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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Who was BU here - traffic incident

235 replies

JuanPotatoTwo · 24/09/2015 09:37

www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/News/Areas/Maidenhead/Video-captures-railway-bridge-stand-off-between-two-drivers-which-held-up-traffic-for-more-than-30-minutes-23092015.htm

I'm sorry, I haven't worked out how to embed videos yet but, in a nutshell, two drivers come face to face under a railway bridge. The woman has right of way but the man refuses to reverse - claiming he doesn’t know how! It's one of those bridges where you can't always see the traffic you're supposed to give way to until you're already part way through so he should have been prepared to reverse.

Of course, if he really can't reverse, then he shouldn't be driving so it seems like the man is totally in the wrong - but I can't help feeling sorry for him. The video is fascinating if only to see how determined they both are.

OP posts:
SoupDragon · 24/09/2015 14:38

Elderly drivers are very dangerous

I don't think all elderly drivers are dangerous. My dad is 79 and is still fine - he would certainly have been capable of reversing had he been in the scenario shown!

I do think there should be some sort of re-test though. The test has changed completely since my dad took it and with changes in laws and rules of the roads, a retest might be a good idea.

sharonthewaspandthewineywall · 24/09/2015 14:44

You should still give way soup dragon when you see someone approaching a junction where they have right of way. Its common courtesy fgs

sharonthewaspandthewineywall · 24/09/2015 14:45

And 'he saw her and sped up' could be entirely her perception- many people think a driver must have sped up to block them when in fact they misjudged the distance/whether they were able to get past in time

amarmai · 24/09/2015 14:52

fucking depressing reading your attacks on that woman. Wonder how it would have gone if both drivers had been men- who would you attack then?

littleducks · 24/09/2015 14:52

She should have moved, she was perfectly capable and just stubborn.

It's a shame nobody sat with the man until the police arrived, at the very least he needs his licence revoked His face looked very blank and he didn't seem quite right so I would wonder if something is going on with him. It could all be him faking but it seems unlikely to me. His attempt to reverse was scary. When he actually did reverse out a by stander holds the steering wheel for him.

People were horrid you the woman but tbh what did she expect blocking all those people.

Shakirasma · 24/09/2015 14:57

I think they both deserved every bit of abuse they got from the other road users.

What a pair of twats!

WhatWouldLeslieKnopeDo · 24/09/2015 15:42

littleducks I wondered if he had been drinking, but presumably one of the bystanders would have noticed?

emwithme · 24/09/2015 15:54

I've been in a similar situation - road narrows to a single lane under a railway bridge (although in my case it was much shorter - about a car and a half long - than here).

You can see the other side of the bridge from about 250 metres away on both sides (it's on a straight road, but is a remnant from The Old Days). I saw the car pull out of their drive (next to the bridge) without even looking my way so didn't see me moving to the centre of the road to go through. I beeped the horn. They stopped (fortunately, I was worried they were just going to drive into me) - just clear of the bridge but ahead of the painted lines on the road (and in a position where they were blocking my exit, if I wanted to keep my wing mirror and paintwork intact on the nearside). I waited for them to reverse a bit. They didn't. I gave a short beep (the kind you give when the lights have changed but the person ahead of you is too busy picking their nose to realise it). They leant on their horn. and flashed their lights - so I turned my engine off and reached down to my handbag and got my book out.

It took five minutes but they eventually moved (they only needed to move back about three feet so I could fit through safely, albeit close to the wall) but the whole time they were shouting and screaming at how they don't have to fucking give way to a stupid fucking bitch in a stupid fucking crappy car (I was driving a Peugeot 206) and I should fucking respect their fucking driveway (?).

What gets me about this (and PPs have said this) is that if the blonde woman had been a big bloke then there wouldn't have been all the kicking off and "just move love" patronising (and the woman wouldn't have mentioned her teenage daughter), and I think it would've been different if she'd been in a different (ie not perceived as luxury) car. I've noticed the difference in how people treat me depending on which car I'm driving. DH and I have two and a half three cars (one is awaiting major repairs) - a Subaru Forester, a Toyota Aygo and a Peugeot 206. I drive the same in all of them OK, I go a bit faster in the Forester on motorways but people cut me up more in the Aygo, and appear to be surprised when the Forester has indicators (this has been corroborated by both DH and my best friend). I actually get the least shit off other people in the Peugeot, but I think that's cos it's an 11 year old estate and I'm a middle-aged (sob) woman.

SoupDragon · 24/09/2015 16:13

And 'he saw her and sped up' could be entirely her perception

Or it could be the truth.

"Fgs"

MySordidCakeSecret · 24/09/2015 16:16

The woman was BU! I felt so sorry for that elderly man, he seemes terrified and totally under pressure. Yeah sure i admire the woman's balls, she didn't give a toss about all those people shouting at her, but it would have been far more sensible and mature for her to just reverse and let it go.

JuanPotatoTwo · 24/09/2015 16:17

Isn't it strange what things make the news - this seems to be being talked about quite widely - but surely similar incidents happen every day. It's fairly local to me, hence my interest.

OP posts:
SantasLittleMonkeyButler · 24/09/2015 16:39

Both in the wrong.

He shouldn't be driving if he can't reverse.

She should have just reversed as soon as it became clear he wasn't going to.

amarmai - not everything is about gender. It is entirely possible to say that a female is in the wrong without being sexist. Of course people would have the same views if it were two men involved.

Gabilan · 24/09/2015 16:53

Emwith I had a stand off with a man in a van when I was on my old horse. He seemed to think I should go back 250 yards so he could avoid reversing 50 yards. I was on my 4th attempt to make it up that road without having to turn around (no, he couldn't know that, but he could have listened when I told him he was a lot nearer a passing place). He got out of his van to have a go at me. My horse reared up, kind of at him. I knew DHorse had a wicked sense of humour but van man was very frightened, got back in the van and found reverse gear.

Generally I don't reach a stand off with a horse as I don't like putting them at risk but if I'd gone back down the same stretch of lane for the 4th or 5th time I'd have had problems anyway.

MonkeyButler of course you can say a woman is wrong with about being sexist. However, men tend not to lean into other men's cars and say "oi love, just reverse" because they know they risk being punched in the face.

amarmai · 24/09/2015 17:14

lol at horse helping you , gabilan! And yes the violent shouting swearing scary men leaning right into the woman's car would not have been done to a man.

Hygge · 24/09/2015 18:13

They were both unreasonable.

Regardless of who had the right of way, that situation should not have taken 35 minutes to resolve. One of them should have reversed for the sake of the other people waiting, if nothing else.

That should have been the priority long before the 35 minutes of that video were over. Not who had the right of way but who was prepared to let that 'right' go and just move for the sake of everybody else.

However I have just as much sympathy for her as for him if it comes down to feeling under pressure and frightened.

I understand they were both stressed and under pressure from the situation, and yes the woman possibly could more easily have resolved that because she didn't appear to lose her driving ability. The fact that he did means he's not really safe to be driving at all.

Obviously nobody was filming the start of that stand-off, so we don't know how long it took for the man to become incapable of driving safely or why. She might not have said a word to him, just sat and waited for him to reverse as she believed he should.

I don't know if he thought he was in the right, or if he just lost his nerve right from the moment the impasse started. But he was waiting just as long as she was, without even half of the abuse that she received. He was waiting for her just as long as she was waiting for him before the other people got involved.

I had to put the sound off on the video because I'm not in a place where I wanted that language to be heard, and I'm half-deaf so I need the sound right up, but from what I heard of the other drivers before I put the sound off, in particular the man in the high-viz jacket, she bore the brunt of all the insults and swearing while he was called mate and was spoken to with some concern.

Perhaps that's just the bit I heard but the high-viz man swore at her and called him mate, so the treatment of both drivers by one particular person seems very different to me and her car was definitely more surrounded than his.

Just because she wasn't showing stress and fear in the same way as he did, doesn't mean she wasn't feeling it though. Having a crowd of men line up the length of your open car to shout and swear at you, no matter what the circumstances were which brought them there, must be a frightening experience and I think I'd be quite shaken by it when it came to drive away.

Sometimes picking your battles is more important than being right. Everyone on that road would have been better off if one or the other of the two drivers had thought that way in this situation right at the start.

As for whether the by-standers would have leaned in and shouted at another man, I was a passenger in DH's car recently, traveling on a long two lane carriageway.

Another car was weaving from lane to lane to try and get ahead and almost hit the side of DH's car. I don't think he'd even realised we were there. DH sounded the horn to warn him and braked, the other driver swerved back into his own lane and thankfully he missed us by inches.

Then we stopped at a set of red lights almost right next to him, him on the left to turn left, us on the right to go straight on. And his passenger got out, ran over to our car and called me (the passenger) a fucking bitch and tried to spit on me through the open window. He also tried to open my door. Then, as DH started to open his own door, he ran back to his friends car, got back in and they drove off. The driver looked just as shocked as we were to be honest.

He, that male passenger, obviously thought we were to blame for some reason, but he didn't pick on DH who is quite big and fit and a man and who was actually driving the car he took issue with. Instead he attacked me, and I'm small, and not fit, and a woman, and I wasn't even driving.

I'm still quite shaken up by that, and bloody angry about it as well.

So I'm also inclined to think that if it were two male drivers in this impasse it might have been very different when it came to how the by-standers were treating them.

LetTilikumGo · 24/09/2015 18:20

They were both being massively unreasonable. Who is that bloody minded and determined not to back down that they hold up loads of people for over half an hour? Utterly selfish behaviour. If he claims he can't reverse then he shouldn't be driving, and she should've reversed for the sake of all those people stuck behind them both.

liptolinford · 24/09/2015 18:31

I wonder who the police would have asked to move their vehicle?

limitedperiodonly · 24/09/2015 18:33

men tend not to lean into other men's cars and say "oi love, just reverse" because they know they risk being punched in the face.

I agree. Gabilan

Men tend to think they are experts in all forms of transport whether they can drive, ride or fly a plane or not. Same with sport.

Women generally defer to them.

I know we have disagreed about riding, and I accept that you are a much more experienced rider than I am, but I am reasonably competent.

Despite that my BIL once warned me to be careful on the grounds that I went past him once and the horse looked a bit too big and frisky for me.

He could have handled it though Wink. The first and last time he was on a horse was in the Scouts' donkey derby.

He is a good driver. But not better than I am. It's not worth the argument though.

Starkswillriseagain · 24/09/2015 20:06

They are both a pair of knob heads who wasted everyones time by acting this way. I do think she should have stopped having seen he was a lot of the way through and committed to it, but once she behaved like an aggressive knob he should have backed up. ^ of one half a dozen of the other, both should be ashamed of their pettiness and inability to drive properly or be courteous.

gandalf456 · 24/09/2015 23:01

I know this area too. I have often got halfway through this bridge when the other side has priority only for someone to be already approaching. It's a bit of a blind bend and you have to approach really slowly in order for this not to happen. I've had it the other way round too when it's officially my right of way but, since I understand the road layout is not great, I just wait. I think she is the knobber because she probably expected to just bomb through without reading the road. Saying that, I agree that it is gobsmacking that the man could not reverse. I can and I drive a mercGrin

Hygge · 24/09/2015 23:24

For the local people, would this perhaps be a good argument to put forward to the council for having traffic lights installed to control the tunnel?

Maudofallhopefulness · 24/09/2015 23:30

He shouldn't be driving if he can't reverse. She was silly to refuse to just to prove a point. Fair play to her though, I'd have cracked under that much pressure in an open topped car.

I think the men targeting her more because she could drive and solve the issue more easily, and she was easy to get at in the open car. The man had his windows up.

Men don't always just have a go at women on the roads. Last week two men were rolling round on the road in a proper fist fight outside my house. Their wives remained in the cars.

NickNacks · 24/09/2015 23:42

Local here- tbh it's not really busy enough for lights and justifying the cost in that regard.

Also I'll quickly point out that there is a bend here and you can't see oncoming traffic approaching the tunnel only the cars immediately at the stop line, therefore old man couldn't have ignored her and gone through anyway, he must have been there first. Dh is also a copper here and says he would have asked her to move.

WotNoLoobrush · 24/09/2015 23:45

I wonder if the video in the link been taken down? It's just a still picture when I click on it.

WhoTheFuckIsSimon · 24/09/2015 23:46

The people who think the woman was right........if there's a long row of parked cars on the opposite side to you and as you get level with the first car you see there's already a car driving towards you, maybe five car lengths in........do you sit and wait for the car to come or do you think fuck it, my right of way and carry on?

My driving instrmuctor certainly told me in such a case you wait, even though legally it's your right of way. The fact the other car has already committed trumps right of way.

The bloke was in the tunnel first. Woman is a twat. Bloke is a shit driver. Neither would last ten mins on the narrow lanes round here.

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