Spent a few days down in Dorset, only about 70 miles door to door though lots of winding roads, on the way down I was stuck for literally about 20 mins about 5 cars back from a hay wagon doing 15 to 20 mph, so in that 20 mins we, a queue of perhaps 20 vehicles, did about 5 or 6 miles when we might have done about 15 miles! How much collective time was wasted? What was the knock on effect in congestion terms? All because the driver could be bothered to pull over for perhaps a minute in every 10 to let some vehicles past.
On the return I was following two cars both towing caravans, they were it seemed together, I was not behind them for too long though could have overtaken and been on my way much more speedily if only the driver of the second one had left enough of a gap to allow an overtaking car to pull-in in between so as to be able to overtake them in two bites.
Rather frustrating both!
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It's the "I've got as much right to be on the road as you have" mentality winning over the "What can I do to ensure traffic flows well?" awareness. It also keeps idiots in the midle lane, effectively reducing many motorways to two lanes.
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Stevie
Lakland 44-02 Sunburst
Yamaha YTS-23
Mexican Telecaster
Alesis Micron
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A lot of the time this basically comes down to not thinking of other people and what they might want - i.e. and a lack of good manners.
We are all guilty at some time or other, I suppose.
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I'm often left frustrated by this as I work in the middle of no-where and often commute to work using country roads. I'm frequently stuck behind tractors and slow moving HGV's. When discussing it with a friend he stated that a tractor should only be on the road for a maximum of 2 miles. Not sure if this is the case? but they rarely pull over which results in some people doing some exceptionally dangerous over taking manoeuvres.
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Got behind a tractor on Friday evening, with four cars already behind it. It was going at 30mph too.
As soon as a safe overtaking place appeared, the first car overtook followed by the rest of them including me.
The problem arises when the first car behind the tractor is a pink fluffy dice, which happens quite often.
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Got behind a tractor on Friday evening >>
A Chelsea tractor Lud?
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"first car behind the tractor is a pink fluffy dice"
The cars are usually perfectly all right - its the drivers you have to watch
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So you travel to the country, where some farmer is earning his living and going about his business on his roads? You will be moaning about cows smelling and sheep bleating next.
blinking grockels
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< Ex RF, Ex TVM >
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Living in a tourist area, I find the behaviour of drivers of farm machinery changes during the holiday season. They seem quite willing to pull over and let cars past once they get a queue of about five most of the time, but when the place is full of tourists they get a bit more bolshy and carry on regardless.
Probably as P'd off with shed tuggers and portaloo drivers as the rest of us.
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'So you travel to the country, where some farmer is earning his living and going about his business on his roads? You will be moaning about cows smelling and sheep bleating next.'
Fair point, but they must be aware that they're slowing people down and causing a nuisance. The police would pull someone over for driving at 5 to 10mph on a National speed limit road, so what's the difference with a tractor? Both are causing problems for other road users.
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It is also contrary to the Highway Code:
www.highwaycode.gov.uk/15.htm#145
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>>So you travel to the country, >>
Eh, where is my post gone ? I replied to AE on this at about 19:20 last night, IIRC I said:
No mi amigo Espanol, I live in the country and was travelling through it.
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you realise that the tractor pulls over , lets queue pass, gets rude hand signals and verbal abuse , waits a couple of minutes , gets going again and two minutes has an even bigger queue behind. allow yourselves 5 mins. extra for your journies, enjoy the music and the views and chill out, much better for the blood pressure. however i don't condone the idiots who let queues build up for miles, just remember the tractor driver has just as tight schedules to keep and also has to beat the weather, so when you get the chance drop a couple of gears, floor the pedal and pass. thankyou, jag.
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Jag, the point in my OP was that a queue of 20 vehicles stuck for 20 mins doing say 20 mph instead of 40 wastes collectively 200 minutes, all because the driver could be bothered to pull over for perhaps a minute in every 10 to let some vehicles past, a total of 2 minutes of his time in a 20 minute journey.
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cheddar, i agree with you as you can see from the middle of my posting, i was just trying to look at the problem from the other side. jag.
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all because the driver could be bothered to pull over for perhaps a minute in every 10 to let some vehicles past
Could *not* be bothered, surely. Unfortunately the occasional individual is worse than that, deliberately not pulling over, or in the case of one person I knew, driving a large van close to another slow vehicle in front to prevent others from overtaking. Disgraceful, but fortunately not very widespread (deliberate) behaviour.
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Could *not* be bothered surely. >>
Yes sorry, thanks, I missed out the "not" in two posts - doh!
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This year, due to the small windows of fine weather, I think we should forgive farm vehicles getting in the hay/crops. These have to be bailed in dry weather (damp hay etc grows fungus) and if you have numerous acres of hay to get in, the forecast is for more rain, then you are driven to move it under shelter quickly - otherwise you have to buy in feed and bedding come the winter. This happened a few years ago and thousands of bales of hay had to be brought down to the south from elsewhere which then doubled++ the cost. Yes, more disruption on the roads as the vehicles to move the hay were vast!
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