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AIBU?

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Original poster

To realise very few people care about road rules or the Highway Code any more

185 replies

JacquesHarlow · 24/09/2025 13:08

AIBU here - is anyone on Mumsnet like me, and thinks about the Highway Code or bothers to follow its guidance? Please join me if so!

For my job I have to drive a LOT. I drive pretty much all over the UK.

Yes, the standard of driving is far better than many countries around the world. But something I have noticed increasingly (and especially since the pandemic) is this:

  1. Very few people indicate right on a roundabout. You get this bizarre situation where someone approaches a roundabout in a right hand lane, doesn't indicate, careers around the roundabout for 270 degrees, then once at their junction, they indicate off left to show they're taking the exit!!
  2. Middle lane hogging is now third lane hogging On any four lane motorway in the UK, I find the vast majority of drivers have moved to the third lane and sit there at 60 or 65mph. The first and second lane have been re-designated as a lorry lane, and as a lorry overtaking lane. Again, this is not the Highway Code.
  3. Phone driving is an absolute epidemic. On the school run people drive off holding their phones and checking messages... next to a SCHOOL where children are still walking and crossing the road.
  4. Merge in turn is completely ignored - instead you see bizarre behaviour like road captains who sit straddling two lanes, a mile before the merge, to stop "queue jumpers". This goes completely against the road rules and the Code but once again, British drivers know best and no one can tell them otherwise
  5. Give way if parked cars are on your left again seems to be ignored. I've seen plenty of fellow women do this one, where they barrel through hoping the other person will concede, and then when asked to reverse their car, go into a complete blind panic and start swearing and shouting for the other person to reverse instead.
  6. Give way to traffic already on the motorway when joining Again, forget it. When I'm in lane 1, and I see a slip road ahead, I try and move over. I can't straightway because middle lane hoggers, however I wait for a gap and then move in time. Only to find the car that is joining isn't happy I've made a space...because they want to slalom across two lanes and barrel their way into lane 2 or 3 in one quick glide! WTF.

Yeah I've shared too many examples, but I could share dozens more.

It's like the Highway Code is irrelevant to most drivers. They decide "what is fair". So if they feel they don't want to wait and there's an obstruction on their left? Barrel on through!

The only way around this is either

  • increased traffic policing of road offences, which we all know won't happen because we have fewer police
  • mandatory driving retraining, which everyone would hate

Is this just me? Does anyone else care about this or notice this, or am I a lone female voice in this space and actually it's fine to just make up the rules as we go along?

Thanks in advance

OP posts:
Goldeh · 24/09/2025 13:25

Temporary traffic lights at roadworks where the light will turn red and an approaching car will interpret that red light as "the car that has already legitimately passed the light plus me (and probably the car behind me too)" rather than "Stop Here".

The five second rule that seems to be unofficially attached to double yellows, as in "I'm only going to be a few seconds" as they proceed to block the junction into school and obscure the road view of every child crossing thus putting them at risk.

Indicators are entirely optional. The more dickhead-coded your choice of car is then the more optional they are. Same with dipped headlights, fuck everyone else on the road, you need LED high beams 100% of the time. It's for safety... at the expense of everyone else's

Parking in general is shocking. People seem to think a parking space is any space their car fits into, designated or no.

TheNightingalesStarling · 24/09/2025 13:23

Also with standing traffic... yes, motorbikes can just go up the middle. Its safer for them.

vivainsomnia · 24/09/2025 13:22

I agree with all but number 4. The usual signs encourage people to get onto one lane much sooner than just when the lanes merged.

Yes merging sooner means a very slight longer time, depending on how long the queue is, but those who decide to pass everybody queuing are assholes.they don't do it because they like to.folliw the rules, they do it because they have a sense of entitlement and think others should just make way to their more important self.

EBearhug · 24/09/2025 13:21

The thing I have found mostly challenging recently (I drove about 1400 miles over the course of a UK holiday,) is not so much other drivers (I expect a percentage of them to drive like nutters,) but roadsigns obscured by foliage, so I can't tell which lane I should be in at a roundabout, and worn roadmarkings, so it's difficult to tell that there's a bus lane o'r box junction. Not that many people seem to know what box junctions are for, but you stand more chance if it's visibly marked.

Original poster
JacquesHarlow · 24/09/2025 13:17

TheNightingalesStarling · 24/09/2025 13:15

The Merge in Turn on the A1 roadworks drives me mad. 90% use it properly. But there's just enough that take offence at the people using the 2nd lane that cause it snare up.

The idea is the queue takes up less space so side roads aren't blocked. Its not queue jumping.

Spot on @TheNightingalesStarling and I experience this one also.

Part of the fault also lies in the traffic in lane 1. If everyone stopped bunching up but allowed gaps, the traffic could zip merge from the right and flow correctly.

OP posts:
Original poster
JacquesHarlow · 24/09/2025 13:15

Bluevelvetsofa · 24/09/2025 13:13

I thought that if there are parked cars on your left, but you’ve already started to move past them, you have the right to continue.

This is absolutely the case @Bluevelvetsofa and I agree with this.

However I have seen plenty of scenarios where there are side roads with busy traffic, and the person approaching the parked cars can see there are cars already committed and about to come through on the other side.

They still barrel through because they expect those cars to suddenly come to a halt and reverse the priority.

That for me is wrong. You don't accelerate and try and barrel through to cause an emergency stop the other side, especially when you know the priority isn't yours.

Of course, if the cars about to commit can see you have already passed the first car on the left and you're "on" the road, they should stop and give way. That's the Code.

OP posts:
TheNightingalesStarling · 24/09/2025 13:15

The Merge in Turn on the A1 roadworks drives me mad. 90% use it properly. But there's just enough that take offence at the people using the 2nd lane that cause it snare up.

The idea is the queue takes up less space so side roads aren't blocked. Its not queue jumping.

Original poster
JacquesHarlow · 24/09/2025 13:13

Colourpurplepalette · 24/09/2025 13:11

As a cyclist and driver the lack of use of indicators drives me mad. It doesn’t cost anything. There may or may not be other cars around, but other road users need to know what you are doing.

Thank you @Colourpurplepalette couldn't agree more.

The weirdest new one is how people who are positioned to go straight at a roundabout, with no indicators on, move forward and then suddenly veer off to the left.

Then they pop on a guilty , completely pointless half-second indicator once they notice the beeps and disgruntled shouts from people who could have made safe progress onto the roundabout if they had been given a signal.

OP posts:
Bluevelvetsofa · 24/09/2025 13:13

I thought that if there are parked cars on your left, but you’ve already started to move past them, you have the right to continue.

Colourpurplepalette · 24/09/2025 13:11

As a cyclist and driver the lack of use of indicators drives me mad. It doesn’t cost anything. There may or may not be other cars around, but other road users need to know what you are doing.