Safe Speed Forums

Strangely enough , on a journey to Peterboro via A14 and A605 recently i found the same gents in company looking cars (Mondideo/ focus etc) who sat up the exhaust pipes of all traffic on the A14 DC passing all in sight , when faced with an ordinary non DC road didn't know what to do when faced with a long straight ahead and a tractor doing 30 MPH, and nothing coming other way - lobotomised into forgetting the act of overtaking??

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

All good reasons, I've been in most of them myself (eg. a drive home from Penzance with a car engine in the back of the van that was proving difficult to secure ie. every time we'd tighten it, it would just stretch the straps or pull them loose if you gave it more than 0.0001g in a corner.)

Yes I built up a queue. Every time there was a safe overtaking opportunity, I'd position myself to the left of the carriageway. If there were no turnings ahead I'd give a couple of flashes of the left signal which is generally interpreted as "I'm not going to be a wanker about it and speed up if you overtake now". Sometimes if the overtaking opportunity was marginal I'd slow down even more in order to make it safer for the overtaker. Most people would get the message and overtake, I'd usually get appreciative waves.

Occasionally you'd get some idiot behind who will sit 3 inches off your bumper for miles and miles of SC A road with nothing coming the other way, but never attempts an overtake once, and then the queue really builds up as once you have two or three of these on your tail it's basically the same as trying to overtake an HGV.

I don't get this mentality. It's obvious I'm not going to go any faster, and if you hit me you'll be buying me a nice new CA18DET engine from Nissan (it should have been fairly visible through the rear windows), so either back off or overtake. I'd usually pull over at the next layby to get rid of these people.


I am, however convinced that some people beleive that crossing the centre line is illegal. I had a classic example of this on the way down to Penzance. On an SC section with lanes that were about 1.99 car widths wide, there was an HGV keeping left and doing 40, and a Range Rover tailgating it and keeping right, wheels almost touching the line. There must have been about 6 inches of HGV preventing the range rover from overtaking without crossing the centre line, but they just would not go past.

I was approaching at 60 in the van with crappy acceleration. Took one look at the situation (long, straight, sunny, midday, nothing coming the other way for miles), I eventually reached the Range Rover who still wasn't overtaking so just drove around the pair of them without slowing down, much to the amusement of my passenger.

I got rather a lot of abuse about 5 miles later when it went DC and the Range Rover finally caught up with me.

two things :-
1 I do like the sign "baby on board" as my immediate thought is
Yes - holding the steering wheel
2 as I drive a white van
in the summer time more than winter, I do find that a growing number of holiday cars do either pull into a lay by to let me pass then pull out again, or slow down and pull to the left when its clear , with a left indicator sometimes, to let me pass, when this happens, I make sure the driver gets a clear message of thanks, by a beep, wave, and indicator flash each way, hazard light blink, this shows my appreciation for the thought, I'm working they are on holiday and appreciate I need to MOVE,
sometimes come up behind and indicate right will get a good result, if 1 your not to fast on approaching thier rear, and back off quickly after indicating you wish to overtake, you can usually tell by thier attitude if they are wiling to comply.

_________________
Brian of Plymouth
When will the government realise , that to err is only human, to be perfect is to be GOD.

And anyone with a massive "ginger" sign on their roof has got to be a bit odd too...

Awww! Give the bloke a break! He's brave enough to tell the World that he has a small dick and is inviting you to pass him...Well, that's the way I read it, anyway!

The Flash/hand shandy brigade have their own agenda that I generally ignore. They obviously detest driving, so that's their loss. I have two ways of dealing with them:-
1) A cheery 'hail, fellow - well met!' wave and toot of the old twin-tone Mazzers as I resume lane, or;
2) Upon resuming lane, heave the choke toggle out full for a couple of seconds and fill their cockpit with about four pounds of half-burnt hydrocarbons to cheer them on their way for the next twenty miles...
Puerile, but ho-wicked fun!

A final bit of childishness on my part is to blast past plastic-laden Chavmobiles in third and kick in the overdrive as I draw level - the victim may even commit suicide in the belief that they have just been roasted by a thirty-year-old automatic!

_________________
Aquila



Licat volare si super tergum aquila volat...

Ones that annoy me are the dickheads who will not get a move, yet when you over take them, speed up to stop you pulling in front of them.

Thier other little 'game' is to sit behind a hgv not overtaking but when someone behind them can get a clear overtake they pull out as if to overtake but don't actually do it forcing the other car back behind them.

_________________
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

I had one the other day, white rover 25 doing 50 (in a 60) on the A41 just north of Waddesdon, being followed by a young lad in a Pug 106. I'd been following the pair of them for a while with no change in speed other than the rover dropping to 40 for turns sharper than half a degree.

I determined that the Pug wanted to get past but didn't stand a chance. I knew that a bit further up there is a very short bit of uphill dual carriageway with two lanes available. I came to the conclusion that the 106 would attempt to overtake here and had a high chance of failure, so I overtook the pair of them before the DC bit and proceeded at 60ish (increasing to 70ish on the DC bit)

Yes the pug did try to overtake, what I didn't anticipate was the Rover driver speeding up to about 85 preventing the Pug from getting past, then continuing at this speed once it was back to an SC until they were sat right on my arse for the rest of the A41. (or at least until the next roundabout where I left them for dead. Yay for AWD! )

Can anyone explain why people do that, I just dont get it.

Because the drivers of the nation are divided into two camps:

1. Those who want to get from over here to over there at their choice of speed, be it fast or slow.
2. Those who's speed and behaviour is affected by those around them. These drivers are called "wankers"

I'd rephrase that to, "Those who's behaviour is affected by those around them".
A drivers speed is always affected by those in front of them.

_________________
Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Fair point...

Noticed something interesting this morning... Drove back from mid-Wales to the midlands in the "mem-sahib's" MGF, with the roof down (it was a glorious morning!). Normally, when nipping along and doing a moderate amount of overtaking I expect to get flashed at by a couple of the "Molehusband Brigade"... Yet this morning, not one... Could it be that, seeing my not inconsiderable amount of (very) grey hair flying in the breeze, they were too embarrassed to remonstrate as they'd been overtaken by a very obvious OAP?

Now all I need is a couple of weeks to get the knots out!!

_________________
"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

Just take it off and stick it in the washing machine

I'll have you know, young Riggers, that if I was able to do that with it, it wouldn't be grey!!

_________________
"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev