To realise very few people care about road rules or the Highway Code any more

[JacquesHarlow]

AIBU here - is anyone on Mumsnet like me, and thinks about the Highway Code or bothers to follow its guidance? Please join me if so!

For my job I have to drive a LOT. I drive pretty much all over the UK.

Yes, the standard of driving is far better than many countries around the world. But something I have noticed increasingly (and especially since the pandemic) is this:

1. Very few people indicate right on a roundabout. You get this bizarre situation where someone approaches a roundabout in a right hand lane, doesn't indicate, careers around the roundabout for 270 degrees, then once at their junction, they indicate off left to show they're taking the exit!!
2. Middle lane hogging is now third lane hogging On any four lane motorway in the UK, I find the vast majority of drivers have moved to the third lane and sit there at 60 or 65mph. The first and second lane have been re-designated as a lorry lane, and as a lorry overtaking lane. Again, this is not the Highway Code.
3. Phone driving is an absolute epidemic. On the school run people drive off holding their phones and checking messages... next to a SCHOOL where children are still walking and crossing the road.
4. Merge in turn is completely ignored - instead you see bizarre behaviour like road captains who sit straddling two lanes, a mile before the merge, to stop "queue jumpers". This goes completely against the road rules and the Code but once again, British drivers know best and no one can tell them otherwise
5. Give way if parked cars are on your left again seems to be ignored. I've seen plenty of fellow women do this one, where they barrel through hoping the other person will concede, and then when asked to reverse their car, go into a complete blind panic and start swearing and shouting for the other person to reverse instead.
6. Give way to traffic already on the motorway when joining Again, forget it. When I'm in lane 1, and I see a slip road ahead, I try and move over. I can't straightway because middle lane hoggers, however I wait for a gap and then move in time. Only to find the car that is joining isn't happy I've made a space...because they want to slalom across two lanes and barrel their way into lane 2 or 3 in one quick glide! WTF.

Yeah I've shared too many examples, but I could share dozens more.

It's like the Highway Code is irrelevant to most drivers. They decide "what is fair". So if they feel they don't want to wait and there's an obstruction on their left? Barrel on through!

The only way around this is either

• increased traffic policing of road offences, which we all know won't happen because we have fewer police
• mandatory driving retraining, which everyone would hate

Is this just me? Does anyone else care about this or notice this, or am I a lone female voice in this space and actually it's fine to just make up the rules as we go along?

Thanks in advance

Agree op. It is wild.

Our area has recently become 20mph. The number of cars that tail gate/beep/flash/aggression is scary

There’s a nursery near us where parents continually park on the pavements to pick up their little darlings. We go to a (better) nursery beyond this one and have to steer my buggy into the road to get past. God knows what you’d do if you were in a wheelchair. The entitlement is enraging.

I have noticed this so much recently that I actually started a thread on it the other day!! I don’t know why it’s suddenly started happening SO much!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5414022-drivers-speeding-up-when-you-try-and-overtake-them?reply=147274386

Since when did 'brake checking' other drivers become part of standard driving practice.

Good point about pedestrians walking on non-pavement roads facing the way of oncoming traffic. We were taught this as children. But what is this recent thing of pedestrians walking in the road when there are pavements on both sides of the road? Also so oblivious to traffic. Weird in the centre of residential London.

That’s complete nonsense. When I go to the office I use a right hand lane and merge into a queue at the end. The motorway gos from 3 to 2 lanes but everyone ignoring that 3rd lane and causing a huge queue is frankly stupid. It’s not a sense of entitlement on my behalf, I’m just using the road as it was designed to be used. I just don’t understand why people would rather queue for 15/20 minutes.

Well OP you'll be relieved to know many students can't book a test for months due to lack of examiners so you're winning just now. The roads are much more quiet than they should be!

It should be a national scandal 😒

The person who trundles along at no more than 40 mph on a B-road in the national speed limit sections, despite the road conditions making it safe to go at 50-60 mph much of the time... and I'm trying to be charitable and thinking "maybe they're just a really cautious driver"... and then we enter a village with a 30 mph... and they just carry on at their set speed of 40 mph. So* *no they're not cautious, just lazy, with no road awareness.

You wish they’d get caught, fined and banned with that stupidity

Oh yeah, the 40mph merchants! A road I use daily has stretches of 50mph slowing to 30mph whenever you pass through a village - all very normal and sensible. There are always drivers who just go 40mph the whole time, so half the journey they are breaking the law and the other half they are ignoring Highway Code and road safety organisations' guidelines.

And I have to say, if the speed merchants are almost always men in their penis-extension cars, then the 40mph drivers are almost always women, totally oblivious to whatever is going on around them.

Oh yes OP, Number 4 on your list drives me insane!!! ESPECIALLY the idiots who then take it upon themselves to straddle both lanes with 400 yards to go so that no-one can use the free lane. READ THE HIGHWAY CODE PEOPLE!!! I would love to know how they think they can justify this….

agree total bloody Wild West on the roads - I got hit on a mini roundabout last year, other car wasn’t indicating right I assumed she was going straight over first exit, nope she drove over the centre of the mini roundabout and hit me.

was my fault apparently - still can’t work that one out……

Lots of people block driveways They don't know what an H bar and/or a dropped kerb means.
Eve when there's a big sign saying access needed at all times, please don't block the drive they still do it.

So yes, yanbu.

They are not assholes, the lane is not closed until it is closed. Your attitude causes the queue to be twice as long, (in length, not time). You are ‘one of those’ drivers.

My pet hate if it hasn’t already been mentioned is drivers who don’t slow down at roundabouts. This seemed to start after the covid lockdown when the roads were very quiet. Some drivers actively accelerate rather than easing up to allow a vehicle from their left to take a gap.

Yes this is your fault, you made assumptions about another drivers intentions and failed to give way, causing a collision with someone who was already established on the roundabout.

You should only move off if it's clear and safe to do so.

For a different illustration, say I was at a side road waiting to turn onto a main road, and someone is approaching from my right, indicating to turn into the side road I'm in. If I assume that car will definitely turn into the side road and pull out, but they weren't turning, carried straight on, and we collide, then it is absolutely my fault because I have moved into the path of a vehicle established in it's lane.

There are many reasons why indicators don't commit drivers to manoeuvres and why they don't negate your liability, and why you shouldn't assume someone's actions based on their use - they can be wrong, they can be faulty, the driver can see a hazard last minute and have to change course...

We all develop sloppy driving habits and assume others intentions based on indicators, but we shouldn't be. Ultimately I'm afraid you are the one who caused that roundabout collision.

No.5 especially is prevalent now. I wonder if people don't know who takes priority, or they just don't care.

Or is that everyone thinks they're a better driver than everyone else and drives around in a toxic bubble of delusional superiority and misplaced righteous anger, thereby exacerbating the problem

I don't recall ever seeing a roundabout where you would turn right, ie go most of the way round it and use the left hand lane.
If there are such things then this is not what I am referring to, obviously.

There's one near me. As you approach the signs clearly show the right lane is to turn right but the left lane is to go in all three directions. As you enter it from the left lane to turn right the markings take you round to exit into the left lane of the road you are joining.

There's another one which tells you specifically that if you are turning right at that roundabout but left at the next one you should turn onto roundabout 1 in the left lane and exit into the left lane. Loads of people fuck that one up and enter r1 in the right lane then try to switch lanes at the exit and cut me up. Pisses me right off.

You have too much time on your hands - unlike the woman who drove over the centre of the roundabout!

You can throw insults about all you want, it doesn't change the fact that the collision was ultimately caused by your actions.

The lack of indicator-use drives me nuts. I'm on a mobility scooter and drivers just drive at me. I can't just leap onto a pavement either. Sometimes I do have to travel a short distance on the road to get to a dropped kerb (which is another of my bugbears - why do road makers/menders make even the drops a good inch or two above the roads????!!!! I've nearly tipped over so many times.)

It does make you wonder. Just saw someone blatantly go through a red light. Not as it was changing from amber to red but definitely on red.

See pedestrian waiting to cross = put foot to floor even if they are meant to stop at a red light. I give up.

There is one like this at J5 of the M3 as you come off northbound. They tell you to use the right hand lane but then you have to change lanes. If you go in the left hand lane it takes you all the way round to turn right!

I would squeeze my buggy past anyway.

Someone was parked on a pavement near my house a few months ago and accidentally on purpose banged his wing mirror as I walked past. He had the cheek to tell me to look where I was going.