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

Runners do it. It drives me mad and I am a runner. Sometimes I am out running with people who stay on the road when I move onto the pavement because a car is coming What is wrong with them?

It actually doesn’t say that. There’s no must for pedestrians (apart from not being on motorways), guidance in Rule 2 says to keep to RH side where no pavements but it may be safer to cross road well before a sharp rh bend and to cross back. It’s more nuanced and will depend on conditions.

Are these people the same people, surely if you are unfamiliar with a B road and it's dark for example, 40- 45 is not that unreasonable?

I find it terrible in a Midlands county I visit compared to where I live, I think there are just more traffic cops!

Both lanes are fully open until the merge point and both lanes should be used until the merge point. The highways agency puts the merge where they want it to be. If they wanted it a mile beforehand they'd have put it there.
Please, use both active lanes correctly and merge in turn at the point of the closure.

I agree, but sadly the twats queueing in the lane you need to merge into often seem to regard it as taking the piss and will often refuse to let you in.

There's a set of lights in my (narrow) high street that has 4 phases, and slow ones at that.

Cyclists don't cycle across there when the lights are red, but bump up onto the (also narrow) pavement to ride past the lights instead. One almost ran into me the other day and had the audacity to call me a cunt as he bumped down the kerb into the road.

They do it because there’s no deterrent, in the same way that if there’s no consequences for inappropriate behaviour in the classroom the bullies can have free rein. All you can do is have cameras on your car. (I haven’t but I’m considering it).

When I did a speed awareness course (ironic I know) the course leader said you should just try to focus on your own safety and not engage with any unpleasantness regardless of how you were treated. So when I’m tailgated I pull in immediately and just try to be unemotional about it.

@LakieLady rest assured they are the cunt - or expletive of choice - personally I don’t really like that one.

Yes of course, that's what we do when we are running. But the point is more that pedestrians keep walking and running in the road when there's a pavement available. Even in the unlikely circumstance that there isn't a car or van parked on it.

You need to do one or the other.

If everyone has got into the lane they need early, it will move, albeit slowly, so just join it and follow what everyone else is doing. It's not clever in that scenario to go to the end and force your way in because you'll force what was a slow moving line to stop altogether.

A lot of places do now say merge in turn and that's what people do. A I go you go works really well but it also doesn't work when someone tries to push in when it's not their turn.

So both methods need people to play fair.

Nope. If one lane is free and you are not at the merge point then it remains the right thing to travel to the merge point and merge there. Just because everyone else has misunderstood how it is meant to work doesn’t mean pandering their ignorance.

You see it less often these days. I think the message about merging at the merge point being correct is finally getting through.

I get annoyed when I am already in the lane that is staying open and people in the other lane start indicating to try and make me let them in early. No mate, I'm not creating a gap here in the wrong place, you go to the end and merge properly. I don't let people in there. I do allow people to merge correctly

I’ve just driven 200 miles up and down the m1 and it was an absolute nightmare. I use cruise control always so I know I’m maintaining a constant speed - maybe a little increase downhill - and people have started speeding up as I’m overtaking them. Only in the last few months but it’s massively increased. The amount of people in lane 2/3 too. I used to undertake in lane 1 happily but I saw a big jobber video where someone got points so I now go across all 4 lanes to overtake, sometimes flashing as I do and honestly it’s like they have no idea! I’m tempted to start a thread asking why the fuck people lane hog.

I drive a lot for work, and other drivers not following the code annoys me a lot. In my mind (autistic stubbornness), if you don't know the highway code then you shouldn't have a driving licence. And if you know it, but ignore it, I'd like to do a psych evaluation to see why you would do that (I usually conclude they're a selfish dick, but I want to know why!)

Not excusing his behaviour at all, BUT some embedded motion sensors (the things that count/time traffic that works with the traffic light rhythm) are not sensitive enough to be able to tell when a bicycle is waiting at the lights, so sometimes we do have to either jump a red or make a different manoeuvre. Ironically there's one outside the national cycling centre in Manchester which prevented GB squad riders from exiting the facility on to the main road in a legal manner during their training rides.

If you’re doing 70 on the inside lane and someone is doing 65 in lane 3 you will naturally pass them at some point. Is this illegal? There’s a whole empty lane between you and them and you are just driving the speed of the road and the traffic. The person in lane 3 is not following the rules of the road certainly, but in naturally passing them on the inside are you also breaking the law?

Yes it’s illegal unless in congestion where lanes naturally travel at different speeds. You should never pass on the left. There is a video on big jobbers page where he discusses this. In it, lane 3 and 4 are congested with a clear lane 1 and 2. Someone has sent the video off and the person undertaking has received 3 points but the clowns in lane 3/4 didn’t - I think. Grossly unfair in my view but the rules are the rules and two wrongs apparently don’t make a right (or a wrong for one of them)

It isn't, in fact. Undertaking is not de facto illegal; it can be if carried out in a dangerous manner (ie swerving across lanes), and then it comes under dangerous driving or driving without due care and attention. A controlled manoeuvre of driving faster on the inside lane than the cars outside you is advised against in The Highway Code, but it is not against the law (some parts of The Highway Code have legal weight and some do not).

There's a lot of people who don't seem to know what to do at a roundabout in general, nevermind not indicating to go right.
Loads of mini roundabouts near where I live, don't get me started on those either!

In Australia they have used signs that say “don’t be a dick, merge like a zip”
Theres a roundabout near me having some major works done at the moment and the queues are awful because people don’t merge properly, and anyone that dares to merge correctly is usually given loads of abuse by the driver who feels they are “pushing in”

Rule 268
Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake. In congested conditions, where adjacent lanes of traffic are moving at similar speeds, traffic in left-hand lanes may sometimes be moving faster than traffic to the right. In these conditions you may keep up with the traffic in your lane even if this means passing traffic in the lane to your right. Do not weave in and out of lanes to overtake.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/motorways-253-to-273

do not. Not must or should. If it wasn’t illegal, you wouldn’t get points for it.

You are wrong.

You don’t understand the difference between the law and the HW code.

So teach me oh wise one

I see it all the time where people will sit in a lane to turn left/right even though there’s 2 lanes left/right and one is completely empty. By your logic I should join the sheeple because they’re too ignorant to read the road markings.

As I said in my previous post, not all Highway Code rules are backed up by the force of law. This one isn't.

You can get points for undertaking in a dangerous or careless manner, not for undertaking per se. Weaving in and out of lanes would most likely meet this threshold; simply passing someone on an inside lane in a controlled manner and while under the speed limit would not.