To be petrified driving on motorways

Overtaking lorries in torrential rain (with the splash coming from lorries) is always terrifying 🥶

I had a bad experience when I tried to overtake a lorry on a 2 lane motorway during torrential rain.The spray was awful and I had to pull in again, no harm done and there were no visible vehicles behind me so I was fine but I was terrified.I really had to force myself to pass lorries again and I still occasionally get the fear experience when I'm alongside a vehicle.
Don't make your world smaller due to fear and get help if necessary.

@Fountofwisdom well done 👍 motorway driving is definitely BY FAR the easiest type of driving for all the reasons you mention. It's so much more pleasant to drive on a motorway than on a horrible unlit narrow country or parked up city lane.

I also don't know how people manage to avoid them unless just driving within a small radius of their home. I've literally been on the M25 and M11 only today and I've not even gone anywhere far - just day to day chores. I also drive all over the UK with my daughter competing in a sport all over the country and motorways are unavoidable (and make life so much easier) ime.

After 25+ years of NOT driving at all due to absolute terror, I had refresher lessons for about 8 months last year and have been driving on my own for about 6 months now. I was terrified when my instructor suggested a couple of motorway lessons but she kept insisting that it is much easier than urban town driving - far fewer hazards; everyone travelling in same direction; better condition of roads, etc. I thought she was barmy but once I tried it a few times, I realised she was right!

I was really scared of joining the motorway but lo and behold, people WILL let you join and then you basically cruise along happily until your satnav tells you to leave. Had to do my first 2 hour solo motorway drive a few weeks ago and amazed myself by actually enjoying it! I do find driving my local built-up urban area much harder: pedestrians walking out where they please, cyclists, people opening car doors without looking, delivery vans parked where they shouldn’t be, etc, etc. Much easier on the motorway!

I understand how you feel. I hate motorways and feel more comfortable staying very local. Yes it's limiting but it suits me.

Well yes. I am important! You are lucky if you don’t get younger drivers zooming around but just have a Rangy up your backside.

No it bloody isn't! Doing 50 mph on a motorway isn't safe!

@GenAvocadoOnToast That sounds like quite a scary road, and pretty similar to the road I drive to work except that my road at least lowers the speed limit at the worst points (though everyone else seems to ignore that) - lots of sharp turns and its so hilly that you can't see far ahead even when the road is straight. Saw a car flipped over the other day but the road was slippery that day so more likely they went down the hill a bit too fast and slid off the road, even at the limit its too fast when its slippery. I almost crashed myself when I came to the top of a hill in the faster section of the road and there was a car broken down in the middle of the lane just in front of me, managed to brake just in time. The driver hadn't placed the warning triangle down the road which they're supposed to do.

Oh many of the drivers of these cars certainly think they own the road and are terribly important.

I have to say it's big fat cars like range rovers that are more likely to drive up your arse, impatient to over take. But maybe they are brain surgeons on an urgent mission to save a life.

I have to say poor driving around here isn’t luxury cars at all. Mostly young men in fairly modest cars but they drive too fast for the roads. We have narrow lanes with passing places with a speed limit of 60. It’s a rare Range Rover that’s caused a problem. Far more likely a Vauxhall Corsa.

There are roads all over the country that go from dual to single carriageway. It’s standard. No driver should be surprised at this and there are always signs and road markings. Even us tourists have this type of road in our home areas!

@GenAvocadoOnToast I think it's up to the Scottish government and since they got into cahoots with the Greens, they have kept pushing back the date for dualling the whole road. It's probably about 2030 by now. If it was in the central belt I'm sure something would have been done about it. They keep saying they're not investing in roads as they want us to use public transport which is fine if you're well served by it - not having one train every 2 hours and a bus once an hour like we have.

Don't know about the road signs as I never use that road.

@RaraRachael have the LA not looked at addressing that? Are there signs reminding people to drive on the left? Are there signs to make clear the road is moving into a dual carriageway?

@Natsku I occasionally experience that on the bendy rural road I just mentioned. It’s a 60 road which is not a safe speed at a number of points. One bend is 90 degrees for example, and there’s a couple of blind summits. At night I tend to drive between 40 and 50, as do others, but occasionally some twat invariably in a luxury car will be in such a hurry to get home that they’ll overtake at high speed when it clearly isn’t safe to do so. I’ve seen them overtake two cars at a time and have near-misses with oncoming traffic. A few weeks ago I came to a stop behind two ambulances attending a crash at a bend, with two cars flipped. Fortunately the people involved seemed to be ok.

They’d rather risk killing themselves and innocent people for the sake of saving a few minutes tops. These are the people who shouldn’t be driving and if I had my way they’d never drive again.

God, the other day some impatient twat overtook me when I was indicating to turn, with the turning lane starting only about 15 metres ahead, while a car was coming towards us in the other lane and was far too close. That twat narrowly missed a crash to save 30 seconds.

There are no motorways where I live but the area has a very high road death toll - mainly due to obsessive overtaking. My dad drove like this. Even if he was turning off half a mile ahead, he'd overtake the car in front. It's also due to the amount of foreign tourists forgetting to drive on the left. One of the main roads (A9) deviates from single to dual carriageway and lots of tourists don't realise they're on a single bit of road.

I don't know about motorways but this thread has certainly made me very anxious about driving on a busy, very bendy rural single-carriageway road this evening!

Not DH's. In my car I can manually select 2nd gear when I'm stationary by selecting "sport" mode on the gear stick and using that or the paddles to go up to second gear. My car won't change gears if I'm in manual mode, unless I change it.

Even in "manual" mode, DH's car will not select 2nd gear to drive off in. Even in "manual" mode, if the car thinks it's in the wrong gear, it will change it for you. You don't have full control of the gearbox on DH's DSG.

I didn't say I never change lanes on a motorway. Don't be obtuse.
I meant I don't like changing lanes when negotiating city centres. You have no time, people are impatient etc.
On a motorway I know what lane to be in, I'm prepared for my junction.

@Allfur
I think deaths are what really matters. There are a vast number of crashes on roads and many are minor. Most are not on motorways. The main info is that motorway deaths (the worst crashes) are very very low when you consider miles travelled. Drivers are far more likely to be involved in a crash on other roads yet posters seem to think motorways are populated by speeding cars. The whole point is that motorway driving is different but much safer.

For a nervous driver, getting onto the motorway is the most stressful manoeuvre. So it needs practice, preferably with an experienced driver in the passenger seat.

People who don’t use them presumably don’t travel on holiday much. Or go to major airports. Many millions of drivers use them safely.

Isn't the cause of crashes more relevant than the cause of deaths?

Take another look. You’ll see it’s about 100 fatalities.

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-fatal-4-factsheet-2023/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-fatal-4-seatbelt-factsheet-2023#:~:text=3.-,Overall%20summary,as%20not%20wearing%20a%20seatbelt.

How can you drive properly on a motorway without changing lanes?

@Shade17 This is the info from 2022 on the gov web site. I think it means 21% of all fatalities.