To wonder why so many people crash on a straight stretch of motorway?

[ColonelBrandonsPiano]

After another motorway crash, involving road closures and delays etc, I’m once again wondering how so many people seem to crash on a straight stretch of motorway.

junctions - yes, built up traffic in a city - yes, roundabouts- again yes.

but why motorways? Is it due to lack of familiarity? Tiredness from a long drive? Lack of motorway experience. Absolutely baffles me.

A lot of times it's the monotony of the drive, miles of the same scenery sometimes switches your mind off so you're not concentrating, particularly on other traffic.
It's amazing how many people fall asleep while driving on a motorway.
Then there's other reasons of course, such as having a medical episode, being on the phone, being distracted by kids or pets, having a row with your passenger ( more common than you think ) speeding, not driving to the conditions and in rare cases, a mechanical fault.

I would add not checking their blind spot when changing lanes.
I always remember the: Think Once, Think twice, Think Bike slogan and am so vigilant.
A fast travelling motorbike can be completely hidden at these angles.
As a child we passed a Biker who had crashed on the motorway.
I was traumatised.
They are so vulnerable.

I've had a left-hand drive lorry pull out on me as I was overtaking, I guess I was in his blindspot, the car that was about to overtake me slowed down so I could pull out, so the lorry touched the side of my car with a lot of noise, but I was okay. I don't think he even knew he hit me, so I'm now much more aware of not being in their blindspot. I've also had a van push me onto the hard shoulder. And more recently early on a Sunday morning when it was quite quiet I had to swerve around a car that had stopped just past a junction, and I watched in my rearview mirror him reverse down the motorway so he could get off at the junction he just passed!

There was also a thread on here a while ago, about people, not actually physically looking over their shoulder as they pulled out on the basis that they knew where cars were from their mirrors. Cars moving into the middle lane in a three lane motorway from both the inside and outside lanes seems also to have potential for accidents if drivers aren't aware of what's going on in every lane not just the one next to them.

Fiddling with their phones.
Surely this is it.
Or fiddling with the buttons on the dashboard navigation/ media selection/ radio.
I read somewhere that manufacturers are doing away with the push buttons because of this
https://slate.com/business/2023/04/cars-buttons-touch-screens-vw-porsche-nissan-hyundai.html
My VW buttons had to be pressed again and again which meant taking my eye off the road.

I’d say it’s slip roads. A couple of years ago, we had a really hairy experience with DH at the wheel. We were in the middle lane and there was a car to his right and a car in front of that one. On the inside lane, there was one car so basically we were boxed in.

Anyway, a car came across from the slip lane easily doing 90, cut across the car in the slow lane and was heading right towards us. Thankfully, I think someone to our right saw what was happening and floored it so DH could get in there and speed up. The really fast car ended up basically where DH and I had been before speeding off even faster than before. It all happened over the space of about 1.5 seconds and could have easily ended in a crash.

Combination of speeding and changing lanes. So someone else changes lane and someone else speeding behind them can’t react in time. Or someone brakes and someone behind is too close and/or speeding.

Speed and too close to the car in front.

Lack of concentration too. People changing lanes without properly looking, not looking far enough ahead to anticipate hazards.

I was driving once in the slow lane doing about 60mph, a van was passing me….and a scaffolding pole fell off his van and came through my drivers side window smashing it. I never saw it happen, first I knew was when my window exploded. The tip of the scaffolding pole came in the van, must have missed my head my mm, then bounced out and was in the road. I must have nerves of steel because I didn’t flinch, didn’t swerve, didn’t even do an emergency stop. Just pulled off at the next junction. The car behind me followed me off to give me the van reg and she was really shook up. Said she thought it was going to kill me.

I think this is very significant.

On the radio I heard an RAF pilot talking about this. They have a saying move your head or you're dead.

Your brain interprets what the eyes see. If, as on a straight bit of motorway, nothing is changing your brain kind of switches off.

If you routinely move your head so that what your brain is having to interpret changes then your brain stays alert.

Speeding. Most of the motorways are smart and have cameras on gantries. The motorways are considerably slower than they once were.
I'd go for poor concentration-lane discipline-driving too close.
Lots of people drive as they walk. Too close, bumbling, unsteady.😂
DP quantified traffic accidents and road works cost his business £24000 per year.

an over reliance on sensors/cruise control and simply not keeping any distance

I think this is more significant than we realise. We become reliant on cruise control to monitor our speed, sensors to keep braking distance etc and our brain switches off. I don’t use automated functions if I can help it - I need to feel in control of what happens in the car and engaged with the road.

I was involved in a crash on a duel carriageway many years ago - police told me that most of the accidents they saw were people not leaving stopping distance from the vehicle in front. Nowadays it’ll be arseholes on their phones (hands free or not both equally bad 🙄).

Interesting to hear so many varied responses, I think if you asked anyone in our area they might give you a list, but top of every single one would be 'people on their phones' - the truck driver above saying its 1 in 3 people on their phone while driving is about right for where we live.

@Foxblue yes that wouldn’t surprise me at all. Traffic studies have shown talking on a phone can be as bad for your driving as being drunk in terms of impact on driving standards.

Driving too fast and not using overtaking lanes properly- so if there is an issue, people are blocked in, you should never be sat next to someone on a motorway

Recently I've noticed an increase in aggressive driving at speed, taking nothing into account regarding other road users having time to notice them coming up behind at speed and lane changing erratically along the way . I feel like most things I can anticipate but this I'm at the mercy of idiots.

In the last week alone we've had 2 near misses. The 1st was on a single carriageway A road where DH pulled out to pass an HGV and half way past the HGV decided to pull out and overtake. Luckily the HGV driver spotted us in time.
The 2nd near miss was 2 miles from home on a dual carriageway. I was driving in the outside lane when a van driver drifted over towards the outer lane as I was passing him. He eyeballed me as I passed him and rather than giving an apologetic wave he seemed incensed that a mere woman in a hatchback had dared to overtake him.
Too many drivers driving without due care and attention. Obviously on motorways the speeds are faster, vehicles closer together and once a crash has happened many many vehicles become trapped.

Do they?

When did the UK last design a motorway? nothing to do with the topography of the land, avoiding steep hills or cuttings, which means even if we wanted too, its not feasible to build dead straight roads.

Driver error is as always, the number one cause of accidents, the higher speeds on m/ways means accidents, when they happen, are far more severe.

Mostly lack of attention and/or impatience imo. People fail to check their mirrors properly before changing lanes, mad bastards weaving in out of lanes at silly speeds because they're in a rush, fiddling with phones/stereo etc, or just daydreaming. Plus people driving when they're so knackered they're nodding off (a friend was killed when she had to stop on the hard shoulder for some reason, and a lorry crashed into her because the driver had fallen asleep).

Mind you, I had a near miss once. I wasn in the outside lane wanted to move back in to the inside, but there was a car in the middle lane close behind me, so not enough room to do it safely. I kept checking, and after looking a few times, saw the car was now in the middle lane and quite a way back, so it was safe.

Except it wasn't: the fucker was in my blind spot and I saw it just as I started to pull across; the car in the middle lane was the same model and colour. All fine, but it shook me up a bit and I'm really extra careful about checking before I switch lanes now.

If you'd seen the appalling driving I'd seen on the M40 and M25 the other day, you wouldn't wonder at all. People weaving in and out of lanes, undertaking, changing two lanes at a time without looking or judging the speed of other vehicles nearby - it was like wacky races. Driving Britain's motorways these days is fucking terrifying at times. I've seen bad driving over the years, but I think it's got way worse and there are very few traffic police around.

BMW and Audi knobheads

When we had our crash, a car two in front of us came to a dead stop in the fast lane of the motorway. He couldn't tell anyone why. Trying to break from 65MPH to zero in about 5 seconds is impossible. Lucky no-one was killed.

Often two people moving into the same lane, maybe in blind spot or not concentrating.

The amount of stupidity I’ve witnessed on motorways is ridiculous. People racing each other like bad boy racers, people overtaking and undertaking and cutting in front of people. Lorry drivers moving over into my lane without checking their mirrors and almost causing me to have an accident! Idiots on motorcycles zooming in and out of everywhere. People thinking they’re the king of the road and that they’re so special that neither the speed limit nor road safety applies to them! Then you get those who tailgate. It honestly scares me the mount of stupidity I’ve seen!

I once had my accelerator cable snap at 70 mph, I was in the third lane, I just about managed to get on to the hard shoulder by cutting up a couple of cars.

I've also been in a situation, when HGVs were still allowed in the outside lane where I was in the middle lane overtaking a lorry and the lorry overtaking me decided to move over.

Thankfully the car behind slowed down to make room for me.