flash their lights but I've had people behind me who have noticeably been agitated about it, some people don't realise/care that many (most) automatics and EVs lack a proper substitute for putting it into neutral on the handbrake. (Some do have auto-hold where the brake lights go out but I think that is uncommon even with auto-hold).
 
Last edited:
Rroff said:
It is a bit of a complicated one, I've not had anyone flash their lights but I've had people behind me who have noticeably been agitated about it, some people don't realise/care that many (most) automatics and EVs lack a proper substitute for putting it into neutral on the handbrake. (Some do have auto-hold where the brake lights go out but I think that is uncommon even with auto-hold).
Click to expand...
I do find it annoying (which I didn't realise until I owned an ev) that the brake lights do stay on when stopped, I guess I could put it in park to stop it but it just seems annoying.
 
Greebo said:
10 minutes walk is nothing, My father walked 3.5 miles to school each wa as a kid. Thats at least an hours walk for a kid. kids today don;t know they are even born they have it so easy
Click to expand...

3.5 miles? Pah, back in my day we had to do a 24km march across the Brecon Beacons with a full bergen! #yorkshireman

tom_e said:
Back in the day the world was a much quieter, safer place. Sending kids on a hike across town, to the next town or wherever these days isn't quite the same.
Click to expand...

Was it actually though, or did we just not have a constant newsfeed telling us how bad and dangerous the world really is?

theone8181 said:
I do find it annoying (which I didn't realise until I owned an ev) that the brake lights do stay on when stopped, I guess I could put it in park to stop it but it just seems annoying.
Click to expand...

I like this about my Niro, when I use the one-pedal-drive to come to a stop at a junction/lights (which is 99% of the time), the brake lights go out :)
 
In cambridge yesterday - escape from new york scenario - the state and disruption caused by roadworks on Milton road N from city getting to the A10 - as they add the independent cycle lanes -
lots of idiots on council voli and private e-scooters too - how much have NHS expenditure increased to finance that

seems they've messed is up too
A road upgrade project in Cambridge which cost £24 million is to be reworked after users of the route pointed out how narrow the pavement is in places, raising concerns about access for disabled people and risk of collisions involving cyclists using the adjacent cycle lane
..
In places the footway is just 90cm wide, Conservative councillor Delowar Hossain calling the path "too narrow and dangerous" and accusing the partnership of wasting money.

"They showed pictures before of the street and the reality is, it's not the same. Telegraph poles are in the middle of the footpath. Whoever designed this didn't do the work properly," he said, referring to the artist's impression of what the scheme could look like [below].
Click to expand...
 
jpaul said:
In cambridge yesterday - escape from new york scenario - the state and disruption caused by roadworks on Milton road N from city getting to the A10 - as they add the independent cycle lanes -
lots of idiots on council voli and private e-scooters too - how much have NHS expenditure increased to finance that

seems they've messed is up too
Click to expand...
Link? NVM I found it. It through me the reports was fom 6 months ago and it was agreed all the telegraph posts would be moved
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom