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.

I travel by rail a lot and the ticket prices are not representative of the train services we receive. We pay £££s for train tickets to get standing room only sometimes. The train service’s excuse is that you’re paying for the ride and not the seat. So they’re happy to pack hundreds of people on to these trains like sardines as long as they pay 100 quid for the pleasure of ‘the ride’! There are services delayed left, right and centre and services cancelled left right and centre. The most common cancellation excuse I hear is “this service is cancelled due to insufficient drivers”. So basically they strike to get better pay which means our ticket prices get ramped up to the max, but they still don’t seem to want to turn up to work anyway!
Then the trains are often very dirty, dirty seats, dirty windows, crumbs all over the place. No heating on in cold weather. And they want us to use rail and public transport more

I think there's less feeling of accountability. I was on an A-road and a van reversed from a side road right in front of me - so close that I had to brake suddenly. I memorised the company name and the van's number plate and sent an email to the company pointing out the dangerous driving of one of its drivers. I was hoping for an acknowledgment - so far, nothing....

Yes it’s tricky when the public transport isn’t reliable and more needs to be done to improve it. In cost and convenience. Is a bike an option for you at all as that’s our default choice. LTNs and better infra make this a viable option but very much depends on location as plenty of roads although technically possible to cycle, I wouldn’t, much less allow DS to even though we are all confident and capable cyclists.

45 min cycling each way before after 12 hour physical shift is really not something DH is willing to do when the other options should be better, like 25 min public transport. Imho quite understandably. Not even talking about the route at 10pm....

I think there's several factors.

The move to everything online means that people are interacting face to face less. This means that people are getting less positive interactions with people and their expectations of behaviour of becoming a bit warped. Toxic discourse online means that you start to assume that everyone in the real world is only out for themselves, and you act accordingly.

People are more under pressure generally with the cost of living crisis etc. So tempers are short. It's not just when driving, but that tends to be when we have a lot of interaction with strangers that requires us all to be considerate of each other.

I'm going to put my hard hat on here, but an aging population doesn't help. I work for Adult social services. You'd be amazed at the amount of people who are still driving but absolutely shouldn't be. It's really difficult to stop, especially when family are obstructive because they know this means that they will need to step up in terms of lifts. The result? A lot of people doing 40 in a 60 when there's no need. Adds to the frustration.

20 mph really isn’t pointless - it’s the limit as where if a driver hits a pedestrian, a pedestrian has a good chance of survival. At 30 mph they don’t. This is the type of stuff I wish was covered more when transport is reported on and had more standardised road design.

I do live in an area with 20 mph limits and they work as they are the safe speed for the streets. The streets tend to be terraced, have poor visibility due to parked cars & lots of DC, cats and lots other reasons to drive slowly.

We do have a problem with some drivers speeding on some streets and it can be terrifying because you know those drivers don’t have sufficient reaction time to stop safely. I found this particularly when my DC were younger. It’s why I take an interest in road safety.

That said, your street sounds like poor design - if councils want to introduce 20 limits, then they really need to alter the streets so that the limit feels appropriate. Just putting up signs when the other visual cues on the street scream that you can drive faster isn’t going to work.

In terms of pulling out of / into a driveway, I can sit for a good 5 minutes waiting, so yes, I’ll sometimes pull out in front of someone, as there is rarely a a clear moment to do so.

Turning in is even worse. In slow moving traffic it’s just selfish not to let someone turn across the road ; they’re not even taking their “space”. Sometimes i get a sense of satisfaction when there’s a quarter of a mile of tailback behind me… surely those people waiting will realise next time to let someone get into their house!

If you are behind a slow driver who is apparently going slowly for no reason, it can be irritating but you don't know why they are going slow. So calm yourself down and wait for a safe place to pass.

Yes maybe they are elderly / not confident on the roads and so either shouldn't be there or need more lessons. But they could also be driving someone home from hospital and need to drive gently. They could be transporting something very heavy or delicate in the car (I once had to drive a wedding cake to a venue and oh my god I barely dared to get to 40mph and I was feeling so anxious about the cake and SO self conscious about the speed at the same time. Luckily I didn't have to drive very far).

In short, you never know what's going on in someone else's car, and anger and frustration has no place behind the wheel. If someone is doing 40 in a 60 then let them, don't tailgate, calm down, and wait until it's safe to overtake.

The standards of driving recently is absolutely appalling. Just this last week I’ve encountered:

• Getting cut up on a large roundabout. I was in the middle lane heading straight on. Car to my left, in the left hand lane (left turn only) decided he wanted to go straight ahead and use my exit.
• Behind a car on a 60mph lane doing 20mph. When the road approached a more built up area and changed to a 30mph zone the car infront sped up to 40mph.
• Was at a junction waiting to turn right. A big van pulled up to my left, assuming he was turning left, but decided to turn right at the same time as me. Almost hit me.

I think high levels of road rage is down to: poor driving which winds people up and they lose their patience for absolutely everyone else on the road. Never ending roadworks. Constant traffic jams. And just daily life in the UK atm, it’s getting darker, colder, there’s so much hate and division so everyone is just fed up.

It’s not that people want people to use rail (politicians on the whole clearly don’t as they haven’t prioritised it for investment although the government has announced some new projects), it’s that rail is the efficient way to transport people over long distances and into densely built cities.

Where I live, there are a few local line stations that are 10 mins by rail but 30 mins by car. At off peak, this tends to even out when you factor in walking to and from the station, but at peak or other busy times (like Christmas shopping time) rail is faster - at times considerably so. As it’s fairly short journeys, the fares are affordable. Rail is also much, much safer and (as long as the trains turn up) much less stressful. The problem is that local rail services are scant.

Despite this, we’ve had very little investment in rail over the years and there aren’t enough local services. What we have had is investment in road to increase capacity. This doesn’t seem to have improved journey time or driver satisfaction- but it has led to problems with air pollution & collisions.

I just find this really, really sad - improving rail has such potential to make so many people’s life easier and safer.

Yes I get it. Ok after a desk job but likely too exhausting after a physical job. E-bikes are great but even they require some input my DH uses his for a 50min commute but he sits all day so it’s a way of getting exercise in.

In your situation it really shouldn’t be too much to ask that there’s a reliable transport option for regular commuters as it’s safer as well. Someone after a hard 12 hour shift is going to be a tired driver. And allows more social mobility for those that can’t drive. But public transport infrastructure just isn’t prioritised. Labour do have a transport plan and it allows for devolved powers which should better serve local needs I’m not sure how fast that will actually happen

I get the country roads with bends. Which is another thing that annoys me. Not sure why there are NSL signs in those areas when you clearly cannot go over 30-40mph for obvious reasons and if you did, you could end up getting yourself (or someone else) killed. That I totally understand and I don’t think NSL signs should be on those types of roads as it’s giving the driver a false sense of being able to go at a faster speed than is realistically possible which is dangerous.

However, I’m talking about straight roads where it’s very clear to see what’s in front of you and the roads are generally not clogged up with traffic, yet for some reason you always get some twat who thinks it’s ok to do 30 or 40mph in what is clearly a 60mph road with no blind bends, just a long straight stretch. And that’s why other drivers get pissed off and angry with them.

Oh god yes, to so much of the above.

People doing well below the speed limit - regularly I'm stuck behind people doing 35 in a 50/40 in a 60. There are very few places to overtake, so the traffic builds up. If you aren't capable of handling a car at the speed limits, please go and get some lessons.

People who don't pull into the centre 'holding bit' when turning right, they pull across it or straddle that and the main lane so no-one can get past on their left.

People who sit in the left hand lane all the way round a roundabout when they're turning right, so they don't have to change lanes but they block all the correctly-positioned vehicles from being able to move out.

People who sit in lane 2 of a motorway doing 67 mph so that traffic in lane 1 either has to undertake or pull all the way out to lane 3 to get round them.

People who just pull out in front of you at junctions or who change lanes by driving at you.

People who sit so far back at lights that you could get another vehicle between them and the junction line. By the time everyone has strung themselves out, traffic behind is unable to get through the previous set of lights/junction etc.

People who will sit and wait to the side, blocking all the traffic, because they don't have the ability to get their car through a gap that's perfectly wide enough.

<and breathe>

I haven't noticed more road rage in recent years but I have noticed more gormless, thoughtless people around. The lack of willingness to zip-merge and trundlebunnies hogging the middle lane on motorways makes driving more unpleasant for everyone. People who champion their gender's ability to multitask but cannot walk through a doorway and use their phone simultaneously. People who walk around in a dreamworld meaning I have to take convoluted walking routes to get past them. Dog walkers who's purpose in life is to behave like a gas and fill any space they find themselves in. The five abreast brigade walking at half the average walking pace who you cannot get past unless you are willing to walk in the road. All these things chip chip chip chip chip away are your patience and tolerance, so it is of no surprise to me some people lose it. Thoughtlessness is a pandemic in the UK and it needs calling out and smacking down.

Are you me?! 😂

YANBU - I’ve noticed people being increasingly nasty on the roads these days.

Yep have noticed this too. Horrible

All these things chip chip chip chip chip away are your patience and tolerance, so it is of no surprise to me some people lose it.

I think this is the most accurate explanation

I agree too. In the time it took me yesterday to pick my kids up from their grandparents on my way home from work and drive them back home I experienced a slow driver doing 25mph on a 30 road, then I experienced some other twit on a go slow and then just randomly stopped dead before slowly manoeuvring to park up their car on the right without even indicating that they were going to do it. Then some other twat who barged their way through a small gap while I was driving past a line of parked cars. All this in the space of half a mile and over 2 separate roads! When you get these incidents happening in such a small space of time and it becomes a daily occurrence it really does chip away at your patience.

Did I mention people who drive with their fog lights on because it’s dark/raining/ever so slightly misty?!

<screams into a cushion>

Tbh still better than the car with no lights on on A road in a dark I spotted month and a bit ago😂

Doing 25 in a 30 is perfectly acceptable. This thread has literally morphed into what the op is talking about..a place to complain about the existence of other people who dare to be in a similar place to you. It's endemic now...everyone is busy and stressed so can't possibly cope with any instance of inconvenience or mistake and seem to massively resent anyone who ISNT doing everything at 100mph. Everyone is complaining about how horrible and selfish everyone is while clearly demonstrating their own impatient reactions. I'm a working single mum with aged parents, I'm as busy and stressed as everyone else but it's perfectly possible to have some perspective on this. Unless you're in a blue light emergency situation, none of these examples are world-ending.

Yes. the number of people who drive the wrong way round roundabouts and on the pavement is unnerving.

I have heard some companies STILL using covid as an excuse for poor service. yes Asda I'm looking at you

You must be one of those who do 25 in a 30mph. You might think it’s acceptable but it is completely unnecessary and holds other traffic up - especially when they could have gone through green lights that have now turned red due to being behind someone who drives about without any regard for other road users.

I never have wanted to tolerate ridiculously slow drivers, regardless of what sort of times we are living in now. I never wanted to have to tolerate them 30 years ago.And yes it is ignorant and selfish to go extremely slow when there’s no reason to. And it may not be world ending but extremely annoying if you’re needing to get to the train station or an emergency has happened at your child’s school and you need to get there quick because they need taking to hospital due to a fall and you’re stuck behind some twat who dawdles about everywhere!