Aibu to not understand why people drive like this?

[HarryPotterISreal]

Why the fuck do people drive like this?

1. It’s rush hour. You’re driving your lorry. Fine, you need to get places too. You are going 40 on a 60 road. Fine, your engine can’t manage the hills. The unreasonable bit: there is a queue behind you going back 5 fucking miles. You know no one can overtake as it is a narrow road with blind corners and rises.

There are places he can pull over. If he did that every five miles or so he wouldn’t be responsible for adding 15 minutes to the journeys of 50 people. But HE would be 5 minutes later so no way, just cause a fucking traffic jam.

At least twice a week.

1. Four lane motorway.

Lane closest to the hard shoulder: Slow moving truck going 55 or whatever. Fine. Lane 2. Another lorry trying to overtake the slow one. It takes a while to build up speed so it is going about 60. Third lane: someone who doesn’t want to be behind trucks. Going 60.

Fast lane: I know it’s not meant to be the ‘fast lane’ but face it, it is. Someone going 65. Behind them someone going 60.
Behind them someone trying to keep distance so going 57.

So between them four selfish twats manage to clog up the whole fucking motorway and cause a traffic jam. And this happens every fucking day.

When you overtake (and continue at a cruising speed of 70 ) the road is clear. The whole traffic jam was caused by a truck that wanted to overtake, a twat who didn’t want to go behind a truck but also did not want to go above 60, then the third dick who wanted to be in the fast lane but to go about 65.

Those three selfish people inconvenienced dozens, even hundreds.

Ffs.

Aibu to hate those people?

Yes, and people driving 25mph in a 50mph zone where there's nowhere to overtake safely... Lots of elderly people do this where I live and it's infuriating. If you can't safely keep up with traffic then you aren't safe to be on the road.

YABU

Are you one of those drivers who insist on sitting in the far overtaking lane doing about 90 and expect everyone to get out of your way at an instants notice?

The roads are crowded and we all have to negotiate our space with other motorists. Yes, some of them drive in an annoying and selfish manner, but safety is the most important thing.

Set off 15 minutes earlier if you’re that bothered.

I thought if you're a lorry/tractor on a single carriage road etc you're legally obliged to pull over to allow cars to pass or have I been misinformed?

CeridwensCottage

Please read my post.

(a) The lorry drivers have tachos that tell their employer exactly what sort of speed they are going and when. The law doesn't require anyone to drive at the speed limit, only not to exceed it. Some of these lorries do 100m+journeys. They'd lose more than 5 mins pulling over every 5 miles and they are running to schedules set by their employer that don't allow for that. I really sympathise as I have cursed slow lorries many a time but if you are late because of a lorry going at 40 instead of 60 you have not really allowed enough time for your journey (as I frequently have not)

(b) drives me mad as well. No clever answers to that one.

YANBU. The only motorway in my county is a 2 lane one. It can take a lorry about 6 miles to overtake another lorry. Cue miles of cars stuck at 52 MPH for ages.

I mean no, you're not BU!

I sometimes wish that like Romans we could ban delivery vehicles during daylight hours, but I know that’s not workable.

Also I want my Iceland Ocado deliveries at a convenient time.

Yanbu

I would imagine that it would be difficult for a lorry, that is already having some difficulty going up the hill - ie. only going at 40 in a 60 zone - that it would be even harder for them to do a hill start and pull back out into traffic, and they would find it even harder to get back to 40mph, so would be even slower and hold up more people.

Physics and momentum.

Sounds like your problem is that you are an impatient driver!

YANBU. People like sirzy are obviously part of the problem ie middle lane higger etc.

*hogger

Nope I am far from a middle lane hogger. In any case nobody was Lane hogging in the examples the op gave simply not traveling at the speed she wanted them to!

People who drive consistently at 40mph, despite the speed limit.

40mph cross country when you could easily do 60, and then 40mph through sleepy villages where you should be doing 30 max.

Grrr

YANBU.

I live in the Lakes - lots of windy country roads that, yes, have gorgeous views and lovely scenery. But lots of us have to drive those roads everyday to get to/from work and can't afford to spend an extra twenty minutes (twice a day) behind people dilly-dallying driving along at 25mph on 60mph roads.

The other day I got stuck behind someone driving along at 20mph who SLOWED DOWN to 5mph for every single corner, braked every single time a vehicle came in the opposite direction and stopped completely when he saw a van coming the other way. It was utterly ridiculous. I managed to overtake him when he stopped for no apparent reason on a straight, clear stretch of road, but his driving was so slow it was dangerous - he was unpredictable and kept swerving into oncoming traffic.

Also yes, it's an offence to hold up traffic on the roads. If you're holding up a queue of cars, you're supposed to pull over and allow people to pass you.

"The Highway Code asks slow moving vehicles to pull in when safe to allow traffic to pass. Rule 169: “Do not hold up a long queue of traffic, especially if you are driving a large or slow-moving vehicle. “Check your mirrors frequently, and if necessary, pull in where it is safe and let traffic pass.”

I asked my dad why they drive slow, he recently retired after 40 odd years as a lorry driver and he says that HGV's legally have to drive by the lower limit on roads which is 40mph on single carriageways and 50mph on duals. British HGV's are speed restricted so they can not go faster than 56mph either. Many of the vehicles have digital tacographs now (some still have analogue though) that work off a smart card (gov issued) which record time/speed/breaks etc so they can tell easily if the driver has been speeding. Drivers need to keep a clean licence as many companies wont hire if you have 6 or more points as it's a higher risk for them.

While I th

Oops - while I think generally YANBU about people not even driving the speed limit... I think people are in way too much of a hurry on the roads these days. I'm sick of pulling off at traffic lights for example and having the Audi behind me get right up my backside because I'm not speeding up quickly enough for them. People need to allow more time for their journeys if they feel the need to drive like that.

YABU

The roads are crowded and we all have to negotiate our space with other motorists. Yes, some of them drive in an annoying and selfish manner, but safety is the most important thing.

^^
This

As you have already pointed out OP you want your food to get to the stores so you are going to have to put up with those bastarding inconvenient lorry drivers all over your roads.

YABU, lorry drivers have very very strict work hours/breaks and pulling over every few miles to let people pass them can mean the difference between getting home and having to park up somewhere because they are our of hours.

Impatient car drivers are terrible for them and cause them to lose even more time because a lot of the time people over take the lorry, then want to turn right but can't because of on coming traffic and then the lorry then has to stop and wait behind them until they can turn off the road causing even more time to be lost to the people behind as they have to wait for the lorry to stop and restart.

In California if you're driving slowly you have to pull over if you have more than 3 vehicles behind you. Often thought that'd be good for lorries and caravans on A-roads...

YANBU.

We’re in New Zealand at the moment. Here it is common courtesy for large, slow moving vehicles to pull in and allow the traffic behind them to pass. In fact, there are signs every few miles that read “Traffic behind you? Let it pass!”

Most of the roads here are single lane A roads. Lorries, vans and campers tend to drive far to one side along straight parts of the road, signalling to the cars behind that it is safe to overtake.

I have no idea why we don’t do this in the UK. It makes so much sense and saves people from getting irate.

Traffic behind you? Let it pass!

I love this.