What really gets your goat while driving?

[Norm]

£700 ... pfffft... cheap . You know the bulbs in halfords, they sell them for about £6 each...they cost about 20p if you get them at trade value.

I wonder what Highway Code this lot are following. They seem to get on with it, but there's a fair bit of judicious horning going on there.

 

[Dazmeister]

In a truck, you have the physical presence to just block the outside lane to prevent people pushing to the front. That way, everyone gets there a bit quicker.

What could have been a 400 yard moving queue was turned into an 800 yard near-stationary queue by a single selfish person who decided he was not only arbiter of the road rules but above them too.
Those who think they are preventing people from barging in are actually slowing the traffic down and cause longer queues. Traffic engineers want you to use both lanes, that is what they were designed to do.

I do like to see that and if the truck is near to me in the queue, I always let him in front as a gesture of solidarity with his actions.

And you actually agree with this type of action? I find it unbelievable. Solidarity? My god!
I can see why though (not that I condone it) as there are so many arrogant drivers who will push in at the very furthest point of the lane closure, some drivers of large vehicles now feel compelled to block the lane off so that arrogant idiots don't take the p*ss

Again you miss the point and don't know what you are going on about. If everyone was to reduce their speed by roughly 10-15mph get over to the correct lane a good 800 yards before the lane closes then there would be no delays. But no, you get morons that fly down the o/s lane and try and cut in at the last minute thus forcng the car in the n/s lane to brake hard and this has a knock on effect on everyone else hence hy traffic crawls at about 10-15mph.

Depends how fast you're going. If you're going anything above/about 40mph I'd expect you to be merging around the 200 yard mark or possibly earlier if travelling faster. Only if Lane 1 is crawling then merge at the end in turn. 800 yards is far too early, by effectively closing the outside lane "early" you're just making the queue longer and then leave a lane with no traffic, which is not making good use of the available lanes. It would be half as long (physically long in terms of miles of queue) if people used both lanes. If you were meant to merge half a mile back they'd have closed the road half a mile back.
I cannot get my head around the mentality that leaves a lane empty for up to a mile before a merge point. So I am happy to admit that I use it. I don’t "race" down the lane as you can never tell when someone is likely to pull out but I do start to indicate left about 150 yards before the merge point. The nature of traffic is that gaps will always appear in rows of slow moving traffic that will allow you to merge without causing disruption to other road users.

Another reason that people queue up in lane 1 so early is down to the fact that people are so flaming aggressive these days. People will literally jam themselves on the boot of the car in front from the instant they see any lane closure signs to prevent anyone from pulling in front of them. They'll maintain these lack of gaps for hundreds of metres placing themselves at extremely high risk of collisions, and for what?
It's a half and half situation. the problem is people dont know how to merge in turn but by the same token people also have an annoying habit of actually pushing in at the head of the queue (equally annoying) or even more annoying, the vigilantes who decide to block the outside lane

I think signage is important, merge in turn or lane closure signs for example "WHEN QUEUING USE BOTH LANES" . It is rare to see a 'merge in turn' sign. (However, there appears to be millions spent on cameras) . It may be obvious and common sense to some using "merge in turn", but for the majority, it needs putting up in black and white to remove any ambiguity.

Problems arise when people worry more about themselves than everyone else on the road. They try to get as far as possible down the slowly emptying outside lane, then have to rely on cars in lane one braking to allow them in (rather than filtering across as soon as a gap opens). This causes other brake lights to go on, and the jam ripples back up the road. This happens over and over again until the traffic is almost stationary. The person who cut in at the last minute then drives off, all smug, laughing at the sheep in lane one.
Drivers with some common sense (and an understanding of how their actions can affect the cars around them) will merge as soon as a gap opens up, rather than tanking down the outside lane, then braking and forcing their way in, thus causing everyone else to brake, creating a shockwave jam back down the road.

Oh and just to add a few more issues that get my goat are...

- People who are making a right turn in front of you (you are also turning right) and instead of going offside to offside, the numpty turns in front of you, thus blocking your view of oncoming traffic.
- If you're last in a queue of traffic that is nearing a exit on a motorway, there is always some idiot that barrels up the outside lane and barges his way in between you and the car in front to exit, instead of adjusting his speed to sit behind the last in queue (me).

 

[Rhythm Thief]

What could have been a 400 yard moving queue was turned into an 800 yard near-stationary queue by a single selfish person who decided he was not only arbiter of the road rules but above them too.

I can see why though (not that I condone it) as there are so many arrogant drivers who will push in at the very furthest point of the lane closure, some drivers of large vehicles now feel compelled to block the lane off so that arrogant idiots don't take the p*ss

[/QUOTE]

Erm ... you appear to be condemning me on the one hand, then saying on the other that you can see why we block the outside lane. I should point out that I'm not normally in a rush and am quite happy to let people in - I'm one of these who leaves a gap for 8-10 cars to get onto the motorway at crowded sliproad junctions - but you should remember that we can see a lot more from 12 feet off the ground than you can in your car. The only reason I'd block the outside lane is that I can see that people are just driving up to the back of a lengthening queue and pushing their way in when they get there.

 

[Inertia]

People who get in the right hand lane at a roundabout when they are going straight on. Worries me because one day one of these guys will chop me up when I go straight on and am in the correct lane.

 

[Norm]

The difficulty is that we are trying to describe specific situations and people are then expanding them to generalise. If the traffic is moving, I'll also take the right hand lane but our sense of "fair" and our ability is queue is legendary, so someone pushing to the front does cause anger, in some. But you cannot describe every situation and those you do describe are taken to display your general behaviour by people who don't sit next to you on every journey. I think that Daz shows this well (sorry, not meaning to troll, just using an example) by saying, in one post, that he uses lane 2 if it is clear before road works but that he hates people essentially doing the same thing to him at the approach of a junction.

Anyone faster than us is a dangerous lunatic, anyone slower shouldn't be allowed a driving licence.

People who get in the right hand lane at a roundabout when they are going straight on. Worries me because one day one of these guys will chop me up when I go straight on and am in the correct lane.

The Highway Code used to say you can use the right hand lane to go straight on if the left lane is blocked. Some roundabouts are marked differently and I think the words are now along the lines of exiting turn use left lane, exiting right use right lane, intermadiate exits "choose an appropriate lane" unless signs or markings indicate otherwise.

 

[Dazmeister]

... I think that Daz shows this well (sorry, not meaning to troll, just using an example) by saying, in one post, that he uses lane 2 if it is clear before road works but that he hates people essentially doing the same thing to him at the approach of a junction.

Maybe I didn't explain this very well, I tend to leave a safe distance between cars, so get slightly annoyed when someone who could effectively join the back of the queue without any hassle but decides otherwise to cut down my braking distance by squeezing themselves into a space in front of me before exiting the motorway. There is simply no need, just to gain that extra space. People feel they have to be making progress by whichever means, even if it means causing you to slow down to increase your braking distance. I've seen it many a time (this morning in fact on M3), diving in close in-front of trucks (just to make an exit) who have a longer braking distance. Where does there brain go when they perform these manoeuvres?? In that instance I am always conscious to give trucks even MORE room when completing a overtake (or exiting) for that reason.

Rhythm Thief - I still don't agree with this lane blocking technique as I personally don't think it works and makes matters worse. But what I said is I can understand how some peoples minds works and why they do it. I always try to see the bigger picture in things. Dont always agree tho!

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Rhythm Thief - I still don't agree with this lane blocking technique as I personally don't think it works and makes matters worse. But what I said is I can understand how some peoples minds works and why they do it. I always try to see the bigger picture in things. Dont always agree tho!

Fair enough. It's not something I always do. But I did it the other week to try and keep another truck behind me, as I could see he wasn't going to have enough room to get in front of me before his lane tapered out. He did get in front of me, as it happened, but he set the overhead speed camera off in doing so.

 

[Dazmeister]

Fair enough. It's not something I always do. But I did it the other week to try and keep another truck behind me, as I could see he wasn't going to have enough room to get in front of me before his lane tapered out. He did get in front of me, as it happened, but he set the overhead speed camera off in doing so.

Yer that would annoy me too as it would mean you would have had to brake hard to avoid him if the traffic was slow moving in front.
But then...he got his just rewards LOL

 

[Norm]

Maybe I didn't explain this very well

No, I think you explained yourself very well, I was just pointing out that apparent inconsistencies could be read into posts when taking a black'n'white view.

For instance, when I worked in Ruislip, most mornings there was a queue to get onto the M25 from the M4 eastbound. Very few of those queuing cars wanted to go clockwise on the M25, most were heading down towards the M3. I was ever wondering whether to get to the back of a queue going somewhere I wasn't going (which could be 2 miles back), or to wait until 200m from the junction and then, effectively, go through the queue to the empty left hand side of the exit slip.

However, pretty much whatever the circumstances, I know that even writing that makes me appear to be someone who was contemplating cutting into the exit queue late.