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I overtook the landspeed record holding ThrustSSC on the M3 - it was on a lorry though
On one of the narrow valley sections of the M74, despite my flooring it, i had to admit defeat and let the two Tornado GR4's overtake me !Doubt they were more than 200ft up. Totally made my day.
On the M6 through the lakes theres a section with a valley to one side where tornados would sometimes pass alongside you
South Africa years ago, driving a motorbike on motorway at rush hour, hemmed in the middle lane with
cars pretty close everybody hamering it.
A taxi in front of me (crammed Toyota hi ace) the spare wheel carrier collapsed in front of me sparking madly on the road, the tyre was bouncing between the car and road still in its cage.
I quickly got out of the way, still dont know if there was an accident caused by it, the driver was oblivious to My horn and hand waving
Seen and done some pretty scary things on motorways in my time but the biscuit has to go to the guy I once saw in a sierra full of workmates using the on and off ramps to undertake moving traffic, the way he was doing it made it looked like it was from habit too
Seen plenty in my time as I do about 30K miles a year, but the worst has got to be in China, during a run to the airport on the motorway there was one guy reversing up the motorway to get back to a missed junction, and an old truck stacked with hay, broken down in the outside lane with a pair of legs sticking out from under it as the driver worked on it. Bizzare!
Rush hour traffic on the m8. Going slow into town just after Townhead.. Car 3 in front pulls onto merging lane on right. Puts hazards on and a back seat passenger gets out and jumps into the gap between barriers on the central reservation.. Think he was gonna attempt to cross to the other side to get to the sighthill flats!!
Got control to radio the cops, must have been a car nearby. About a minute later saw them stopping eastbound traffic and pulling in to get him. Saw a lot of finger waving going on in the rear view mirror..
Kenya's cycle team at the Manchester Commonwealth games 2002 on a training ride down the M61 😯
left a services area behind an estate with camping gear and a dog in the back, nothing unusual about that right?
Gathrered speed, doing 80 ish, suddenly the back of the estate opens up, dogs eyes get very wide !!
Quickly alerted the driver
A27 Shoreham Flyover a couple of weeks ago...dawn and raining, silver Polo overtakes me. As he gets level, driver picks up turquoise plate and balances it on the wheel, and starts to eat the first of two slices of buttered toast. This is an elevated section with slip roads, and a red light cross roads 500m further on that always results in panic braking.
Kenya's cycle team at the Manchester Commonwealth games 2002 on a training ride down the M61
Ive heard a similar story at work. Apparently they were looking for a nice road to practice on, they found a big loop which looked spot on and low and behold it was the M60!
Also when ive been out at work ive seen far too many people with hazards on in the hard shoulder reversing back along to get the correct junction. Its scary how many people actually do it!
Here in India crazy is taken to another level, well certainly frequency at any rate!
I would estimate that around 5% of traffic on any motorway would be going the wrong way, and not a journey of over an hour passes without seeing a lorry which has left the road leaving some devastation in its path 😯
5 on a motorbike is pretty much the norm too.
Cheers, Rich
This takes some beating
And another - WTF?
On one early morning motorway jaunt i came across an HGV where the driver had obviously nodded off at the wheel. Unluckily for him (but luckily for those on the other carriageway) when his rig swerved across the road he hit the only solid concrete bridge for miles and came to a rather abrupt stop. I always remember seeing the mess it left as i drove past, it looked like somebody had thrown a bucket of blood all over his windscreen. Certainly woke me up. Not nice.
A person driving the wrong way down a slip road on to a motorway.
On 2 separate occassions people reversing back down slip roads on to the motorway.
A lorry hanging over the edge of bridge on to the M1 below.
Through a section of road works with a temporary barrier between myself and on coming traffic a van some how ended up coming towards me through the barrier. It all happened very quickly, bits of the van hit my car (but no damage) dont know what carnage happened behind him.
Air Ambulance landing in front of me (ok M62 was shut)
People not wanting to que so they have used the hard shoulder.
A bird hitting a van in front of me, on impact feathers went every where then the bird did a few somersaults before hitting a car on the opposite carriage way. Was very dead by that point.
A lorry on fire down an embankment.
One of those big motorway trucks with the big arrow on the back and big crumple zones. Well saw one with all its side completely crushed in where a lorry had crashed in to it.
.... I drive on the M62/M1 every day!
If your ever passed by someone on the phone or undertaking/bad driving and you see them crashed further down- call the Police and offer to be a witness. Everytime I've seen someone using their phone rather than remonstrate with them I've thought 'if you crash or cause a crash I'll pull over and offer myself as a witness'.
On the M60 I drove passed two cars parked on the hardshoulder with two blokes punches each other out and oblivious to the fact they were on the line with lane 3. When I saw that I vowed NEVER to get angry or lose it on the motorway. EVER.
a few weeks ago i was driving up the m40, pulled out and passing a freelander. as i got alongside a pretty girl in the back seat nearest me got my attention, then she and the other two pretty girls in the back all flashed their fairly sizable boobs at me. it was quite distracting.
"When I saw that I vowed NEVER to get angry or lose it on the motorway. EVER."
What about if some one looses it with you for having your fog lights on when you dont need them 😈
theflatboy, I was driving over Saddleworth/M62 and as I drove towards the rear of a clio I could see the lad had his left arm around the passenger seat. Wierd I thought- pulled level and noticed a girls head bobbing away - I swerved abit and thought don't bother being a perv and carry on...the bloke turned and gave me a grin. The bloody bastid!
haha, as if driving over the highest bit of motorway in the country wasn't exciting enough in itself!
haha, as if driving over the highest bit of motorway in the country wasn't exciting enough in itself!
Oh dear, I think you need to get out more! haha! 😆
crispo ❓ we have day trips there 8)
Couple of years back driving over Shap (so M6?) heading to London with two sculling (rowing) boats on the roof. High wind rips the roof rack off taking some roof with it. I get to watch in the rear view mirror as my precious boat somersaults still attached to the roof rack while a Porsche passes underneath it. The whole thing landed on the central reservation intact with only about a foot sticking out onto the hard shoulder. All in perfect condition until somebody clips it driving past and takes the stern off my boat. Scary for me to watch but the guy in the Porsce must have crapped himself. Took it all as a sign me and the wife weren't supposed to race Tideway in singles.
Maddest and scariest was watching a 44 tonne lorry jack knife in my rear view mirror on the M1 when the traffic suddenly slowed right down in pouring rain.
Fortunately the traffic didn't stop completely as I genuinely thought it was going to flatten us all.
Traffic cones actually being used for roadworks.
Galvanised bucket bouncing down the carriage way just in front of us and then a very worried lady in an mx5 which flattened the bucket.
A wheelbarrow upside on the A50, luckily late at night and people we just going round it.
Yes I've seen ALOT of motorist (read 99%) sail passed me in torrential rain down Shap southwards.
Absolutely bonkers.
Lucky the Porsche driver didnt report you to the Police as you were actually breaking the law. Driving with an incorrectly secured load is an offence.
saw some traffic doing more than 30mph on the M25 once...or I may have imagined it.
to be fair it sounds like the load was secure, just not the roofLucky the Porsche driver didnt report you to the Police as you were actually breaking the law. Driving with an incorrectly secured load is an offence.
😉
A dead stag with full size antlers.
Suddenly appeared under the car in front of me. Decided straddling it (in a Fiesta) was the only option at 70mph. Bumped in the air, but the only damage was a torn heat-shield off my exhaust.
A christmas tree in the fast lane,presumably jettisoned from the pedestrian footbridge overhead.
When I rang it in to the police, the operator lady was as suprised as I was, it being June at the time.
ir_bandito - was that a trouser-filling moment? :0
Yup.
happily cruising down the A1 at 70, everyone keeping distance etc. suddenly the cars in front of me all have their brake lights on, next thing I see is a frikkin' huge stag emerging from under the car in front, antlers and all. It must have been hit by a lorry i guess.
Luckily, since everyone was keeping their distance, I had time to line myself up to straddle it - if I'd tried to drive over it I'd have crashed/flipped/got hurt.
there was a long line of cars on the hard shoulder, everyone phoning the police and trying to sort their sphincters out...
Other scary thing I've seen is a double mattress in the middle lane on the M1. The first time I'd driven on a motorway. Again, luckily there was space to swereve past it without hitting anything. that time I think I did actually shat myself...
in China, during a run to the airport on the motorway there was one guy reversing up the motorway to get back to a missed junction
That's fairly tame for China - still seems alarmingly common to find people driving (forwards) the wrong way up highways/motorways. That's not to mention the small motorbikes and load carrying trikes that appear out of nowhere at night driving into oncoming traffic with no lights...
a mate of mine saw his bonnet on the A19
driving at 70, it suddenly flipped up so he couldn't see. He was overtaking a lorry so he put his hazzards on, kept himself parrallel with the lorry and slowed down a bit so nothing on his left anynore. Then drifted to the left. Once behind the lorry, he slowed more and drifted to the left again, hoping to end up on the grass verge. But it was smooth as he stopped. He'd ended up in a layby and luckily there was no-one there!
I remember driving down the M1 once. Everyone driving reasonably slowly due to an incident ahead. Drove past an engine(!) in the middle lane then two foreign registered lorries parked up and the rear of a small car.....a bit further on were two black guys stood on the hard shoulder GRINNING at me- a wierd full on grin! That puzzled me. Then the penny dropped. They'd obviously had a very very lucky escape and the grinning was a human reflex. 
My first time driving on the motorway was in the Midget.
Got overtaken by a Vulcan bomber.
A fe miles later I was overtaken by the remains of a lory tyre (I presume) bouncing down the motorway, each bounce must have been to lorry height and it was going faster than the trafic, very scary in a very small convertible with th eroof down!
Seen some crazy, tragic, stupid things in 20 odd years patrolling local roads but the one which comes to mind relates to a very lucky young man.
Got sent to a crash on the Kingston Bridge, M8, Glasgow in the early hours. Guy driving alone in a hatchback had fallen asleep going north over the bridge in lane 1. Lane 1 becomes the Bothwell St off ramp, which rises up and veers right over the M8 and into the city centre. Snoozy didn't make the turn and drifted into the nearside barrier of the elevated section. His momentum uprooted the uprights of the barrier, sending posts and concrete chunks flying onto the main M8 far below, causing numerous blowouts and traffic screeching to a halt.
The horizontal spars of the barrier broke and one section punched through the front grill of his car. As he continued forward, the spar skewered through the engine bay, bulkhead, popped the stereo out the dash, grazed his left arm, passed between the front seats, punched through the middle of the three rear seats, through the boot, burst the tailgate open and stuck out the rear of the car by several feet like a giant kebab. The spar was dislodged enough that the car came to rest overhanging the main M8, some 50 feet below, with only the offside wheels still on the flyover and the flapping spar bearing most of the car's weight. When we arrived, the car was still slowly oscillating as if on a diving board.
Aside from a slight injury to his left arm, he was unscathed but the crash fair woke him up. Don't think he was really aware of the chaos he caused to other road users or of how lucky he really was. Still booked him though 😀
Did he say why he'd fallen asleep/reason for it?
Another which made me smile. Colleagues attended a report of a low loader striking a railway bridge on the A8 at Langbank. The low loader had been carrying a bright yellow submersible from Greenock to Faslane. Someone had got their sums wrong and the top of the submersible struck the bridge at about 40mph, dislodging it from the trailer. The submersible landed on top of a Clio travelling behind, smashing the glass sunroof and pretty much destroying the car. The lady driver was trapped inside with her head poking through the hole where the sunroof had been. She was completely uninjured.
Would love to have seen her insurance claim. "I was driving along the A8 beside the Clyde when a yellow submarine landed on my car..." 🙂
Hora - Yeah, he put his hands up straight away to say he'd fallen asleep. He'd travelled down to Glasgow Airport to drop someone off for a flight and was heading back up north.
my mate 'inspecting the wheel' in the fast lane of a traffic-jammed M8, whilst actually having a sly slash, when several cars further up the queue opened their windows and waved their pinkie fingers in response 😆
A bloke who used to work for us. He said 'I woke up looking at a steering wheel in my hands and it took me a while to figure out why I was holding a steering wheel- then the sound of the car tapping against the hardshoulder in the fast lane' (brought him upto focus). He'd been out for a night drinking with his mate (who also used to work for us).
He confessed this to me when were out drinking 'as I know what your response would be if I told you this when your sober'.
His plate and Fri/Sat night route home were reported.
Ooops wrong topic.