Safe Speed Forums

My father has just done some work on his car after failing the mot and was taking it out to bed the brakes in (new pads and discs). This was friday night,on the way back home we came up the A414 (40mph limit in force) to the Marconi roundabout it's a two lane section of road up to the next roundabout, from there the left lane goes left down Westway and the right goes right to London Road Location

Father is in lane two to go right, in lane one is a golf, drifting from side to side in it's lane, it's about half a car length in front of us and starts to drift towards lane two, I'm watching this I'm not sure if my father had seen it (he says he did when we spoke afterwards) and as we pull alongside (our nose level with the other car's rear) it carries on drifting into lane two, I give a warning (I think it was watch out left), and my father accelerates hard past the golf (it is still drifting towards us). He became quite agressive in his manner.

Looking at it IMO given the car in lane one was drifting I would have held back rather than try to pass, especially when they started to drift over the line.

Also rather than acclerating hard past the car drifting I would have braked increasing the gap rather than trying to pass a car with a closing gap.

The other thing that concerns me is that IMO his driving is becoming more erratic and also more aggressive, he has always been a working driver and does press on but not quite in the erratic manner he is now starting to develop

Any thoughts/comments?

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

How old is your father? Not being funny, but is it possible that his abilities are starting to deteriorate slightly?

I agree with you that he made a bum call in booting it past the Golf that was drifting across into his lane, but even though he claimed to have seen it, he made no compensation for the hazard until you pointed the it out to him. Being Friday night I think its fair to assume that the driver of the Gold may have been either drunk or extremely tired. It might just be possible (although a bit of a long shot) that your father's noticing that his judgement and observation are slowly failing and he's finding it frustrating, so pointing out a potential hazard to him brought on the red mist?

Then comes the really tricky part. You say that he's always been a working driver, so he's confident and proud of his ability. So how do you aproach the subject? In an ideal sutuation you need to talk to him about it, tell him about your observations and possibly even suggest that he takes an observed drive or something like that. Being your father though, I can well understand how difficult it can be...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I certainly agree with Sixy he should have held back.

I assume SE you go out with your father quite a bit so you are noticing his skills slightly degenerating? Does he drive any other members of your family around so you could maybe get some backup then work out some 'positive' suggestions for your father?

In the general case of passing someone who is drifting or encroaching, there is a point where it's better to accelerate than to brake. Many such situations arise because of 'blind spot' observation failures, and using the horn can be very effective in alerting them to your presence.

It's frequently because of the blind spot nature of the problem that accelerating is effective. It's not that acceleration clears you from the danger zone, instead it moves you to a relative position where you can be seen. At this point -hopefully- chummy stops coming.

I wouldn't necessarily conclude that acceleration was an aggressive strategy in such situations. 'Unwise' and 'sub-optimal' would be far higher on the list. Before I called it aggressive, I'd want to see a pattern of behaviour.

I certainly agree that holding back would have been the better idea. This is always true when you have not entered the hazard zone when the danger becomes apparent. But we've never told drivers this - they have to work it out for themselves.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I had exactly this happen to me on approach to the M275 – approaching that dammed truvelo!!!

I noticed the guy in lane 1 (or 3 to those who know the layout, 'nasty evil company' live link here), half a length in front of me in lane 2 (or 4), drifts right. Thankfully I notice this before he leaves his lane. At that point my thoughts were ‘you’re not doing that I think you’re doing are you?’ so I was ready for him. Sure enough he carries on and drifts into my lane and doesn’t appear to be stopping. Without considering the speed camera up ahead I automatically thought it safer to brake (even though my car can certainly accelerate and I had room to do so). I also gave him the horn – believe it or not he carried on as though I wasn’t there

Deep breath – live to fight another day!

On reflection I believe I did the right thing by hanging back; I think my only error was that I didn’t check what was behind me before braking

This is one of two which I reported on nearmiss-report.org



I reckon SE’s father’s attitude is in question, his skill set might be just fine.

A bit of background, he has been a working engineer visiting sites for most of his life mostly accident free. He has a high opinion of his driving but in my opinion and others he is 'erratic', for example he accelerates hard and and brakes hard, the idea of adjusting the accelerator to control speed is not an idea he practices, most passengers he's had in the car describe him as getting a move on and tend to avoid getting a lift with him. My mother and sister are quite critical of his driving but he dismisses them as panicking.

When I did the IAM three years ago he initially was quite interested and we spoke about it, for him to quickly dismiss it as 'bullshit'. Last year I started (and failed) the Police Class 1 (I was doing this to be a volunteer emergency serices driver), he is aware of this but we don't talk about it. I don't want to create the situation where he feels he has something to prove.

There are some problems at home which I won't go into here but I feel that they are also having an effect. He is also a person who likes to be 'right'.

Sixy, no offence taken, I would say that his reactions are not slowing down in most respects he is quite sharp, eyesight and the like he is quite fussy about his glasses being right and has regular eye checks.

I only gave the warning when I thought he hadn't seen the golf drifting over.

But I am finding that he is becoming more jerky and stop start with his drving and is becoming more aggressive in his manner, pressing on when he could have held back.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh but my concern is that as I have watched hime over the last year he is deterioating, he is becoming more agressive and I am finding it difficult to raise this with him as his driving is very much a point of pride with him.

I am also concerned as professionally when I investigate accidents I am able to keep a personal bias to a minimum, but given that this is a family member I am finding it harder to keep free of bias.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

That slow web site isn't owned my Google, it is owned by a nasty evil company who have been found guilty of being a monopoly. Nasty.

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Andrew.

I think the extra information here does put a different complexion on the incident originally described. The original incident has become an example of a pattern of behaviour.

I'd now suggest that there are potentially dangerous flaws in his belief system.

The only person who can ultimately deal with 'flawed beliefs' is the individual concerned. I'd suggest that he's going to have to recognise that there's, ummm, room for improvement before anything will change.

Talking about near misses might help him to realise that there's more that can be done to avoid them. Softly, softly... Ask his advice.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

oops, you are right, I thought ....well ....I thought wrong!

I've amended my post as appropriate