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So are you OK overtaking people doing 50 in a 50 non motorway or dual carriageway?
Your bad driving encounters
- Thread starter Stu999
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So are you OK overtaking people doing 50 in a 50 non motorway or dual carriageway?
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"I decide what is safe and what isn't on the roads - laws be damned."
Associate
Yeah this is the attitude a lot of drivers take and they see nothing wrong with it. And those same people question me getting upset with this type of behavior when it puts me and my families life at risk and for what? They get where they are going 2 minutes quicker? Because it is fun? It's scumbag behaviour.
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Associate
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There's a reason it's in quotation marks after I've quoted someone else twice right above it...
Caporegime
Agreed. Massive increase after the covid lockdowns but my biggest day to day issue is people pulling out in front of me at junctions, then typically dawdling up the road.
They're in a massive hurry to pull out so you'd think they'd be in a massive hurry to move!
It was an interesting one the other day - I had someone following me for a few miles and we both had a clear run and ended up at the same place within a very short time of each other. They were annoyingly right up my arse in 30s and 40s but fell far behind on the open road, but then would start catching me up again through the 30s and 40s and I had to wonder who was the safer - on the one hand they were doing up to 50MPH through 30s and 40s but never exceeded ~50MPH the whole journey while I was sticking to the limits in the 30s and 40s but my peak speed was quite a bit above theirs.
yes - the anithesis of those nervous after passing test are the over-confident - but their cars, similarly, need to be marked out for the attention of others on the roads
if cars dashcam provided real time anpr , could just have an app like WAZE where you can register and rank other peoples driving and whether to be wary of them.
if cars dashcam provided real time anpr , could just have an app like WAZE where you can register and rank other peoples driving and whether to be wary of them.
I think it's linked to the people driving at 45mph everywhere. One too many articles on how it saves fuel so now people desperate to save think 50p is somehow worth half hour of their lives. Bizarre.
Man of Honour
I'm not sure getting people to interact with their phones and fill in 'hows my driving' surveys while they are driving around is going to help with the overall standard much
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That doesn't necessitate arrest.
Associate
No, I personally don't.
However it is *objectively* true that legacy roads that used to have a derestricted (60) limit and have been later assigned a new 50mph limit have not been made more safe in doing so.
Associate
Absolutely spot on.
Taking human nature into account - if you're not being "aroused" to concentrate whilst driving, this is when complacency creeps in and why in many instances driving a little faster can aid to keep concentration levels higher.
Associate
My golden rule is to never manoeuvre if doing so causes another vehicle to change speed or direction. It is infuriating when other drivers do not follow this simple concept.
Associate
Disagree.
This is the logical conclusion of the whole "fast is unsafe" message being foisted upon us all by "safety groups" (and some in this thread, I'll wager, who have been hoodwinked into believing it...).
Common understanding of "speed" is that 60mph is "fast" and by simple idiotic analogy that 30mph or 40mph is therefore "not fast" and therefore some how "safe". It is the simpleton mind who uses this absolute measure of some arbitrary unit of speed measurement and in doing so becomes the idiot who "doesn't speed" because they limit themselves to 45 in a 60 limit, but don't see anything wrong in exceeding the 30 limit because that isn't fast and "I'm a safe driver".
Witness the birth of the "red routes" to limit speed and increase safety - but the outcome has been to not reduce road deaths along those routes. It is a foolish mindset that continues to gather momentum despite the body of evidence that indicates the mindset is incorrect.
The problem with speed is your reaction time to any occurrence on the road. Go faster less reaction time, go slower more reaction time. There are probably only about 10% of people in the world with near instantaneous reaction, the rest of us are just mediocre.
Associate
Still so much to unpack in this thread.
Has anyone ever seen Ashley Neal on YouTube? It could easily be said of Ashley that he is "cocksure" of himself. Clearly, however, he is not an idiot driver by any measure of the word.
This is why I take exception and offence to anyone conflating the attitude of "cocksure" with the automatic label of "idiot".
Yeah, sure, there are some cocksure idiots on the road and in my view this is a minority of the number of cocksure drivers out there. The trouble is that *YOU* just don't see the cocksure competents because their driving is not marking them out. They're inconspicuous. You *do* see the idiots, because they are conspicuous, and therefore the attitude of labelling the cocksure with the additional label of idiot is prevalent amongst those of limited analysis and reasoning. (And by extension those very people are virtue signalling that they believe themselves to be "better drivers" and in so doing become the hypocrite because what they are doing is, in fact, displaying their own cocksure attitude for all to see...)
Just to be clear, I don't see anything wrong, per se, with being a bit cocksure. I am myself. How does one justify that to oneself? Well, going back to the original discussion about hesitancy and nervous drivers... I am normally able to read the vast majority of other drivers around me, and know what they are going to do based on the body language of their driving. I'm pretty cocksure that I have skill enough to do this after many years of nurturing the ability. I can often tell what other drivers are going to do apparently before they know it themselves. For instance on a quiet 3 lane motorway with a vehicle ahead and a lorry well in front of that. I can tell that the car in front will need to pull out, often seemingly before they do themselves, so position myself in lane 3 well in advance and only when they are too close to the lorry do they start to cross the line and then might even indicate as an afterthought. You can see this happening well in advance if you are concentrating or if you are a competent driver. However, those many other drivers who approach the same situation as me and position themselves in lane 2 only to be conflicting with the driver needing to pull out into the side of them to pass the lorry that was clearly visible half a mile or more in advance... causing both drivers to get all angsty about right of way and who is in front or I was there before you idiocy... Oh, and neither are speeding - or cocksure - but both are idiots for sure, for not reading thje road and other road users...
With that in mind, I am happy to report that yes I'm a bit cocksure and can normally predict the vast majority of other drivers actions - even the cocksure idiots actions (possibly a hidden pseudonym for "boy racer"?) - because they are predictable.
Enter the nervous driver - this is where it gets sticky. I'm not talking about the recently passed a test hesitancy or young driver still learning the basics - you can tell those too - I'm talking the hesitant don't really know what they're doing types. Of all ages. This is where it gets sticky because those drivers are bloody unpredictable.
Personally, I'd very much rather be surrounded by the cocksure idiot and other cocksure competent drivers because despite the fact that I might not like their driving - at least they are largely predictable and therefore I can be safe around them. Not so with the nervous driver - it breeds a lack of overall safety. I just wish they'd learn better, because in the vast, vast majority of cases they could learn better if they had a mind to.
Has anyone ever seen Ashley Neal on YouTube? It could easily be said of Ashley that he is "cocksure" of himself. Clearly, however, he is not an idiot driver by any measure of the word.
This is why I take exception and offence to anyone conflating the attitude of "cocksure" with the automatic label of "idiot".
Yeah, sure, there are some cocksure idiots on the road and in my view this is a minority of the number of cocksure drivers out there. The trouble is that *YOU* just don't see the cocksure competents because their driving is not marking them out. They're inconspicuous. You *do* see the idiots, because they are conspicuous, and therefore the attitude of labelling the cocksure with the additional label of idiot is prevalent amongst those of limited analysis and reasoning. (And by extension those very people are virtue signalling that they believe themselves to be "better drivers" and in so doing become the hypocrite because what they are doing is, in fact, displaying their own cocksure attitude for all to see...)
Just to be clear, I don't see anything wrong, per se, with being a bit cocksure. I am myself. How does one justify that to oneself? Well, going back to the original discussion about hesitancy and nervous drivers... I am normally able to read the vast majority of other drivers around me, and know what they are going to do based on the body language of their driving. I'm pretty cocksure that I have skill enough to do this after many years of nurturing the ability. I can often tell what other drivers are going to do apparently before they know it themselves. For instance on a quiet 3 lane motorway with a vehicle ahead and a lorry well in front of that. I can tell that the car in front will need to pull out, often seemingly before they do themselves, so position myself in lane 3 well in advance and only when they are too close to the lorry do they start to cross the line and then might even indicate as an afterthought. You can see this happening well in advance if you are concentrating or if you are a competent driver. However, those many other drivers who approach the same situation as me and position themselves in lane 2 only to be conflicting with the driver needing to pull out into the side of them to pass the lorry that was clearly visible half a mile or more in advance... causing both drivers to get all angsty about right of way and who is in front or I was there before you idiocy... Oh, and neither are speeding - or cocksure - but both are idiots for sure, for not reading thje road and other road users...
With that in mind, I am happy to report that yes I'm a bit cocksure and can normally predict the vast majority of other drivers actions - even the cocksure idiots actions (possibly a hidden pseudonym for "boy racer"?) - because they are predictable.
Enter the nervous driver - this is where it gets sticky. I'm not talking about the recently passed a test hesitancy or young driver still learning the basics - you can tell those too - I'm talking the hesitant don't really know what they're doing types. Of all ages. This is where it gets sticky because those drivers are bloody unpredictable.
Personally, I'd very much rather be surrounded by the cocksure idiot and other cocksure competent drivers because despite the fact that I might not like their driving - at least they are largely predictable and therefore I can be safe around them. Not so with the nervous driver - it breeds a lack of overall safety. I just wish they'd learn better, because in the vast, vast majority of cases they could learn better if they had a mind to.
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That's interesting. There may be some truth in that.
Tbh I hadn't thought of it that way as nobody I've ever spoken to seems remotely worried about safe speeds, only cost. Whenever there is a speed reduction everyone moans because we want to go faster. It also seems to be a behaviour that's on the rise in parallel with massive petrol rises and money saving tips whereas the speed campaigns have been around for decades and it doens't feel like anyone takes any notice of them. I'll accept that may not be representative of the general population though.