Your bad driving

I once parked at Morrisons only to hear my car reg called out on the PA system. I had "parked" in the middle of the lane you drive on, not an actual bay.

Someone probably posted a pic on the local FB group in absolute disgust. Probably affected their dinner that night.

Kek.
 
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Oof definitely done a few stinkers...

Most recent one being I was having a bad day and some woman was tailgating me in a 30 doing 30, really close and I "brake checked" her. Never done it before in 15 years of driving, never done it since. I regretted it as soon as I touched the brake peddle. She didn't go into the back of me but I just thought why did I do it, just don't get annoyed by it, it would be such a pain in the arse possibly literally if she has gone into the back of me.

Another being when I had recently passed my test being on a national limit A road, coming up to a side roads crossroads junction and the car in front that was indicating left to turn into the side road. Also a Car giving way at the side road on my left. I overtook the slowing indicating car without thinking the car giving way at the side road might take the opportunity to nip across the road to the side road opposite (it wasn't indicting right). Again I realised it was dumb about half way through my manoeuvre and haven't done it since.

Everyone has dumb moments but as long as you're not oblivious to it and learn from it it's OK!
 
Keep in mind it completely depends on your car and the tyres you have too. The factory alignments specs won't always offer the same feel/performance if you've changed wheels and are running on different tyres etc, or other modifications. Using my E46 M3 as an example, hardly any places do it properly using weights unless you specifically ask for it, and that alignment is to account for high speed driving so the suspension is compressed more from the downforce giving maximum contact on the tyres. if you're not driving at high speed most of the time then your slow speed driving may result in worse tyre wear and/or handling characteristics.

In light of that though, I really really like the high speed steering feel on the E46. It feels more in control the faster I drive, and you feel everything through the steering and seat/feet. The car just feels more stable the faster the speed is - but that sort fo thing is hard to translate to a copper if you get pulled over :p
 
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'undertaking' on 2 lane slip roads to motorways/dual carriageways when the other 'driver' just goes straight to 'lane 2' of the slip road regardless of their speed/any other (none) slower moving vehicles present...it feels like 'undertaking' so bad bad

'lane 1' gives much more time to see what's on the main road too...could go on but maybe wrong thread :p
 
Am in southern Europe right now, a place where winter tyres are mandatory for 4-5 months of the year.

Didn't plan to be here this time of year & certainly not for as long as I have been.

So didn't change my wheels & had to drive on the first heavy snowfall day of the year.

Gently rear-ended someone the other day at traffic lights because of that - they change quite quickly here & people are hot on it, was following a bit too close & simply couldn't stop on time.

My failure on both points - should have changes wheels/tyres... even if I had, still should have left a bigger stopping distance, but wasn't being as conscious of the conditions & my surroundings as I usually am + impatience due to being in a rush as I was running late. So running summer tyres, I was driving poorly to the conditions.

Impacted at maybe 3-4mph... no damage to other car, even according to engineer inspection - cracked my (£18k with paint matching) front bumper in the process though.

Dumbass move by me - taught me a lesson... not usually so careless/thoughtless.

Probably my biggest fail in over 18 years of driving.
 
builder22 said:
'undertaking' on 2 lane slip roads to motorways/dual carriageways when the other 'driver' just goes straight to 'lane 2' of the slip road regardless of their speed/any other (none) slower moving vehicles present...it feels like 'undertaking' so bad bad

'lane 1' gives much more time to see what's on the main road too...could go on but maybe wrong thread :p
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Been doing that for most of my driving life... especially home in the UK where people are so keen on queueing so far in advance, leaving lane 1 empty.

If I can pass in lane 1, those in lane 2 (or 3) are in the wrong lane.

As long as you're not diving in and out of traffic, switching lanes often & intentionally speeding up excessively to "under-take"... you're not actually doing anything wrong... so as long as you keep to the speed limit or less & not weaving in and out... you're "moving with the flow of traffic" and it's proper road etiquette.
 
mrk said:
Yup regularly find myself passing people via lane 1. Too many lane hoggers.
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Plus the buggers who start queueing a mile before a lane closure.

I mean - it's nice for me to use the other lane til the end and merge in turn - but the odd fight with the odd self-appointed queue police is annoying.

So much better in mainland Europe... people generally know how to merge in turn... especially in Germany / Switzerland / Netherlands.
 
TOW said:
Been doing that for most of my driving life... especially home in the UK where people are so keen on queueing so far in advance, leaving lane 1 empty.

If I can pass in lane 1, those in lane 2 (or 3) are in the wrong lane.

As long as you're not diving in and out of traffic, switching lanes often & intentionally speeding up excessively to "under-take"... you're not actually doing anything wrong... so as long as you keep to the speed limit or less & not weaving in and out... you're "moving with the flow of traffic" and it's proper road etiquette.
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While I agree, I'd say 1 in 15-20 cars will wake up/panic and start trying to move into lane 1 during the undertake :(
I usually just move from lane 1 out to lane 3 and back for that reason.
 
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builder22 said:
'undertaking' on 2 lane slip roads to motorways/dual carriageways when the other 'driver' just goes straight to 'lane 2' of the slip road regardless of their speed/any other (none) slower moving vehicles present...it feels like 'undertaking' so bad bad

'lane 1' gives much more time to see what's on the main road too...could go on but maybe wrong thread :p
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I've given up now and just undertake, if its a motorway I just cruise by slowly in case they all of a sudden decide to move over, on slip roads I go past full chat. :D
I speed often on NSL roads as well with the mindset the white circle with a black diagonal line means fun time. :)
 
TOW said:
If I can pass in lane 1, those in lane 2 (or 3) are in the wrong lane.
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100% this. I just cruise past them now - if they want to sit in a lane with two neighbouring lanes, and just pootle as if they're on rails... I can do the same in my left hand lane with no one around me being disturbed :) I just pootle at the 70mph speed limit while they're doing 59mph. Still doesn't feel good when you're passing someone on the inside that's already proven themself to be a bit inattentive.

I think my worst habit is just aiming for exactly the speed limit regardless of what it is/conditions. If someone is 2mph under the limit I'm keen to get past/around them and if they're 2mph over them I'm not going to speed up for them. I do leave plenty of opportunities for passing though, I'd rather put distance between me and an annoying driver than be aggro-ing up close.
 
I'm far from a perfect driver but in a car I am relatively sensible now. In my younger days I was a bit of a **** and this culminated with 15 points on my licence without being banned in 1995. That day in Okehampton magistrates court I realised I had to grow up whilst driving.

On a bike it took me a lot longer to be sensible especially when it came to overtaking (I have never had any points on my licence from riding a bike, just from driving a car). For anyone never haven ridden a motorbike, overtaking on non learner bikes is pretty much as simple as opening the throttle and you can find yourself doing well over 100mph in no time. Whilst I would never dream of riding a bike well above the speed limit normally, I have found myself doing 120+ overtaking in 60's in the past. This leads to the odd occasion of misjudging as overtake and getting away with it. After the most recent near miss, admittedly before the pandemic, I realised I'd be stuffed in a head on, or even being clipped, so now I am far more conservative when riding a bike and judge my overtaking a lot more sensibly.
 
Bad driving is subjective, many people will probably dislike my driving as I do theirs.

I tend to overtake on wherever there is available space (''undertaking'') and on motorways I tend to ignore the speed limit pretty much always except at speed traps. Vmax+50km/h everywhere when traffic allows...

Everyone makes mistakes, I tend to often curb my wheels when parking... Used to have 16''-ers so I could use kerbs as regular roadways without too much troubles (they looked like new even after 5 years), but my back wheels (now 19''-ers) look as if I'm a woman driver :p. Quite frankly after the first few times I gave up taking care, I try to avoid the kerbs but if you quickly want to park somewhere sometimes you just don't mind. Especially if you spend 5-10x per day parking on average. Also I tend to misjudge and kerb the inside of a corner once every 6-12 months. I accidentally punctured my tyre like that once on a corner of a junction :(.

For the past 5-7 years I do tend to take it easy in built-up areas or with busier traffic.

Rroff said:
To be fair most of my bad driving has been because my attention has been far too concentrated on people tailgating me or otherwise driving badly behind me - while it doesn't exactly make me nervous or panicky probably worries me more than average and I can make poor decisions sometimes on what is going on in front due to it.
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This for example I have very little understanding for, I've almost never had this happen almost ever in 13 years of driving except for once where my car was in it's emergency run and I couldn't go over 70 kph (40mph?), and when it does happen when someone else is driving in my car I just tell them to chill the hell out and ignore the car behind you, his/her problem (unless you have to do an emergency brake).
Basically never worry or panick about someone tailing you (unless you suspect it's the rozzers), **** them... Or just drive faster, if you make the best progress possible for the situation you can I tend to notice nobody will ever tailgate you. I've had people crawling up my ass if I'm stuck behind traffic, then I'll often be moving closer to the edge of a lane to show that I can't go any faster because of slowpoke in front of me, 100% of the time the car behind you will increase it's distance from you once they see you can't go any faster (or move over). But I often tend to agree with that person and want to go faster myzelf.
 
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snowdog said:
This for example I have very little understanding for, I've not had this happen almost ever in 13 years of driving
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Because you're literally always speeding by a huge margin


snowdog said:
Or just drive faster, if you make the best progress possible for the situation you can I tend to notice nobody will ever tailgate you.
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... See :P
 
Ok I admit, on the moped I used to have this problem, going top speed and a car almost on your rear wheel. It's the reason I got my motorbike license and a bike that pulls faster than most cars and stopped riding yellow plated ones ( which means 30mph ones) which here are often forced to ride between the cars instead of the cycle paths.
But yeah indeed, I think speed limits are, ehhh, annoying (understatement, I hate them with a passion) in most places.
 
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I had covid a few weeks back, it was icey, thought id scraped sufficient ice off - pulled out of my 3.5 metre wide drive and managed to scrape the door and wing :( . Im usually really good with spatial awareness.
 
I spun my Company Cavalier back in the 80’s trying to left foot break around an industrial estate. Nearly collected a lorry coming the other way.

There are many many more “learning journeys” over they years for sure. Fair bit of experience of big speeds (over 170mph) and it’s the type of car that determines how that feels but most high performance cars with 200mph too speeds are incredibly planted at big speeds if set up well.
 
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