An epidemic of insanely slow drivers

[Driversmatter]

On Saturday just gone we joined the M25 (convoy with the Mrs) - no speed restrictions free flowing - it was busy but moving. I opted to cruise in lane one and allow the other half to catch up. We dropped to 35mph at one point in a train of cars and she still didn't catch up. It was making my teeth itch so after about ten seconds I gave up and drive normally. We met up four junctions later!

Even in the 50 bit between jj5-6 people were bumbling well below that. Maddening. Think there is a case for mandating some kind of motorway training. Hiding behind the idea that areas of the UK don't have motorway is somewhat missing the point and could at least be simulated in this tech era.

[bigothunter]

Bootdog said:

Things have changed a lot in the past decade or so :
I moved to the UK in 2012 and have done a lot of trips up and down the M1/M6 corridor in the meantime.
In 2012, lane 3 of the M1 meant you had to be at 90-100 or you'd be holding people up every time you did an overtake. I was very happy to adapt to this style of driving back then, and had some memorable "making progress" sessions over the years.
Compare this to last week, I'm now driving a campervan, and it can still do good pace but needs a bit of planning to get there. I stick to 70-ish, but will always accelerate to complete an overtake. I didn't hold anyone up, but I think I was passed at pace by maybe 5 cars over 200 miles from Liverpool down to London. There was no progress to be made due to holdups in lane 3 most of the way. Lane 2 was a disaster but lane 1 was generally almost as good as lane 3.

Most of my motorway driving these days, involves towing a heavy race transporter trailer. My speed (and progress) matches the vast majority of cars.

Sad state of affairs which is ironically called progress

[bigothunter]

irc said:

Arguably safer passing on the left. They have no idea of other traffic. At least on the left you have the hard shoulder as an escape.

A new thing is on the two lane stretch of the M8 west of Glasgow airport seeing the outside lane down to 56mph as there is an EV doing 50 in the inside lane being overtaken by HGVs. This is the route from the west highlands towards Carlisle so I presume the EVs are on a long distance run conserving range. The alternate being they are just aholes. Range issues or not there is no excuse IMO for doing less than HGV speeds on a motorway.

Yup it's pathetic

[croyde]

I'm sure that the law abiding, stick to 16 in a 20, are all bad drivers

Obviously I get stuck behind a lot of them and have time to observe.

Usually it's wildly avoiding parked cars to the left and keep left islands to the right.

Whilst I seem to keep a pretty straight course.

Got stuck behind one of these yesterday. Never sure of what lane to be at traffic lights, half in/half out, slowing to almost standstill if there was a car coming in the opposite direction, on a pretty wide road.

Then overtaking a cyclist doing 16, but our driver refused to go above 16.1, thus a very long dangerous time when he was far too close to the bicycle.

The dangerous thing is that eventually I get fed up and boot it past, if clear, and go way over the pathetic limit in order to get the overtake done as quickly as possible.

I need to move out of London and move to the middle of nowhere.

[donkmeister]

croyde said:

I'm sure that the law abiding, stick to 16 in a 20, are all bad drivers
.

Bit of a generalisation

In all parts of the country and all speed limits, you have:
1) people using the speed reported by their car and aiming to drive at the speed limit
2) people eeking out their 10% +1, with GPS reported speed
3) people who literally DGFA speed limits (or rather, about being caught) and will innit blud/cyka blyat their way through life knowing they can scaper eastwards if/when things go st-shaped.
4) everyone else.

There's dheads, road captains and bad drivers (not mutually exclusive terms) in all of those groups.

[donkmeister]

CLK-GTR said:

London is a miserable experience...especially as a driver. I went in in my car the other day for the first time since i lived there about 15 years ago. Speed/red light/yellow box/bus lane/being an inch too far to the left cameras everywhere means you can hardly concentrate on the road ahead between checking the speedo, the nav and the various signs. Then you have the taxis and locals who do know where all the cameras are trying to cut you up, the entitled cyclists coming from all directions and lastly the deranged deliveroo mopeds. I'll not be going back in a hurry.

It's definitely got worse with each passing year since they reinstated the mayoral seat. It's never been a particularly good experience TBF, but Ken started the effort to actively make it st. I'll let someone else give their theories on why it's like playing bumper cars now...

Street parking in central London was no big deal around 2000/2001, even without a residents permit you could park in loads of places for free on Sundays and evenings. These days you struggle to find street parking for visitors in many of the outer suburbs and even in provincial towns.

[Quavers]

It is now normal to see HGV 's being driven more quickly and confidently than most cars.

[M4cruiser]

Blue One said:

It is worse in London where a politically motivated 20mph limit has been imposed. This is an artificially slow speed for cars, and, thankfully most drivers seem to have intelligence to show some discretion on how much they abide to it where there aren’t cameras and clear roads.

Particularly annoying is the pool car I use a lot, on which the slowest cruise control is 20mph. So the car is constantly making "Bong"ing noises as it goes 20-21-20-19-20-21 being unable to keep to exactly 20.
But there is a way of setting it to 19, sometimes it does, I can't work out how I do it. It's just that sometimes when I "set" it and press "down" a few times it ends up at 19. Weird.

[Pan Pan Pan]

croyde said:

Pan Pan Pan said:

croyde said:

popeyewhite said:

irc said:

popeyewhite said:

Nerves/temerity in abundance on the Cheshire roads today. Most annoying instance of such was when following a Golf that braked every time another car approached.

Agreed. Very annoying following a driver who believes braking makes his car narrower.

Yes, well put.

I usually just breath in.

But you must keep all the windows shut, otherwise breathing in doesn't work!.

Closing your eyes helps too

Indeed! See no evil and there will be no evil! I was following a Range Rover on a B road recently, and the driver was braking from around 35mph down to around 20mph for every slight curve in the road, also braking, whenever another vehicle appeared coming the other way in the distance. Why do they even bother driving a car? The bus would be cheaper, faster, and they can look at the scenery as they are going along.

[irc]

The prize this week goes to the driver doing 40mph in the middle lane of the M8 (a 70mph section) just east of Paisley 8pm last night. Nothing in the inside lane for a mile ahead of him.

At the risk of being judgemental the only explanation I can think of is the he passed his test in a foreign country with lower standards and is new to the UK.

I wasn't surprised to see he had a huge dent to his offside door where it looked like negotiating a corner of some kind had also been beyond his ability.

Edited by irc on Friday 14th June 11:07

[MightyBadger]

donkmeister said:

Bit of a generalisation

In all parts of the country and all speed limits, you have:
1) people using the speed reported by their car and aiming to drive at the speed limit
2) people eeking out their 10% +1, with GPS reported speed
3) people who literally DGFA speed limits (or rather, about being caught) and will innit blud/cyka blyat their way through life knowing they can scaper eastwards if/when things go st-shaped.
4) everyone else.

There's dheads, road captains and bad drivers (not mutually exclusive terms) in all of those groups.

1,2,3, yes, there is no 4.

[croyde]

Discovered the cure for us perpetually infuriated, exasperated and close to giving up drivers.

I joined ZipCar a month ago, as I may of needed a van at the last minute, but I didn't.

I happened to be in Wandsworth and wanted to get to Hampton, and seeing as I'd already walked 7 miles, I was headed for a train station.

I saw a Zipcar parked up and then looked at my App out of interest. They had given me a £15 credit and this car was one that you could drive and head for another location, and just drop it off in any other residents permit only parking spot.

So I tapped the phone and got in, found the car key in the glovebox which was one of those keyless transponder things.

Pressed the Start button then wondered why I couldn't hear anything. The car was a Hyundai Ionic

Next I found that it could only be dropped off in the ZipZone and Hampton was well outside the boundary.

Nevermind, I'll get to the border (Raynes Park) and get the train.

So off I went in heavy traffic, jams etc but I was so relaxed. One pedal driving, it's quite a big car with plenty of space inside, quiet and no feeling of having to push on, like I do in my Abarth.

(Wasn't until I finished the drive that I realised that I was being charged 36p a minute, might have put my foot down if I had known )

So I now understand the reason to have an electric car, but hang on! the laid back driving position, the smooth surge of power, auto gearbox, where had I felt that feeling before whilst commuting from SW London to E London many years ago?

Of course, my 4.6 litre V8 Mercury Grand Marquis

Still that car used to get 12mpg on that run. The ZipCar cost me £12.60 for a 4 mile journey that took half an hour, exactly the same as an Uber but I'd much prefer to drive myself anyway.

I conclude that the answer to our troubles is a big armchair-like driver's seat with either electric motor or an auto V8 petrol with at least 5.0 litres.

[-Lummox-]

CLK-GTR said:

London is a miserable experience...especially as a driver. I went in in my car the other day for the first time since i lived there about 15 years ago. Speed/red light/yellow box/bus lane/being an inch too far to the left cameras everywhere means you can hardly concentrate on the road ahead between checking the speedo, the nav and the various signs. Then you have the taxis and locals who do know where all the cameras are trying to cut you up, the entitled cyclists coming from all directions and lastly the deranged deliveroo mopeds. I'll not be going back in a hurry.

Does make me chuckle at the consecutive comments about "entitled cyclists" in London traffic. Would the drivers who complain about them prefer it if the people commuting by bike were taking up another car space in the traffic jam instead? Would that somehow make things better? Or are they ironically demonstrating their own sense of entitlement by expressing that the cars have more "right" to use the roads than the bicycles? Most people riding a bike in London are doing so for work rather than leisure, so if they weren't on their bikes, they'd need to be in another vehicle of some sort instead, even if it was (the often awful, unreliable, overcrowded and overpriced) public transport.

What makes a cyclist "entitled" anyway? The fact that they try to make progress through standing / slow moving traffic because they've realised the utter idiocy of trying to drive a car through London rush-hour traffic? Does the fact that a cyclist can make progress through slow moving traffic where cars can't, make them "entitled" - or just shows that they've put some thought into how to get where they are going with the least hassle and most haste given the circumstances and road conditions, and it's really the car-driving rush hour road captains with a chip on their shoulder that are the problem?

Obviously I'm somewhat biased in this one as I drive (outside of work) and am a cyclist & train commuter, but I know that London traffic is a nightmare these days and you'd have to be incredibly patient / foolhardy / stubborn (or a combination of all 3) to commute in it by car. It sometimes feels like those who choose to drive a car in inevitably heavy traffic, bear a grudge to the cyclists (and motorcyclists) who have chosen to use 2 wheels instead of 4 to get where they are going quicker.

That's not to say there aren't any bad cyclists, because of course there are plenty - just like there are plenty of bad drivers, bad pedestrians and every other kind of road user. But I don't agree with the simplistic "cyclists bad, drivers good" kind of generalisations that seem to get thrown around.

As someone who commutes in London traffic most weekdays, I see far more accidents caused (or only narrowly averted) by a certain kind of phone-zombie pedestrians than cyclists or other road users. You know the ones, eyes locked on their screens, headphones in, stepping out into traffic without even a cursory glance... Or "entitled" pedestrians who feel like red lights don't apply to them at lighted (not zebra) pedestrian crossings with oncoming traffic, because their journey is more important than everyone else's so they should just be allowed to ignore red lights to them if it means they can complete their journey sooner... Or the person 10 seconds ahead of them crossed so they assume (without looking) that it must still be safe to cross for them, too... London pedestrians are the biggest road menace of all... But nobody seems to grumble about "bloody pedestrians!!!" as if they should all be destroyed!

Of course this is just my experience, YMMV... but when it comes to slow moving or stationary traffic in towns and cities, the overarching problem seems to usually be that there's just too much traffic, rather than one particular scapegoat-class of road user causing the problem...

[Julian Scott]

croyde said:

Discovered the cure for us perpetually infuriated, exasperated and close to giving up drivers.

I joined ZipCar a month ago, as I may of needed a van at the last minute, but I didn't.

I happened to be in Wandsworth and wanted to get to Hampton, and seeing as I'd already walked 7 miles, I was headed for a train station.

I saw a Zipcar parked up and then looked at my App out of interest. They had given me a £15 credit and this car was one that you could drive and head for another location, and just drop it off in any other residents permit only parking spot.

So I tapped the phone and got in, found the car key in the glovebox which was one of those keyless transponder things.

Pressed the Start button then wondered why I couldn't hear anything. The car was a Hyundai Ionic

Next I found that it could only be dropped off in the ZipZone and Hampton was well outside the boundary.

Nevermind, I'll get to the border (Raynes Park) and get the train.

So off I went in heavy traffic, jams etc but I was so relaxed. One pedal driving, it's quite a big car with plenty of space inside, quiet and no feeling of having to push on, like I do in my Abarth.

(Wasn't until I finished the drive that I realised that I was being charged 36p a minute, might have put my foot down if I had known )

So I now understand the reason to have an electric car, but hang on! the laid back driving position, the smooth surge of power, auto gearbox, where had I felt that feeling before whilst commuting from SW London to E London many years ago?

Of course, my 4.6 litre V8 Mercury Grand Marquis

Still that car used to get 12mpg on that run. The ZipCar cost me £12.60 for a 4 mile journey that took half an hour, exactly the same as an Uber but I'd much prefer to drive myself anyway.

I conclude that the answer to our troubles is a big armchair-like driver's seat with either electric motor or an auto V8 petrol with at least 5.0 litres.

Cars and very busy cities are near pointless now.

I do however use YEGO and other similar products when in European cities and use either an Electric Vespa or Electric Scooter - they are brilliant. We've used YEGO to sightsee around many a European city and used the them and the stand-up scooters as A-to-B transport costing pretty much nothing.

Clearly it doesn't work in the UK as they get vandalised and the weather is so ste.

[KTMsm]

I've been on a lads holiday in Europe using 3 cars

My passenger was an HGV driver who kept telling me it was all about average speed and there was no point going above 50

I was being good and not exceeding the speed limit but sitting dead on it by GPS (110 / 130kmh)

He refused to stay in my car and swapped passengers with one of the slower drivers

The next day we did a 4 hour trip, well I did, his trip took 5 1/2 hours and he missed dinner

I sent him a photo of my steak

[PlywoodPascal]

I've a new commute to work that involve using a dual carriageway now.
Almost every single time I am behind someone else on the slip road, they are joining at 50mph or below, sometimes even as low 40mph. that's into free flowing traffic, by the way, not heavy traffic or anything.
I don't understand what these people are thinking.

[simon_harris]

PlywoodPascal said:

I've a new commute to work that involve using a dual carriageway now.
Almost every single time I am behind someone else on the slip road, they are joining at 50mph or below, sometimes even as low 40mph. that's into free flowing traffic, by the way, not heavy traffic or anything.
I don't understand what these people are thinking.

they aren't thinking, or paying attention - that is the crux of the problem.

[CLK-GTR]

-Lummox- said:

Does make me chuckle at the consecutive comments about "entitled cyclists" in London traffic. Would the drivers who complain about them prefer it if the people commuting by bike were taking up another car space in the traffic jam instead? Would that somehow make things better? Or are they ironically demonstrating their own sense of entitlement by expressing that the cars have more "right" to use the roads than the bicycles? Most people riding a bike in London are doing so for work rather than leisure, so if they weren't on their bikes, they'd need to be in another vehicle of some sort instead, even if it was (the often awful, unreliable, overcrowded and overpriced) public transport.

What makes a cyclist "entitled" anyway? The fact that they try to make progress through standing / slow moving traffic because they've realised the utter idiocy of trying to drive a car through London rush-hour traffic? Does the fact that a cyclist can make progress through slow moving traffic where cars can't, make them "entitled" - or just shows that they've put some thought into how to get where they are going with the least hassle and most haste given the circumstances and road conditions, and it's really the car-driving rush hour road captains with a chip on their shoulder that are the problem?

Obviously I'm somewhat biased in this one as I drive (outside of work) and am a cyclist & train commuter, but I know that London traffic is a nightmare these days and you'd have to be incredibly patient / foolhardy / stubborn (or a combination of all 3) to commute in it by car. It sometimes feels like those who choose to drive a car in inevitably heavy traffic, bear a grudge to the cyclists (and motorcyclists) who have chosen to use 2 wheels instead of 4 to get where they are going quicker.

That's not to say there aren't any bad cyclists, because of course there are plenty - just like there are plenty of bad drivers, bad pedestrians and every other kind of road user. But I don't agree with the simplistic "cyclists bad, drivers good" kind of generalisations that seem to get thrown around.

As someone who commutes in London traffic most weekdays, I see far more accidents caused (or only narrowly averted) by a certain kind of phone-zombie pedestrians than cyclists or other road users. You know the ones, eyes locked on their screens, headphones in, stepping out into traffic without even a cursory glance... Or "entitled" pedestrians who feel like red lights don't apply to them at lighted (not zebra) pedestrian crossings with oncoming traffic, because their journey is more important than everyone else's so they should just be allowed to ignore red lights to them if it means they can complete their journey sooner... Or the person 10 seconds ahead of them crossed so they assume (without looking) that it must still be safe to cross for them, too... London pedestrians are the biggest road menace of all... But nobody seems to grumble about "bloody pedestrians!!!" as if they should all be destroyed!

Of course this is just my experience, YMMV... but when it comes to slow moving or stationary traffic in towns and cities, the overarching problem seems to usually be that there's just too much traffic, rather than one particular scapegoat-class of road user causing the problem...

With that comment i was specifically referring to the lady on a Boris Bike who pulled out of a side road without looking, causing me to slam my brakes on, and then proceeded to hold everybody up veering across most of the lane as she trundled up the road.

There are good cyclists and there are bad cyclists, but with the new hierarchy of road users the bad ones seem to feel its given them carte blanche to ride however they like and the rest of the world must work around them.

[Muddle238]

MightyBadger said:

donkmeister said:

Bit of a generalisation

In all parts of the country and all speed limits, you have:
1) people using the speed reported by their car and aiming to drive at the speed limit
2) people eeking out their 10% +1, with GPS reported speed
3) people who literally DGFA speed limits (or rather, about being caught) and will innit blud/cyka blyat their way through life knowing they can scaper eastwards if/when things go st-shaped.
4) everyone else.

There's dheads, road captains and bad drivers (not mutually exclusive terms) in all of those groups.

1,2,3, yes, there is no 4.

I think 4 are those who will only do X-10, where X is the posted speed limit, "just to be on the safe side".

Then there's group 5, who do 40 everywhere, regardless and then finally group 6, who do 35 through the twisties and anywhere where it's not possible, safe or legal to overtake, gradually growing a ever-lengthening convoy of traffic behind them, right up until they get to a straight stretch and then they gun it up to 60, thus preventing any of the tailback from being able to pass.

Group 4, 5 and 6 make me wish that there was some jurisdiction for legally ramming drivers off the road.

[matchmaker]

Travelling along the M80 out of Glasgow a few weeks ago. 70mph limit, road fairly clear. I came upon a line of 3 cars doing 60 in the outside lane, behind a P plated Nissan. Nothing in the inside lane for at least half a mile. fk it I thought, I passed all four on the inside giving a long and sustained blast of the horn as I passed the Nissan. They got the hint and moved left.

As they were on P plates, presumably they had recently passed their test. How the juddering fk did they pass?