Driving standards

chrismpw said:
Utterly horrendous.

I went down the M4 towards the M25 2 days ago - in a fast lane sat a white van doing a steady 65mph absolutely not bothered about hogging the lane, with nothing inside him. A line of angry BMW drivers lined up on his bumper, eventually gaving to undertake him. I did too, eventually, but only on the very inside lane.

Every journey i end up behind someone doing at least 20mph lower than whatever the speed limit is, despite good conditions etc. Not helped that modern cars over-read their speed by at least 5mph at 70.

Journeys I remember taking 1 ½ hours, 20 years ago, now regularly take over 2 hours.

People can't park either. Was stuck behind a car in our high street last week, that was double parked .... against an empty space.... some bint decided it was too much effort to squeeze their SUV into a perfectly big enough space, so just parked next to it ffs.

So YES, plenty of evidence that driving is worse.
Click to expand...
I spend an awful lot of time on the road for work, and people just go to sleep on the motorway. Just absolutely no awareness of what's going on around them. It's quite shocking. I have absolutely no qualms about overtaking on the inside these days. There are brain dead zombies everywhere and I cba sitting behind them for miles waiting for them to realise they're asleep and getting mad about it.

The 4 lane bits are the worst. They all sit in lane 3, while lane 2 is practically empty. Knobs.
 


Zezti said:
I like watching driving instructor Ashley Neal on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@ashley_neal) and there are quite a lot of clips that make it into his videos from Liverpool. Do you have as big of a problem with kids on electric bikes as it seems, up there?
Click to expand...
Electric bikes and scooters, yes. However, I was in Sicily a couple of weeks ago and much worse there, in the cities. They come at you from all directions.
 
I hate people who insist on driving massive cars but have no spatial awareness.

On roads where cars are parked up they drive down the middle and expect people to give way.
 
FrenchDarrenBent said:
Retired people should only be allowed to drive between 10 am and 3 pm and between 6.30 pm until 6.30 am.
Click to expand...
I'm retired (sort of) and those are the times I prefer to drive. Far fewer bellends around (strangely, someone seems to have given them a job and they are in work for part of that time). I come across a few proper slow 'arisses, granted, but then it is usually quiet enough to get by if really needed ...
 

Worse. Absolutely.

The quality of drivers on the roads these days is absolutely shocking and, frankly, quite scary. The amount of bad habits, distractions & general aggressiveness connected to drivers & their driving is the worst it has ever been. There are also far too many cars on the road now in general, with the cars themselves getting bigger & bigger with too many roads that are no longer fit for purpose.

It's difficult to really provide solutions that don't involve raising the minimum driving age, introducing mandatory re-tests for older drivers, and increasing road taxes across the board (as long as that increase fully goes towards improving the roads in this country in general). On the flipside though - part of the problem remains the lack of a viable alternative in cheaper, more reliable public transport...

All in all, the state of transport in this country is just an absolute mess these days..
 
As an aside - my wife and my baby in his pram literally nearly got hit by a car earlier after the driver performed an illegal u-turn... then had the absolute audacity to give her grief for it!

These are the types of people that exist on our roads :rant:
 
Ten days ago, as I was approaching a busy roundabout and there being (I thought) no vehicles between myself and the roundabout, I looked to my right, saw a gap to pull into the roundabout, accelerated and went straight into the rear tyre of a motorbike. The bike reared up, wheelie style (obviously had his brakes on) before coming back down and escaping across to the opposite exit.

Fortunately the rider was fine. I accepted responsibility as, regardless of the fact he seemed to appear from nowhere, he was in front of me and I drove into him.

My car (a 2010 Fiesta Titanium automatic) only had a motorbike-rider's arse-shaped dent in the bonnet and could've probably done with a new bumper assembly. The bike, I later found out, was bent sufficiently to be written-off. The rider had said his wife didn't want him to go back on the bike anyway so she'd probably thank me for making sure he now couldn't.

My car was perfectly fine other than a cosmetically-challenged face, so we continued our 25-mile journey home without any problems whatsoever. However, my insurance company decided that the damage might be sufficient for the car to be written off. I was a bit perturbed by that as I imagined I'd probably only get about £2,000 for it after excess. Nevertheless I agreed to wait for an assessor to turn up.

Before he did, I got an email from the insurance company which offered a settlement figure if I'd rather not wait for the assessor. Imagine my delight when I read the figure was £4,700! Four hours after calling them the money was in my account and I started looking around for another car.

The Fiesta is being collected tomorrow. Hopefully the driver won't notice that the alloy wheels that were on the car when I bought it have been replaced with steel wheels. I changed them a couple of years ago as the very low-profile tyres the previous owner had put on it resulted in my teeth loosening every time I drove over a pot hole. I never got round to telling the insurance company and didn't seem to think it necessary seeing as I hadn't increased the value.

I'm reliably informed by a dealer that the insurance company is now out of the equation and I needn't worry.

Watch this space :coffee:
 

Welcome

Join Grand Old Team to get involved in the Everton discussion. Signing up is quick, easy, and completely free.

Register

Shop

Back
Top