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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

'sunday drivers' 40mph everywhere

246 replies

angelos02 · 18/10/2015 23:04

Just had a weekend away in the countryside and at least half a dozen times got stuck behind people that shouldn't be allowed to drive. Doing 40mph in national speed limit zones & the same in built up 20 mph areas. Note to you Numpties...if there is big line of traffic behind you, you are probably driving dangerously.

OP posts:
MerryInthechelseahotel · 18/10/2015 23:26

Were you in a hurry on your weekend away?

Maybe they were local people who knew the roads were not safe to drive at 60 on.

guajiraguantanamera · 18/10/2015 23:27

This happened to us today! So frustrating. It has become a joke in our family about "Sunday drivers"

Original poster
angelos02 · 18/10/2015 23:30

Not in a hurry. Just frustrating to be stuck behind people that can't drive.

OP posts:
AnyoneButAndre · 18/10/2015 23:35

Merry there is absolutely no defence for driving at 40 in a 30 mph zone, so there's no reason to assume that when they're driving at 40 in a 60mph zone it's because they're magically brilliant local drivers.

YANBU OP, there's a special circle of hell for those gits.

Scremersford · 18/10/2015 23:38

YANBU. I've encountered 40mph on the motorway more than a few times.

wasonthelist · 18/10/2015 23:43

This has been going on a long time and doesn't seem likely to alter any time soon.

My Mum used to complain about it in the 60s and 70s when we went to my Grandmas every Sunday.

A lot of people do a lot of things (driving included) without giving much thought to it (or other people).

I know it doesn't make it right, but I can't see it changing any time soon.

What is your AIBU OP?

MerryInthechelseahotel · 18/10/2015 23:47

No, no excuse for driving at 40 in a 30. I missed that bit.

Original poster
angelos02 · 18/10/2015 23:48

I suppose my AIBU would be that they should be treated the same as those that exceed the upper speed limit. Their poor driving causes others to drive recklessly.

OP posts:
coffeeisnectar · 18/10/2015 23:50

We were stuck in a line of cars doing exactly 32mph in a 50 zone all the way home tonight. It's a straight road, only one side road. Very frustrating.

Original poster
angelos02 · 18/10/2015 23:57

I just don't understand their thinking. Are they drunk? Hungover?

OP posts:
wasonthelist · 19/10/2015 00:05

angelos02 Sun 18-Oct-15 23:48:05
I suppose my AIBU would be that they should be treated the same as those that exceed
the upper speed limit. Their poor driving causes others to drive recklessly.
In that Case YABU.

It's true that driving too slowly is selfish, but the only people responsible for driving recklessly are the people doing it.

As for being treated the same as people who exceed the limit - I suspect they are in most cases - ignored. 90+ % of people (including me) I see driving every day are exceeding the limit at some point and we aren't getting nicked for it most of the time because we know how to avoid it. In the same way that the people dawldling aren't getting nicked - because there is almost zero police presence.

Whilst I don't condone excessive dawdling or speeding, I'm always a bit wary of people who are keen to denounce others are people who "can't drive" just because they are doing something you don't like. I dislike people driving aggressively, taligating and overtaking on blind bends etc, but just because they aren't doing it how I'd do it doesn't mean they can't drive.

wasonthelist · 19/10/2015 00:08

angelos02 Sun 18-Oct-15 23:57:09
I just don't understand their thinking. Are they drunk? Hungover?

Quite possibly. More likely not thinking about what they are doing at all, like people I sometimes have jammed up the exhaust pipe of one of my cars when I'm already doing 5-10mph over the limit in an NSL - they aren't considering what they're doing really, it's just how they drive.

wasonthelist · 19/10/2015 00:11

Quite a lot of dawdlers I see are having a conversation with passengers and so less in tune with the world outside. I also see a lot of people who slow right down when they are the phone to someone, they quite often speed up again and stop weaving when the call is finished.

Original poster
angelos02 · 19/10/2015 00:30

You say 'on the phone to someone' quite flippantly as if it is an ok thing to do when driving. I often slow down when taking a swig of wine from my bottle.

OP posts:
Caboodle · 19/10/2015 05:24

Hmmm. I lived rurally until fairly recently. Council had to spend what I assume was hundreds of thousands of pounds repairing holes in the dry stone walls where people had driven into them on the NSL road. Locals drove more slowly and carefully...they had seen it all before.

bearleftmonkeyright · 19/10/2015 05:36

I do get a lot of people driving right up my arse on roads where I know the speed limit and am doing it. Large parts of the A road into my local town are 40 then change to 50. Doesn't stop Mr or Mrs Flash Car driving close to me ready to swoop past.

RudyMentary · 19/10/2015 06:21

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Sighing · 19/10/2015 06:47

We get this a lot on a particular local stretch. It's a country road past the church, then fields, then the school. It is quite wide. Because of previous fatalities (there's one bend) and the school the limit is 30. Other roads feeding onto it are NSL or 40. But on a daily basis locals will either be honked at or passed on it (at some speed) for sticking to the limit (we're biased I suppose, our kids go to that school and it's not actually exciting to see the air ambulance land in the school grounds to airlift another victim).
Sometimes country roads are not nsl.

BrandNewAndImproved · 19/10/2015 06:58

I absolutely hate this.

I get on the ring road to work every day and it's the same thing. Drivers doing 40mph when it says nsl. If you want to do 40 fuck off the ring road and take the back way.

wanderings · 19/10/2015 07:11

Oh yes, lots of Sunday dawdlers round here (close to a large city). I drive every day, and it's really noticeable at the weekend. I'm self-employed and work most weekends; travelling always takes longer then.

My theory is that on Monday to Friday, many of those on the road are those who drive every day, with a sense of purpose; often for work purposes, so they want to get somewhere, time is money, and perhaps they drive the same route every day, so they're familiar with it.

At weekends, there will be lots of people who only drive at weekends, often on less familiar routes if they're visiting somewhere new, so they're more likely to be slower and cautious. If they're on days out, they're more likely to have passengers too. Of course, the aggressive racers are often out at weekends as well (sports cars at 100mph).

dynevoran · 19/10/2015 07:20

There was someone last night on the a40 between andoversford and Oxford driving around 40mph on the long single carriageway stretch. It's a 60mph road and even 49-50 is an acceptable speed. There must have been 50 cars queued up behind them by the time the short dual carriageway started.

A couple of idiots were so impatient they were overtaking loads at a time really dangerously, in their irritation that the people right behind weren't overtaking. It wasn't really safe to overtake and those people were putting us all at risk by doing it. But some of the blame in a crash would definitely lie with the person doing 40mph. They contribute to the situation too. Really frustrating. If you can't drive a decent speed in the dark then you should take some advanced lessons to build confidence.

BondJayneBond · 19/10/2015 07:27

I suppose my AIBU would be that they should be treated the same as those that exceed the upper speed limit. Their poor driving causes others to drive recklessly.

YABU.

Firstly, someone else's slow driving is not an excuse for other drivers to behave recklessly. It can be frustrating, yes, but it's not an excuse for tailgating or doing dangerous overtaking.

Secondly, a lot of rural roads have the NSL as the default speed limit, regardless of whether it's safe to do 60mph or not. There's plenty of rural roads near me which are narrow, windy, frequently cluttered with tractors, horses, cyclists, pedestrians (no pavement on most of them), with very little visibility of what might be lurking around the next bend, and on roads like those, it would be dangerous to try and maintain speed near the upper speed limit of 60mph. Not to mention the single track roads which also have a default speed limit of 60mph.

I think there's a danger that penalizing drivers for driving at 40mph on good, fast, NSL roads, would also discourage drivers from driving more slowly on the kind of NSL roads where it's verging on suicidally / homicidally dangerous to try and drive at 60mph.

BrandNewAndImproved · 19/10/2015 07:43

I disagree bond I drive quite a lot on country nsl roads. If it's a road I haven't been on before with lots of bends I would pull over and let the huge queue of drivers behind me carry on.

For one I then wouldn't be tempted to take risks and speed up unsafely and it just makes life easier for everyone all round.

Some people are selfish and they drive selfishly to.

OddBoots · 19/10/2015 07:52

It's a long time since I took my driving test but I was always taught that on country roads you never know what is ahead so you drive at a maximum to the speed from which you could stop in the road you can see before you, on a winding road with trees/hedges along it that is going to be slower than a straight road through open fields.

No excuse for 40 through a 20 zone though.

Marue · 19/10/2015 07:55

Here most people always drive at half the speed limit, its infuriating