Seven people overtook me in the space of 20 minutes

[Tankersome]

AIBU to be so bloody annoyed by how easily some people find it to speed?

I live rurally with lots of windy, pot-holed single track roads. I commute into the town every day. The rural roads are all NSL but I drive them around 35mph max - and always pull over on the rare times a car is behind me to let them pass if they like.

When i finally get onto the main road that takes me into town, i get myself up to 60mph and switch on cruise control. It's a lovely straight single-carriageway with no pot-holes so I feel comfortable doing this.

But despite going the speed limit, I'm always overtaken. This morning it was a new record with seven people overtaking me in the space of the 20 minutes I'm on that particular road (it was five last night on the drive home).

They don't just speed to overtake either - they continue along at 70-80mph until they're out of my sight. It's not a busy or congested road whatsoever, and there aren't any pavements. So they probably feel safe going at that speed but it's illegal. I've never once seen a speed camera van parked at the roadside either so there is no incentive for these people to drive within the speed limit.

It just really annoys me. Yes, we all have places to be. But why do some people feel so at ease with speeding like that? And the annoying thing is, it makes me feel like I'm the one in the wrong because it's as though I'm holding people up despite going the fastest speed allowed on the road.

If that many people overtook you then its a sure sign you are going too slowly

So doing 60 (nsl) on an single carriageway road is going to slow? Ok.

If nothing else, this thread illustrates why it is important to drive assuming that all the other drivers are potentially idiots and to factor that into your stopping distances!

She said 35

YABU - YOU are the dangerous driver here because you're driving so much below the speed limit you are causing other drivers to react to you. YOU are affecting their driving. You'd fail your driving test doing this by the way! 35 when it's NSL is ridiculous. People will over take you, and traffic police would pull you over too to have a word if they saw you pootling along with a line of traffic behind you, and pulling over to let people past. Unless you're driving a tractor. Are you??

Obviously it depends on the safety of the road in question, but driving too slowly causes a safety problem. I think 35 in a 60 area sounds unusually slow, that's about the speed of a tractor.

YABU!

< bangs head against wall >
Did people posting actually see the country lane photo? That's not SAFE to do 60mph on unless you want to come around a bend and plough into a tree/tractor/horse/pedestrian
You read the road despite the speed limit, on a straight stretch with clear visibility I might do 55mph, if it then narrows and becomes a winding lane, I'll do 30mph even though the limit is still 60mph

TawnyPort She said 60 on the road where people were overtaking her.

From the OP
"When i finally get onto the main road that takes me into town, i get myself up to 60mph and switch on cruise control. It's a lovely straight single-carriageway with no pot-holes so I feel comfortable doing this.

But despite going the speed limit, I'm always overtaken. "

keneft Yes, sorry my post wasn't clear. That is exactly what I was referring to. You couldn't just drop back a bit without tapping the brakes which, as you say, has a chain reaction down the line of traffic and potentially can cause someone else further back to be rear-ended.

I regularly drive home on a 3 lane A road that is basically treated like a motorway by most of it's users, before it goes down to a single carriageway part of the A road (where people stupidly continue to drive as if on the 3 lane part) There is no way cruise control would be appropriate because there is constant lessening of the foot on the accelerator or having to brake suddenly when people pull in and out, sometimes unpredictably. I also regularly have those conditions on other single carriageways too. The people who stick rigidly to 60 are often actually causing a problem, because in the event of a problem arising, they become one more hazard to avoid! Especially if they are behind me and I need to drop my speed for whatever reason and they end up tailgating.

The only time I ever use cruise control is on the toll road part of the M6 where there is plenty of space, relatively few users and plenty of space to overtake without having to contstantly take my foot off the accelerator/brake. It never is used at any other time.

These are both NSL roads (not hunting before someone jumps on that bit!)
You can see how narrow and winding they are

Stompy you know some speedy tractors! Round here they might mange 25-30 on the main road but would be doing about 15 on the roads the OP says she does 35 on.

35 when it's NSL is ridiculous On a winding road where there is no room to pass an oncoming vehicle, as described in her OP? I really hope you are not driving in my area.

People will not overtake her, because there is no room to do so, and because they would be foolish to drive any faster than she is.

She described two different situations in her OP, the single track road where she drives at 35 mph, and the single carriageway main road where she drives at NSL and gets over taken.

She hasn't been dripfeeding, she described all this in her OP.

I can only assume people are reading the title, and the first three lines, and then leaping in with their two-pennyworth without reading the rest of the post. I know people can be way off-beam with their posts when they haven't read the thread, but it's a bit much not even to read the post.

From the Brake website ...

"Breaking the speed limit or travelling too fast for conditions is recorded (by police at crash scenes) as a contributory factor in almost one in four (23%) crashes resulting in one or more fatalities".

1,800 people a year dead and 22,000 injuries may be statistically insignificant but in my mind, we need to be tackling drivers who drive at inappropriate speeds. Large fines, diaqualifications and imprisonment rather than slaps on the wrists and a few points.

Speed awareness courses seem to be full of people who think they're super, observant advanced drivers who can handle the conditions and whose speedometers can't be relied upon, as does this thread.

I hate it when people overtake you when you’re doing the legal speed limit. Someone here saying it was probably safe to speed, I really don’t care about people’s subjective perspectives on what’s safe. I do the speed limit, because that’s what the law tells me to do. I have no interest in being caught speeding and receiving points or a speed awareness course. That’s the consequence I’m bothered about.

Are you sure you are doing 60? A lot of car speedos under-read. You could be doing as low as 55.

This. When I set cruise control on my car I do add up to 5-10%, and when i pass one of those 'sad face/happy face' speed readers its always smiling and shows i'm diving at the actual speed limit, so I think my car speedometer overestimates.

35 when it's NSL is ridiculous On a winding road where there is no room to pass an oncoming vehicle, as described in her OP? I really hope you are not driving in my area

if its a winding road with no room to pass, how are they all overtaking her?

There’s a stretch of main road near here, where road works are set to continue until 2020. There are several sets of traffic lights. Of course, at busy times, this tends to get people agitated.

Yesterday we were third in a line of traffic coming up to the lights as they changed to red. The first car stopped and the one in front of us clearly thought he was more entitled to go than anyone else, overtook the car in front and went through the lights after they had been red for a while.

Cliche, I know, but guess what he was driving? It’s the second time re entry that I have seen drivers go through a red light. The first was on a dual carriageway with four way controlled lights.

We have country lanes here, they are single carriageways with a few passing places.
You would be an idiot to do the NSL as advised at the start of the lanes. A crash would happen very quickly, 40 max tbh.

PLUS the amount of people who won't reverse back to the nearest passing place is ridiculous, why use those lanes if you can't reverse?

tawnyport reread the OP! They're overtaking her on a different road (a straight single carriageway).

Tawnyport RTFT

like Olivander , goes and knocks head against wall in frustration

I hate it when people say that speeding isn’t necessarily dangerous, and they feel happy to drive at whatever speed they deem safe. In my opinion that’s no different from people saying that actually they’re safe drivers with a few drinks inside them. What makes people think they’re so clever, and superior to the rest of us? With live in a country with laws, which generally are made to keep us safe. What gives people the right to break the law because they think they know better?

If you have that many people overtaking you it would suggest to me that you are the problem.

She said 35
RTFT

35 on the single track pot- holled, blind bend rural road!!
60 on the main single carriageway.

Why are very clear explanations and photos so difficult for many people on this thread to understand?

I totally agree op. Impatient Speed freaks are tossers. Why cant they just slow the fuck down and make more time for their journey.

stompy you clearly haven't done any rural driving. There are lots of single lane overgrown NSL roads where it would be literally impossible to accelerate up to 60 without losing control of the vehicle let alone ploughing into a dog walker/horse/vehicle around a blind bend.

If you have that many people overtaking you it would suggest to me that you are the problem.

I love that the person obeying the speed limit is the problem! I have a black box for my insurance, and I'm not going to speed. I do exactly the speed limit (based on speedo and sat nav which is always beeping at me for creeping over the limit). I constantly have people tearing past me. There are no cameras on that stretch of road and I've never seen a police check. They do it because they get away with it (despite the fact there are often accidents).