Has anyone else noticed the sheer amount of road rage about recently?

[dinoma]

I do live in a city and one of the biggest issues is cars park on both sides meaning there’s only room for single traffic meaning a lot of cars meeting and reversing.

I have noticed the anger and rage, mouthing obscenities and hand gestures because someone else happens to be there.

I get the inconvenience of having to pull in or reverse back but I would never feel the need to aggressively stick my fingers up (or worse) or mouth something at another driver for simply using the same road.

I’m sure these people aren’t like this in their homes or businesses.

People have always been dicks cocooned in their wee tin bubble.

Hard agree. Drivers are becoming mental nowadays.

Dont know what the national speed limit is on various types of roads? If you see an actual national speed limit sign then that should mean 60mph surely. Or 70 if it’s a motorway. Not 30, not 40 but 60.

60 for a single carriageway, 70 for a duel carriageway.

But why do people continue to do 30 - 40mph in them then? I come across it a lot. It’s just frustrating and ignorant when they are holding traffic up behind them for no real reason!

I don't have a WFH job, so after the first lockdown ended in June 2020 I drove for work all through the COVID years.

The quiet roads 20-22 were fabulous, then the number of cars on the road slowly crept up but everyone still seemed relaxed and polite, then the last year or so traffic seems to have absolutely exploded. Traffic jams everywhere, and everyone is so angry - cutting up, pushing, barging and road rage. The change has been really quite shocking.

I suspect it's all the people who were WFH who have now been forced back to the office and aren't happy about it.

TBH I preferred it when they WFH too 😂

I don’t think it’s to do with WFH per se, I think more people are buying cars nowadays to try and keep up with the Jones. I know of a family who own 4 cars - for one family and parking them all over everyone’s front. Two of those cars they don’t even use/ need. The amount of parked car dodging when driving on roads I seem to have had to do in the last few years is unreal. You can’t get down my parents street on a Sunday nowadays because everyone has at least 2 - 3 cars per household and clog the street up. This is a small quiet street where once upon a time, not many people owned cars on there. It’s the same when you drive anywhere, roads completely congested everywhere. A lot of them in massive 4x4s. I think it’s just more drivers and more cars in general.

There has been dangerous driving where I live for years, not least:
speeding
using mobiles
drink / drug driving
ignoring no entry, weight limit & other signs
driving through red lights

Judging by local social media comments, expectations re roads are completely unrealistic - not least that traffic should flow - and don’t just fit with other things happening locally (eg building lots of new estates with poor public transport & walking & cycling routes). These views are perhaps not surprising given the reporting on traffic - road collisions don’t get the same scrutiny as those on the railway and there’s rarely any challenge of claims that widening roads will improve congestion (even though the well-established concept of induced demand (that traffic will fill any available space) suggests otherwise). Language about driving such as “the war on drivers” also doesn’t help - it’s not accurate (drivers have most of the road space and budget) and it doesn’t acknowledge that while driving is really useful, it also creates lots of problems.

There are solutions though - firstly we’re underusing rail. We really need to expand capacity to put more freight and commuter traffic on the railway. In towns, better routes for walking and cycling would help for shorter journeys particularly for older DC travelling to school - I’m not saying that people should have to use these, but people should be able to choose the best mode of transport for their journey (not be forced to drive because rail services are inadequate or the roads are too dangerous to cycle).

I also think that adopting the Dutch approach of Sustainable Safety would help - it separates different types of traffic (so it cuts out conflict between pedestrians / cyclists / cars etc) but it also tries to make road design predictable so drivers know what to expect. That’s such a contrast with here, where there is massive variation in say junctions design, and it must reduce the cognitive load on and stress of drivers by removing uncertainty.

We are underusing rail because they are charging ridiculous prices for tickets. Who wants to pay £100+ per person for a train ticket. I was quoted £750 for a family of 6 (this included 2 children) for a return ticket to London. And we only paid £120 for the hotel to stay in London overnight. Who wants to pay those prices just for the pleasure of using public transport? We booked the coach in the end which cost £145 return for all 6 of us.

I've really noticed this in my area over the last year or so - more people really speeding and downright dangerous driving.

Nothing to do with COVID IMO and more to do with society becoming more selfish, entitled and aggressive.

Very good. And had that book been published, I'm sure that Adrian Mole would have fully supported Mr. Johnson in his assertions that there were no parties in Number 10, just like he fully supported Mr. Blair with his Weapons of Mass Destruction, and fully supported Bill Clinton saying he did not have sexual relations with that woman, saying that the truth cried out from his eyes, his nostrils and his lips. He would have had a lot to say about people who broke lockdown roolz, and then on the very next page done it himself. (I think Weapons of Mass Destruction was the worst book, actually.)

I'm not sure if road rage is linked to lockdowns (remember, we must not use their words, i.e. "the pandemic", which the govt tries to blame everything on, all these woes happened because of LOCKDOWNS, not Covid). Perhaps people think that if the prime minister could disobey the law and get away with a measly £50 fine, they see no reason why they should obey the law. I find government in general even more despicable than I did during the Bliar Years. Because of the government deliberately frightening the pants off the public, pitting the public against each other, and destroying their businesses and livelihoods overnight, and preventing them from comforting their dying loved ones while Mr Johnson partied, people feel conned, and I think it has made people much less trusting of government and authority in general - hence the backlash against digital ID. People are asking questions. Had it been proposed in 2019, I doubt if we would have seen the 2 million and counting signatures against the idea, and people might have said Boris was deluded with "I will eat my ID card in front anyone who asks to see it". Many people are not afraid of the police any more, because they know that they have been cut to the bone, and can't really do much.

I think it’s also how cars are sold. Every car ad has footage of driving round beautiful empty roads or through empty city streets not gridlock and parked up streets. So the cognitive dissonance between what people imagine and what the reality is is extreme. Plus I guess during covid the adverts are what people actually experienced.

Driving for many people isn’t that convenient a way to get around. Certainly in urban or built up areas if everyone drives nobody moves.but it’s still the default choice. We got rid of our car a few years ago because we go most places by bike or public transport and honestly haven’t missed it. I hated driving in traffic, really didn’t mind motorway driving but on shorter journeys found it a hugely time consuming and frustrating way to get anywhere. And so many people really don’t know the rules of the road and are just so aggressive. Plus recently so many more drivers looking at phones and have split attention so they are a caught out by moving traffic and lights changing which just makes them more in edge. As well as being a danger to everyone else.

Only solution (particularly for urban areas) is to get people to use alternatives where possible as driving is a very inefficient use of space to move lots of people around. Cause the fewer cars on the road the better it is for everyone, especially those who, for whatever reason have to drive.

I think it did change a lot of people and not for the better.

And for small children, that 'few months' felt like a lifetime for many and it really wrecked their social and coping skills. Many were allowed to 'do what they wanted whenever they wanted' at home as their parents gave up dealing with them / worked / had no clue how to parent without outside support / etc and it really shows in schools.

There’s a stretch of nsl between the village where I live and the slightly larger small town where the secondary is. There’s a blind bend at least every 50 m, some nutters walk / run on it, there are kids cycling to school, animals that run out in front of you. I never drive at nsl - it wouldn’t be safe. Most people drive around 40, there’s 20 limits at each end. Nsl is not a target, it’s a limit and you use your judgment re speed.

You remember the lad who flew I think Sheffield to London via Berlin and it was cheaper than train...
Yup.
The price of trains in UK gives me heebie jeebies

We have a straight NSL road, lovely and wide... and thers people doing between 90 and 40mph on it.

(Not including the tractors... they need to go slower)

Definitely is.

That being said, there are so many horrendous drivers out there I’m also not shocked people are pissed off. Just yesterday I got stuck behind a guy who didn’t move at a green (likely on phone), then didn’t move off at a clear roundabout for ages, before doing 50 through a 40. Later on in my trip a car hit a kerb 3 times trying to reverse into a huge space which was empty either side.

Unfortunately most of the poor driving where I live is from elderly folk. I completely understand their want for independence but the driving standards are so bad and the amount of accidents caused recently is obscene. And sadly deaths. Been quite a few children killed in the last few years due to elderly drivers in automatic cars trying to park and instead of reversing, driving forward and into someone.

In my place of work we’ve had 2 elderly drivers crash in a very small carpark- one drove into another car and straight into a bollard (which if it wasn’t there they would have drove into the building). The other lost control turning out of the carpark and flew up the kerb at about 20 mph before ending up in a wall.

Something urgently needs done.

Yes it really does say something when flights are cheaper than rail. I think of a coach can do Leeds to London for less than £20 then rail services should be able to. There is way more risk to a coach driver driving on the roads and busy motorways in peak hours and having to sit in traffic jams than the risk of being a train driver IMO. Not saying driving trains doesn’t come with risks but I imagine they are far lower than for driving coaches. Why do they feel the need to charge £100+ for tickets.

We actually planned on not gettimg a car for a while when we moved to place where we have few public transport options.
After 4th time getting taxi to work because public transport was fucking about again, we got a car.

I find the groups of bad drivers tend to fit into 2 categories - either the elderly or the narcissistic male drivers with their BMWs, Tesla’s, Audis or massive SUVs who seem to think they have a god given right to speed, tail gate, dangerously over take or barge their way through.

Had someone pull out of their drive in front of me the other day, he couldn’t wait for me to drive down the road before pulling out of his drive, then turned his car around to face me because he wanted to drive in the direction I was coming from. And because he thought he was so entitled to do such a manoeuvre and that he should have priority, and because I didn’t stop for him and let him set off after he’d pulled out of the drive in front of me and I instead drove around him and made him wait, he flung his arms up in the air at me. I put my window down and said “don’t pull out of your drive into on coming traffic”!

Ticketing is a massive problem - it’s also one that is a bit easier to fix than capacity (as you don’t need to build new track) and one that can be fixed with political will.

I’m always surprised locally that business forums etc don’t complain more about the lack of commuting services & late night ones.

(As I’m not a rail expert, I would really recommend reading Gareth Dennis How the railways can fix the future).

Yeah i know what you mean but i think for many people there was a sort of reset during lockdown that never really got back to normal. I have many local mum friends who still don't really go out that much. They are much more flaky and more likely to pull out of things last minute. Maybe they are being more honest with themselves about how they want to spend their free time. Some just aren't as bothered about going out out. People are sick of putting up with other people's sht too I think so maybe this is expressed more when they are driving and people on the roads around them are being bell ends 🤷‍♀️ Ive still got friends who won't meet for a coffee when I have the tail-end of a cold as they live with vulnerable parents (fair enough). I still haven't really forgiven my neighbours for being selfish prcks during lockdown. I think it's a complicated issue tbh

DD recently passed and is commuting to uni this year, she’s still very much a new driver and remembers what she was taught as well as needing to be extra super law abiding due to insurance costs, new license etc. she’s constantly complaining about being beeped at for following speed limits and being rudely gestured at, under or overtaken. She mentions it’s usually middle aged men doing the beeping and gesturing although she turned into her uni car park behind one (very embarrassed) fellow student the other day who’d tried to overtake her off the lights and then nearly mowed down several pedestrians - campus security pulled him over 😂

@Benvenuto Indeed. Suppose a family of four wants to visit granny (now that it's "allowed" again. How did we ever get to state where we consented to such things being forbidden? ) The choice is: £10 for a car journey, £60 or more for a train journey. Tough decision, innit?

@ShesNeverSeenAShadeOfGray Can you say the bit about affecting small children TEN TIMES LOUDER, please? Lockdown restrictions might have been "only fifteen months" (which we were boiling-frogged into accepting from "reviewed in three weeks"), and that was a QUARTER of a five-year-old's life, in their formative years. The politicians threw children under the bus with this, including our current prime minister, who had NOTHING to say about this while in opposition.

A few years ago, I drove along a very wide road in south London, obeying the stupid and pointless 20mph limit. I was driving in the bus lane, as it was allowed at that time; and as a driving instructor, I knew that you can fail a test for not driving in a bus lane when it is allowed, because of the rule about keeping to the left. And guess what happened? I was overtaken, by a bus! Yes, really! There I was obeying the roolz to the letter, and an employee of Transport for London saw fit to break them.

I don't live in a 20mph area, but I'd imagine that if you do obey them to the letter, you get tailgated and dangerously overtaken frequently. I remember my driving instructor telling me that going too slow is almost as dangerous as going too fast, because people then overtake dangerously.