To think that driving has gotten worse since the pandemic?

Yeah, the headlights are absolutely dazzling. I was driving home down a country road in the dark and fog earlier in the week and the bright headlights from oncoming cars made it very scary. Some even keeping them on full beam.

I have stopped cycling because of this, and I used to be a confident cyclist.
Re driving- drivers have become very Impatient and will use their horn if there is only a moment's delay.
Also, why are the new bright car lights even legal? They are so dangerous for oncoming drivers.

One problem with the motorways is the volume of lorries. I drove home on the M6 last night and the left hand lane was almost full of lorries. So everyone else was in the middle and right hand lane. It was absolutely chocka. Plus, if you left a proper stopping distance someone shoved themselves in it. And people leaving it too late to get across to exit. It was mental last night. There was also a driver who caused mayhem when I joining the motorway - really busy, big line of traffic going a reasonable speed down the slip road all trying to join, when someone speeds down the outside essentially pushing everyone else out the way and making it so much hard for everyone and more dangerous. There was just no need for it. I’m not surprised there are accidents when people are so inconsiderate of others.

I am strongly against compulsory registration etc for normal cyclists. But I think there is a case for much stronger regulation of cyclists WHO ARE DOING DELIVERY WORK. lots of aggressive cycling and dumping of bikes.

SUVs should face a lot of restrictions like having to pass extra tests, retest, restricted from certain types of parking, different lanes and speed limits. Make people think harder about whether they actually need one!

This afternoon I drove on the M4 heading westwards. Pretty much the entire motorway was driving in the right-hand lane with the odd car or lorry in the left-hand or middle lanes.

People really need to learn how they're supposed to drive on motorways - i.e. left-hand lane unless overtaking.

I was thinking about this only today.

I had a half day at work, so I was driving home at lunch time, and experienced 3 lots of aggressive driving in about 20 minutes.
First, I was turning right onto a roundabout, and a Royal Mail van was approaching. But rather than continue the speed he was at, he SPED UP right towards me. Forcing me to gun the accelerator to get out of the way.
Further on, a car whizzed up behind me, and was right on my arse until the road went to 2 lanes.
And then another car cut me up on a roundabout!

I wasn't driving slowly, just normal speed, keeping up with the flow of traffic. So why are all these people driving like they're trying to get their dying mother to hospital??

I'm an experienced driver, have had a license over 20 years now, but definitely feel the need to drive a lot more defensively and "risk aware" than I used to. Aggressive driving is definitely on the up.

Next time you drive, or a passenger in a car, take note of how many street furniture (sign posts, bollards, barriers) are damaged due to idiotic driving. Never seen so many. Councils are not replacing them as they are struggling financially. I bet those who damage these things, their cars would be damaged/write offs and there is a high chance they are not insured.

Yet the contractors they use for roadworks waste money by not collecting up the signs with stands and cones. These cost us money. If collected when clearing up, these signs/stands can be used again and again. I am a littler womble and on a group pick, we found about 18 of the signs (2 were unretrievable as thick with brambles) and stands down a 1.5-2 mile stretch of road in ditches. They are beyond use as twisted, broken.

Anyone repeatedly finding themselves in the position of needing to slam their brakes on so they can obey normal protocol shouldn't be commenting on a thread about driving, or probably even driving

Not always. For me, middle lane sitting is when you sit in the middle lane for miles on end with nothing on the inside.

But a lot of people seem to interpret it as such if you overtake a lorry and then stay there because there's another lorry and you don't want to weave in and out. But they do, to make a point. Just overtake for goodness sake.

The same applies if the motorway splits, you might get over quite early because you don't want to get trapped in the wrong lane later.

Undertaking is just as stupid as middle lane sitting - two wrongs don't make a right.

Agree, making people do another test for SUVs would concentrate peoples' minds a bit about whether they NEED such a big car or just want it for appearances sake.

I disagree. If anything it leads to better driving because you don't have one hand (and half your brain) on the gearstick!

I would like to ban SUVs for 90% of those buying them, though. I DO think that people driving cars that they feel too safe in (and that are too big for them to handle) leads to poor driving. They certainly don't give a fig about pedestrians.

Yes I was thinking about that this morning in the context of the Lime bikes in London. Maybe people should only be able to hire them if they've done their bikeability.

I do think the likes of Deliveroo and Uber should ensure that their cycling couriers have done bikeability before they are allowed to do any work for them.

We've had a lot of temporary traffic lights in our area in the last couple of years, compared with previous years anyway, regeneration of a small town combined with failures from water, gas & electric all needing roads dug up.
I went through 4 sets on my 8 mile trip to work today, and 4 sets back, and that's without the static ones. Fairly rural area without a lot of, if any, alternative routes.

They were failing regularly, and are stuck on red both ends. A couple of them are easy to judge because you can see the oncoming queue and at night usually the reflection of the red light the other end and after about 5 minutes of both ends waiting, someone eventually goes one end and then the other end goes when that queue has gone. The others are not so easy as you can't see the other end, and it causes problems.

We've had police at them directing traffic more than once, and I think they must have had words because it seems to have stopped happening now, even though we've got even more 😳 but there's then someone who waits 30 seconds, or not at all, beeps at the front car and then just goes, only to meet the oncoming traffic that's quite rightly come through a green light their end., because they've assumed they're broken and not waited to make sure. I can see how people would use it (or try to) as an excuse for jumping a red light, because they really were quite bad for a time around here.

Legally you shouldn't go through a red light at all, but how long are you meant to sit there for? (Genuine question!) I'd have sat there all night for one set because there wasn't an alternative route and despite me reporting it, they were still knackered the next morning, with no police presence (or any presence) to control traffic. Though it was one you could see the other side of.

Of course you wait and make sure that they're definitely not working properly and then proceed with extreme caution, but I do wonder who'd be at fault in that situation if an accident occurred because if the lights are broken, you've both gone through a red light haven't you?

I do agree in general though, an Audi up my arse in a 40 today, I was doing 40, came to a roundabout, was clear, me and car in outside lane pull off together into our respective lanes, Audi decides he's in the wrong lane being behind me, the inside lane, and there's no room for him to pull into the outside lane, so he just speeds up the middle, last I saw he cut someone up as the road narrowed after the roundabout exit.

I mean he had no intention of waiting behind the cars moving to the outside lane to pull onto the roundabout and I was the only car moving to the inside lane, so he pulled out behind me and then pushed his way between me and the cars in the other lane. Luckily the road is wide and so after squeezing between me and the car next to me and forcing us both over right to the kerb, he effectively stayed on the white line, overtook and then cut someone up on the exit.

I see impatient or dangerous driving every day, and I live rurally so not as much traffic as cities, not so long ago was someone going the wrong way around a roundabout - I mean how?!

But I think generally people have got more self focused, less bothered about their impact on other people and behaviour has become aggressive when something doesn't go their way, there's very little in the way of 'correction' or consequences for any of it.

💤

I think a part of the puzzle is that some people learn overseas where the driving standards are lower (China and India for example). I dont mean that offensively, just a fact.

Then you have people looking at phones, vaping, being competitive on the road.

Youre in a vehicle that could kill a person. I dont understand why some people take it so lightly.

I personally think that automatic cars are contributing to the rapid decline in driving quality and increase in accidents. Driving autos is so easy I don’t think people are fully paying attention to the car, speed and what’s around them in the same was you do when engaging in a manual car

Drove behind a car swerving about. I stayed behind until I needed to turn right at traffic lights so needed to go in right lane. The driver in the swerving car pulled up going straight ahead. He had a large nitrous oxide canister between legs and inhaling contents of balloon- he was doing hippy crack.

Here is what the police has to say about it.
It isn't me being difficult; it's genuinely not allowed in the UK.

Because you don't seem to acknowledge that on UK motorways you should NOT pass traffic on the left because that is not allowed except in queuing traffic, and yet you keep on about other lanes being overtaking lanes, and people not knowing how to drive on motorways. You are right about the latter, but because other people drive badly does not stop it being highly dangerous and frowned upon and not allowed in the highway code to pass on the left, EVEN IF there is an idiot in the lane to your right who shouldn't be there. You can be charged with reckless driving if you get caught.

Your earlier posts didn't acknowledge the "if you absolutely have to, slow down a lot to pass on the left" from Parker's guide. You said you weren't frustrated but were driving happily along in an open left lane and passing a number of others who were wrongly driving more slowly than you to your right. This in itself is poor driving. Just because everyone else is driving badly in the middle lane when they shouldn't be there doesn't make it right to go hurtling past in the left hand lane. It is dangerous driving.

Oh god. Yes, this. I was in a single lane carriageway that split into 2 at the traffic lights. The traffic lights started to turn to red as I approached, I had plenty of time to stop. I was going 30mph on a 30mph road. The tool in the van behind me decided that the lights didn't count for him, swerved around me and nearly hit the traffic coming across the junction. He'd have had to wait for less than a minute. I don't get it.

There's a difference between moving into a lane to the left, for the purpose of 'undertaking, and simply driving along in the inside lane, at the correct speed, with nothing in front of you.

My point is that, if you are being overtaken on your left, then you are in the wrong lane. You are causing problems for other drivers, in all 3 lanes.
And that slamming on my brakes, when there's an HGV behind, which can't stop or decelerate quickly, is more dangerous than slowly passing the driver, who is in the wrong lane, in the manner outlined in the link you posted.

I'm the 'epitome of irony,' because I know how motorways are designed to work? Or, because I understand and acknowledge the dangerous, knock on effects, of drivers who don't?
How is that, in any way, ironic?

I drive on the motorway every day and sometimes I wonder if it is me because I feel like the common denominator.

I've had drivers fly down slip roads who have had to slam on their brakes because they've misjudged the speed of the road and are trying to merge where my car physically is - nowhere for me to go as it's rush hour but also no reason for them to latch on to the arse of the car in front that's merging correctly.

I have had drivers aggressively speed up into gaps in the inside lane when I am trying to merge from a slip road. Once I was merging from a slip road and a car in the middle lane also decided they wanted to be in the inside lane at the same point. On the weekend I was overtaking in the outside lane at about 70mph and a little ford fiesta trundled out at a much slower speed for zero reason so I had to brake harshly. Same stretch of road and I was pulling back into the middle lane when someone who was undertaking nearly went into me as they also moved into the middle lane.

People driving up my arse at 70mph, in the dark and poor weather. I try and leave a reasonable gap to the car in front cos "stopping distances" but then they just get irate and try and drive even closer because I've left a gap.

Yesterday morning a huge wagon went through a red light and would have nearly taken me out had I been slightly more quicker off the mark.

Maybe it is me...

I think it's just got worse increasingly each year. When I passed my test in the early 90s I could get across the town I live in within 10 mins, same trip now takes 30 mins (even in the middle of the night due to additional junctions and lights). Also there are so many more drivers on the roads.

Most days I experience an impatient driver either on way to or from work. I live in a one way street and that is often ignored, I was almost hit by one such driver while pulling out of my drive and he was screaming and swearing at me for nearly hitting him, I just pointed at the no entry sign and ignored him.

Also had cars go round me when stopping at a red light more than once, as traffic lights apparently don't mean stop, it must be optional now, along with no right turn signs, which are also ignored daily on my route!