Driving in town

[NiceCupOfTea]

Just been thinking about this in another post I made.

I did my IAM training on a combination of rural/suburban/motorway/town roads as of course we all should, but I find when I get into big cities (London in my case) a lot of what I learned can't be applied. There are loads of things that I just don't feel trained for and so I have always reverted to "town driving mode" that is, being quite forceful, discourteous, and "when in Rome", etc.

A couple of things spring to mind, for example - queueing for junctions on dual carriageways where the traffic is moving gradually but slowly. Rather than leaving a gap in front of me and just idling in first to move slowly while others go stop go stop, I join in with them. If I do the former, I have found that time after time after time people will just pull into the gap forcing me to brake, and after half an hour or so I end a good 5 minutes further back in the queue.

Similarly, in slow traffic I will tend to close a gap in front of me if it looks like somebody will pull into it - as again I end up shunted back in the queue.

Questionable lane discipline on some roundabouts, because if you follow the markings (which are frequently odd or counter-intuitive) you go against the flow of what everybody else is doing which can cause "issues".

hogging a lane in busy traffic as you know that if you pull in you will need to come out 30 seconds later and a steady stream of tailgating traffic won't let you or will close up any gap to prevent you (as I do ).

closed lane signs - "X" - over a carriageway. If you are a regular at the Blackwall Tunnel going south when it is closed you often see one lane closed, with "L/" arrows for a couple of gantries and then "X"s over the appropriate lanes. All fine and good when the traffic is flowing, but as they are generally accompanied by 2 miles of stationary traffic, this causes problems. Do you pull over as soon as you see the arrows? Do you continue as far as the red cross? (Do not proceed any further in this lane IIRC) or do you do what most people do and continue right to where that lane is coned off and then try to merge? This latter sounds wrong (as it is past the X's) but is what usually happens and as the traffic is stationary makes the most sense as everybody "knows" where to merge (although the people who changed lanes at the initial "L/" are not generally very happy. It is often difficult to know what to do - whether to be righteous, or to get home 2 hours earlier

Part of my problem is that I feel a complete hypocrite!

Sorry for the rambling post, just my thoughts spilling out. Just wondered if anybody could offer me any advice on this as my IAM training goes down the toilet when I am faced with stationary traffic and 3 hour 20 mile journeys home

[GreenV8S]

Don't know which area you're in, maybe the traffic you get is worse than the stuff I have to put up with. But I find that I can 'smooth out' waves in the traffic by keeping a steady average speed and more or less coasting to a stop or just applying a whisper of brakes when the traffic stops. Very occasionally people dive in to the gap this leaves, but more often thn not it seems that these were people who needed/wanted to change lane and were waiting for a safe opportunity, and not just people trying to gain advantage by lane-hopping. I'm quite happy to let people in under those circumstances. I'm also happy to let one car out of every side road I pass in stop/start traffic and I'll let a gap open as I go past to help them out. I won't routinely let more than one car out, and it's quite straight easy to make it clear from positioning and closing speed that I'm not stopping to let the next car out too.

[NiceCupOfTea]

I do try to do that, but I can think of a couple of roads in particular where people will just keep filling the gaps to the extent where you feel like you might as well park up and let everybody go in front of you

[7db]

Stick with it. I thought that advanced driving had no place in London, but actually it has a huge place in London driving. Chill out about the odd one or two people in front of you and plan your route to avoid the really big delays -- bus routes and red lights. Always leave tyres and tarmac, but use firm acceleration where there is space to create a bubble of safety. Where do you have your queuing trouble?

[NiceCupOfTea]

Blackwall Tunnel northern/southern approaches spring to mind - crawls, then stops, crawls, then stops. Looking around at autos at the moment because it is driving me nuts I will try it the next time I do it. Deep breaths required

[TripleS]

Do you need to leave such large gaps that people are tempted to push in front of you?

...or are people just extraordinarily pushy down there?

In any case I would think an advanced driving style is still relevant, but it might be adjusted a bit to suit the conditions, rather than abandoned completely.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[StressedDave]

Just ask yourself how big a 2-second gap really is when you're crawling. It's not very big. The secret is to make the gap large enough that you have good forward vision, enabling you to plan, but not so big that it looks attractive to vehicles in the other lanes.