Is this just the UK?

[Relaxationdayifonly]

My mother is 81. She’s a very smart, well-groomed 81. Yesterday it was warm and sunny and she was wearing loafers, pale grey linen ankle grazers and a cream silk shirt as a jacket. Her hair is blonde.

Point I’m making is she isn’t a cartoon frail old lady with a stick.

The thing is she isn’t as sprightly as she might at first seem. Her legs are beginning to trouble her (she has all kinds of circulatory problems which she plays down). She walks quite slowly now and rests often.

Yesterday we were out in the city centre. We used the crossing to cross the road. (There was no button/beeping, just black and white paint.) It’s not a terribly fast road.

It felt tricky because a car stopped but the sun was blazing and in my eyes etc and I couldn’t see the driver very well. I kind of waved a thank you - we hadn’t stepped out, If that’s relevant, we had stood waiting for a car to let us cross.

Anyway, we crossed the road. Slowly. Elderly lady crosses road slowly. I reach the island in the middle of the road, my mother is a few steps behind me. Driver blasts his horn loud enough for both of us (but particularly her) to nearly jump out of our skin, she nearly fell over with the shock because it was very close to her, and shouts out of his window something along the lines of “it’s a ROAD it’s for CARS you’re not supposed to TAKE ALL DAY you bloody idiots”.

Is this just our country, because we know that we don’t value or respect our elderly relatives the way they do in say, Asian cultures, or indeed parts of Europe?

It just seems so, I don’t know, barbaric?
An elderly lady being harassed because she can’t move fast enough. She we just lock them inside do you think, because they can’t go as fast as we need them to?

Sigh.

Why would you assume that it is just the UK?

Nope, all countries have knobheads.

Plenty of dickheads everywhere

You just encountered a horrible man.

Pedestrians are MUCH better treated in general in the UK than the parts of Europe I'm familiar with: Belgium, France and Spain. Here in Brussels, you have to be more or less already on the crossing for them to stop and even then some just swerve around you. There was even someone successfully sued for damaging a car when taking a pedestrian crossing.
In the UK I've seen people crossing with a red man in front of police and the police saying nothing. It's almost a pedestrian's paradise compared to where I live.

However, Luxembourg and Germany respect pedestrian crossings more because they respect rules.

Go to Buenos Aires. You would have been run over.

There are horrible people in every country I imagine. The best thing to do is hope his knob goes black and drops off on his birthday, smile at the prospect and then have a lovely day.

It's not the UK.
You can't put the actions of one obnoxious bloke onto all the drivers in a while country.

In the UK I've seen people crossing with a red man in front of police and the police saying nothing.

The little red men are only advisory. You don’t have to take any notice of them if you don’t feel like/have a death wish.

One twat beeping his horn at an elderly woman isn't representative of the whole UK.

As others have said, and fairly obviously, you encountered an obnoxious dickhead, that is all. Don’t read anything else into it. I wouldn’t act like that, I don’t have friends that would act like that. Most people wouldn’t.

My friends nan had a driver do similar. She turned around and said ‘fuck off you silly cunt’. This was a woman that my friend had never heard swear, ever. 🤣

@DrDavidStarKey in a strange way I find that a relief.

But are you supposed to stay inside when you reach a certain age? Which country you happen to be in?

Not that old people are routinely run over in Argentina btw.

@GuitarsUnderTheStars brilliant. A so brilliant.

Absolutely. That should have said 🙄

In the UK I've seen people crossing with a red man in front of police and the police saying nothing.

Why would the police say anything?

You don't need a green man to cross the road.

But are you supposed to stay inside when you reach a certain age?

No you ignore the ableist and ageist twats.
And you keep an eye for those who might be behave like this, for safety purposes.

But you carry on going out. You carry on crossing roads etc.l.

Fwiw I found that actually having a stick is usually a very good way to signpost you are slow/have walking issues. Even when you don’t ‘need’ it as such.
(Yes I’m disabled and have mobility issues despite being much younger than your mum)

I think this was a question in my theory test. The correct answer was definitely not to beep the horn to hurry the elderly pedestrian along. It’s an arsehole thing rather than a UK thing.

I don’t know whether it’s the uk but I find people generally have less patience these days. I live in a village with lots of driving hazards, cars parked both sides of road, kids, elderly, etc. people are unbelievably impatient. When inside their car boxes they feel invincible in their rudeness.
having said that I also encounter rudeness and impatience from pedestrians when I drive past them too slowly (trying to give them and their dogs / families space) and still get the arm waving or impatient comments. I think it’s just the sad state of the world we live in where an extra three seconds on a journey warrants an unpleasant exchange.

I'm in the UK. I live in a city where the standard of driving is terrible. I was raised seventy miles away and my DDad brought DMum here for a day out in the early 80's and someone drove into him here!

The standard of driving in the UK is terrible and there seems to be habits that people have got into that make no sense at all. Leaving massive gaps between the stop line and cars or between cars in queues for example. It makes driving very frustrating. People can work a car but not drive well or efficiently nowadays.

@Gwenhwyfar , in some countries it’s forbidden to cross when the red man shows. In Prague I once had a
policeman tick me off severely for so doing (it had been safe to
cross). He said very crossly ‘Would you do that in London?’
‘Well, yes, because it’s allowed.’
TBH it hadn’t occurred to
me that it was verboten there, but of course I didn’t make that mistake again.

"He said very crossly ‘Would you do that in London?’
‘Well, yes, because it’s allowed.’"

Is it allowed??? I thought the red man meant don't cross, just that there is a tolerance for it.

"The standard of driving in the UK is terrible"

Compared to where?

Agree with this and add in some US cities too where it's woefully bad for pedestrians.

Also, where I've been to in SE Asia, crossing the road is petrifying!

Sadly there are dickheads everywhere Op.

Of course it's allowed.

Jaywalking isn't illegal here. You can cross the road whenever you want (unless it's a motorway or there's a specific sign that prohibits it).

Of course there are uncouth idiots everywhere but one of my dd's lives in Spain where she says elderly people are so noticeably well respected.

"Jaywalking isn't illegal here. You can cross the road whenever you want (unless it's a motorway or there's a specific sign that prohibits it)."

Yes, but I thought jaywalking was crossing where there isn't a pedestrian crossing. I'm talking about crossing on a pedestrian crossing when there is a red man. I thought that wasn't allowed, just as it's not allowed for cars to go on a crossing when there is a red light for them. Seems normal for me that it would be the same rules for all.
Anyway, where I live now you can cross where you want, but the police absolutely will tell you off if you cross a pedestrian crossing with a red man for pedestrians.