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I have family in London. I find myself getting tenser about the driving once inside the M25.
Fortunately it's only ever the weekend we are down. I imagine I would be much more stressed if it was during the week day.
Best driving ever was leaving Nottingham about 4am and driving for a job interview. 3h of people leaving space, driving neatly, sticking to lanes. About 7.30/8am to 9am the traffic changed. Weaving in lanes, clearly on the phone at 70, speeding.
I put it down to people who are on the road at 5am are probably always there at that time of day and are unlikely to be late due to traffic/ kids/ random delays.
"beet bobbies" only get those in Norfolk & Suffolk I believe
Beet me to it. Red faces all round
Came here to say tha needs to get thisen to Bradford!
(But it's already been done!)
Have to agree that Bradford is horrific to drive around/in /through as is leeds i will usually get train to leeds if needed. There has been a bit of a push on M1 this week with most matrixs showing keep left /dont hog middle lane net result being even worse than usual , could be just me being prompted by the signage to notice even more of the deriving dead. They drive among us 🤬 🤬 🤬
Have to agree that Bradford is horrific to drive around/in /through as is leeds i will usually get train to leeds if needed
I seem to remember that Bradford has one of the highest percentages of uninsured drivers anywhere in the country.
As a city it's also got truly woeful connectivity (as does Leeds), the result being that everyone drives everywhere.
I drove to Leeds-Bradford Airport very early one morning imagining that it'd all be nice and quiet but for a time around that Leeds-Bradford corridor it felt like I was in a live version of Grand Theft Auto.
That's staggeringly common - I'd have thought if you were running a county lines drug operation, you might try and slip under the radar a bit, drive a boring car in a fully legal manner, not draw any attention but nope, it seems to be the order of the day that they'll speed, drive uninsured, use the phone etc...
Isn't that just the ones that get caught? Maybe the brighter ones are doing just as you suggest and tooling around gently in unassuming, fully-legal, family hatchbacks listening to Radio 3 at modest volumes?
Last week we had the misfortune of driving from the Euro tunnel to Stockport. We were next to one driver who hogged the middle lane for at least one hundred miles (vehicles having to go into the outside lane to pass and come back into the inside lane). Hours later we left the M1 asap and drove the rest through Chesterfield and the Peak District, where the driving was courteous and of a good standard.
The journey going out on the motorway down South was so stressful. For the first time ever I had to get onto the hard shoulder on the M6. Coming back onto the motorway it was clear, I got up to a decent speed pulled onto the inside lane and a car in the middle lane puts his full beam on and comes into my lane at speed, tailgates me for several seconds and speeds off at about 90 back into the centre lane, it was one of the most scariest moments I've ever had, it was like a punishment pass. Why?
Last week we had the misfortune of driving from the Euro tunnel to Stockport
Ending up in Stockport is pretty unfortunate.
For the first time ever I had to get onto the hard shoulder on the M6. Coming back onto the motorway it was clear, I got up to a decent speed pulled onto the inside lane and a car in the middle lane puts his full beam on and comes into my lane at speed, tailgates me for several seconds and speeds off at about 90 back into the centre lane, it was one of the most scariest moments I've ever had, it was like a punishment pass. Why?
My experience of people rejoining from the hard shoulder is that they frequently misjudge both their own speeds and that of passing traffic, which leads to exactly the situation you describe. I suspect the reason the other vehicle was in the middle lane is because you didn't see them when rejoining the motorway and they swerved out of the way to avoid a collision. Which would also explain their anger and bad driving afterwards.
Having lived in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and now Manchester; by a long measure, the M62 corridor, surrounding towns and cities have the worst driving standards I've encountered any where in the UK including central London. I think it's party a space and road infrastructure problem, but a large part of it seems also to be just a local attitude to driving.
I dunno. I live just outside of Maidstone and regularly drive up to Nottingham, where my kids are both at Uni. On the M20, M25 and M1 , there are people hogging lanes or weaving in and out. And the traffic in Nottingham doesn’t feel any different to that down south to me, but maybe that’s because of its size.
I think that often there’s no patience for anyone that doesn’t know exactly where they are going, and what lane they need to be in. The one way system in Maidstone is particularly bad for this.
Double post
In my opinion people are being taught to pass a driving test, not, how to drive, not reading the road ahead or taking into account the weather or conditions under wheel. Driving in fog recently, the amount of drivers without lights on was astonishing.
I've driven more in France than the UK this year and it's been far more pleasant in France (even when the French do race up and tailgate if one is trying to overtake on their motorways).
I've driven more in France than the UK this year and it's been far more pleasant in France (even when the French do race up and tailgate if one is trying to overtake on their motorways).
The driving in France is generally very good (notable exception being Paris!) and then it becomes unbelievably bad close to the Tunnel as all the proportion of Brits rises dramatically.
To a certain extent the Dutch and Germans also bugger up the whole system too around Calais but the main problem is the Brits.
France has fewer or roughly the same number of people and way more space. I’ve also driven a lot in France and once things get busy, or there’s some extra lanes the driving gets very similar to the UK.
Having lived in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and now Manchester; by a long measure, the M62 corridor, surrounding towns and cities have the worst driving standards I've encountered any where in the UK including central London. I think it's party a space and road infrastructure problem, but a large part of it seems also to be just a local attitude to driving.
Agree on that and I'd add in the M56!
OP here again. Today I tried driving in the way I experienced in Basingstoke and Maidstone over the weekend. Blimey, it's stressful and it must wear out clutches, tyres and brakes pdq. Getting onto the M4 at peak rush hour (Pont Abraham, J 49) is my normal commute and I'm more than happy to be delayed by 30 seconds if it means that I don't have to dump the clutch or whatever. It's definitely not a style of driving I'm going to adopt. A driving god I am not.
I don't mind driving in France, they are bad for tailgating though, and their drink driving rates are really bad compered to almost everywhere else in Europe.
I’ve also driven a lot in France and once things get busy, or there’s some extra lanes the driving gets very similar to the UK.
Yes, this.
Some of the few nationalities I’ve found to drive well, noticeably better than us Brits, are the Dutch and Belgians. As I cycled from Belgium into northern France the driving standards dropped noticeably.
Despite all the claims about how terrible we supposedly are at driving, if we look at objective evidence the UK has very clearly one of the lowest fatality rates of any European country - especially compared to those of a similar population like Germany, France, Italy and Spain. And out fatalities are continuing to gradually improve.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023 Chart 13.
But why let facts get in the way of a good moan about how terrible the UK is?