[Closed] Driving standards/sense of entitlement.

It's well known in any other field that you need continuous training and improvement to maintain a resonable skill level. 10 hrs and a test at 17 then nothing more is a recipe for the disaster we already have.

Very sad incident in our town on Saturday night. Well lit straight part of main road, no other cars involved at 1.30am a young father and child died, don't know the full circumstances yet but when you drive by you can't unders5and how it actually happened. I do think re tests should be undertaken as i inly said to the mrs yestetday half the folk would fail.

On the other hand I recently pulled onto a 50mph main road having seen two bikes coming along at a great distance away.

I then discovered they must have been doing a hell of a lot more as they were immediately behind me, one pulled along side, one pulled in front, slowed me down to 40 mph odd and gave me a torrent of abuse.

you cant win.

When I go out on the road bike it feels as if the roads have become lawless.
Rarely see a police car and no fixed speed or anpr cameras in my area.

But what about heir human rights? They need to be able to drive to get to work/see family/ go to the drive through? Why should they have to maintain a safe standard to do that? It's bad enough we have to have an mot yearly to prove the car is safe to be on the road!

you cannot 'test' for attentiveness, common sense, apathy, selfishness, which is a cause of many problems and complaints. It isn't driving 'skill' that should be re-tested or improved.
Removing the human from the machine is the way forward.

Maybe it was the fact that you didn't go from 0 to 50 instantly and they were quite legitimately doing what ever speed they wanted. That they did catch you proves that. Usual underestimation of a bikes potential speed. Or did I bite the troll?

Anyway rude words was a bit naughty I accept.

"lawless"
To a great extent, this. No where near enough policing for many reasons. No social desire to do anything about it, eg sticking at least 2 zeros on any fines and its just not trendy to think. We live in a society where everything is done for us. .

I know we have these moans regular but good God I swear it's getting worse

I completely agree. Tailgating seems to be the norm now and I stick to the speed limit so seem to get it all the time, especially through 30 mph zones.

But what about heir human rights? They need to be able to drive to get to work/see family/ go to the drive through?

Almost word for word the lawyer said representing the prick that killed my cousin.

No mention of my cousins rights that were taken away in that incident, nor of his wife's and two boys human rights.

£500 fine for tacograph offences.

The law is an arse.

^ Tailgaters very quickly learn that I can drive real slowwwww . . .

they were quite legitimately doing what ever speed they wanted

"Interesting" point of view. It's evident the poster estimated their speed incorrectly though.

When I go out on the road bike it feels as if the roads have become lawless.

I get this feeling about the whole country now. Funny thing is though, when I go up to Scotland for work its a lot nicer up there. Must be an English thing.

I then discovered they must have been doing a hell of a lot more

The way our eyes work means that smaller objects appear to moving slower than they actually are. It's easier to estimate the speed of a car than a bike.

Never assume that anyone is driving to the speed limit either.

Standards and agressikn both seem to be worse I agree. I used to enjoy driving - now not so much.

When I go out on the road bike it feels as if the roads have become lawless.

They pretty much have. Almost a complete lack of policing leads people to push the boundaries of what they can get away with. Anyone else noticed that a red light now means two more cars can go through rather than stop.

I got threatened with "getting your fxxkin head kicked in" for having the temerity to say "you're welcome" to the angry man in the people mover who I'd waited to come through on my side of the road round some parked cars and failed to acknowledge my politeness. 😆

Theres a lot of angry self important people out there on the roads.

Tailgating seems to be the norm now and I stick to the speed limit so seem to get it all the time, especially through 30 mph zones.

20's are even worse.

People seem to get very upset if you have the temerity to drop your speed as you enter a 20 zone. I go through one regularly and I'm just waiting for the day that someone tries to thump me for obeying the law.

Anyone else noticed that a red light now means two more cars can go through rather than stop.

Yeah, this is definitely on the increase. You get a green light and can't set off because there's still cars streaming through the junction. People just don't care.

I remember someone on here commenting about tailgating. They said something like 'I stopped for an elderly lady to cross the road, then let three drivers out of Tesco's car park'. The driver behind should have had steam coming out of their ears.

If I'm tailgated I tend to drive more slowly, especially around bends. I'm sure it's safer for both of us. I usually have all day.

It's sad that the police don't have unmarked boring ordinary family cars, which seem to be a hate object for the driving gods on our roads.

I try to stay pretty relaxed on the road, but the thing that winds me up is other people's rude & inconsiderate 'me me me' behaviour.
My Dad used to be a black cabbie and just laughs at me. He tells me that I'll never change these people's behaviour so there's no point getting wound up over it. But, I can't help it. I'd love to be able to let it wash over me, but I find that really difficult.....

I think a lot of the time, it's not the stereotypical knuckle-head or young boy racer. I think a lot of people don't think there's anything wrong with (short list of annoyances):
- cutting the corner when turning into roads
- not indicating
- pulling onto roundabouts with no though about 'give way to the right'
- sneaking through gaps because the car in front is doing it so it must be OK
- leaving dual carriageway/motorway exits at the last second & having to squeeze into the queue.
- wrong lane at lights/roundabout and then just barge your way in
- joining dual carriageways/motorways with barely a glance in the mirror & expecting everyone to just get out of the way.....

I fully acknowledge that I am a far from perfect driver, but the one thing I do try to do without fail is be courteous to other driver's and try to not just think about my own situation. Until they start being dicks, that is..... 😆

Anyone else noticed that a red light now means two more cars can go through rather than stop.

Obviously this must be cyclists' fault. 🙁

Stopping at an [i]amber[/i] light seems to cause all kinds of red-faced confusion and gesticulations.

My Dad used to be a black cabbie

RacisT!

Theres a lot of angry self important people out there on the roads.

It's not just the roads where you encounter bitter angry people who feel they have no control over their lives and have the need to express their constrained anger at the way their life has turned out by acting like dicks, getting bumped into deliberately when shopping, bumped into on the pavement, people shoving in front of you in queues - all dicks.

Don't rise to their bait however easy it is to imaging grabbing their pugnacious face and bitch-slapping it repeatedly whilst saying "Please don't be a dick", it's best to ignore them and breath deeply - move on with a smile on your face.

It's not good for your stress levels and will cause your adrenal glands to go into overdrive producing cortisol which can weaken your immune system amongst many other deleterious effects on your health.

You'll never win the war against dicks, there are far too many of them.

- cutting the corner when turning into roads

I make a point of not giving way to these cocknockers. Funny watching them suddenly have to wrestle the steering wheel all over the place to try and get back over to the correct side of the road.

It's well known in any other field that you need continuous training and improvement to maintain a resonable skill level. 10 hrs and a test at 17 then nothing more is a recipe for the disaster we already have.

That implies that drivers who drive aggressively, carelessly or selfishly don't know better. Regular tests won't stop people behaving like arseholes between one test and the next. If anything having passed a test seems to elevate the sense of entitlement.

Regular tests won't stop people behaving like arseholes between one test and the next.

True, but various threads on here have reported that some folk find the Speed Awareness Courses genuinely quite interesting and feel that they actually learnt something.

So I think the same is likely to be true of regular re-tests, [i]*if*[/i] they are run properly. We all have bad habits and slipping standards. Test might remind people of what they are supposed to be doing, point out any misconceptions, and also cover any changes in rules/advice.

It would also help weed out some of the people that [i]really[/i] shouldn't be driving on medical/eyesight grounds!

On the other hand I recently pulled onto a 50mph main road having seen two bikes coming along at a great distance away.

I then discovered they must have been doing a hell of a lot more as they were immediately behind me, one pulled along side, one pulled in front, slowed me down to 40 mph odd and gave me a torrent of abuse.

This is a key argument against speeding that I always make on here but no-one seems to agree with.

If everyone sticks to a consistent speed then it makes it much easier for other people to assess your actions, and this kind of thing is less likely to happen.

If you put GPS enabled data loggers into everyone's car and used that to both monitor driving standards and price insurance, that would change the way people drive.

I couldn't give a rats ass if you think it's an invasion of your privacy, you're driving is an invasion of everyone else's safety.

molgrips - Member

If everyone sticks to a consistent speed then it makes it much easier for other people to assess your actions, and this kind of thing is less likely to happen.

TBH though, unless they were going spectacularly faster than the limit, it still sounds like olly2097 shouldn't have pulled out.

Within what you might call the normal range of speeding, it doesn't really make that much difference to gaps and closing speed- if it becomes a problem because someone else is doing 10mph over the limit, it was always dubious.

It goes both ways, it's not just overly fast drivers, 45 mph dawdelers deciding to slow an entire road down for miles on end. Be nice and let people who are not on a jolly do the speed limit.

For tailgaters in a 30mph zone I simply flick my rear view mirror so I cannot see them, out of sight out of mind 😉

It's funny but it seems everyone on here is a competent, capable and courteous driver.

The smug meter is off the scale on this thread! 😀

Yes I completely agree with the OP - driving really does seem to have gone downhill badly in the last few years. And regards tailgating - we have a 20 zone near us (as there are two schools next to each other). I have been overtaken on more than one occasion for having the audacity to drive at the speed limit through it.

Then there was the time I was a pedestrian walking down the pavement right outside the same schools and a woman mounted the kerb and drove fully on to the pavement (all four wheels) right in front of me as I was walking towards her as she (in her words) 'can't park on the zig zags' of the crossing she was seeking to avoid as she dropped off her kids at school.

Remarkable.

And another one that really boils my piss are people at roundabouts that go into the right lane and just go right around the roundabout so they can turn left just so they can avoid waiting for a minute or two in the queue.

TBH though, unless they were going spectacularly faster than the limit

Could have been either, couldn't it? Yes, drivers often do pull out infront of people, but bikers also speed a lot.

Be nice and let people who are not on a jolly do the speed limit.

Here's a test of your knowledge.

Is the designated speed limit the speed it's legal to drive at or the speed it's illegal to exceed?

pulling onto roundabouts with no though about 'give way to the right'

I'm noticing lots more people treating the left lane of a roundabout as some sort of filter lane and joining the roundabout when other cars are on it. And what's worse, getting really indignant when you toot at them having had to swerve to avoid them!

It's funny but it seems everyone on here is a competent, capable and courteous driver.

I'm sure I have plenty of bad habits and misconceptions too - but it is hard to spot them in yourself. That's one reason I support periodic re-tests.

Example: My wife had been driving for over 15 years mistakenly thinking that if the road has two lanes then it's a dual carriageway and thus a 70 limit. 😯

Likewise I'm quite sure that at least some of the car drivers pootling along at a steady 50 or 60 on actual dual carriageways think that they are at the speed limit.

I generally like to think I'm a good, attentive driver doing 25k a year. But then everyone else also thinks they are a good driver too.

As for my episode, maybe I shouldn't have pulled out but after they reprimanded me they certainly rode off at high speed which makes me think I'm only partially to blame.

But hey, bad driving and road rage happens every day. I'm guilty too I'm sure.

I'm noticing lots more people treating the left lane of a roundabout as some sort of filter lane and joining the roundabout when other cars are on it.

Round here there are loads of roundabouts where the left lane genuinely is a filter that skips past the roundabout - so that probably doesn't help!

Bring on the self-driving cars (unless they start producing special agressive version of the software!).

Likewise I'm quite sure that at least some of the car drivers pootling along at a steady 50 or 60 on actual dual carriageways think that they are at the speed limit.

Maybe they're just driving at the speed it's safe to drive at?

Likewise I'm quite sure that at least some of the car drivers pootling along at a steady 50 or 60 on actual dual carriageways think that they are at the speed limit.

The clue is in the word "limit". The limit is the maximum allowed, not a target to aim for.