Agree with the "too many cars, too little road" comment - thats the root cause of our woes - I've driven round several large and busy continental cities and their driving can be just as bad as ours...
One other thing is the need to 'get to where you are going before you've set off' syndrome - we seem to have inherited this off the US, you also see it in supermarket queues - over in Europe everyone takes their time but over here if we're not served in less than 2 minutes all hell breaks loose... and a person with 8 items in the 5 or less checkout.....!!
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I am just gob smacked on what I see on the roads. It is often the same kind of people in the same type of car too. They just think they are invinisbile. I just don't get why people are so rushed it is ten times quicker than the bus.
Edited by Webmaster on 31/10/2008 at 23:41
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Courtesy, decorum, define it how you will. Walk around a typical French town at night and observe the general standard of conduct of the locals. Conduct the same excercise in any British town and you could quickly draw the conclusion that Brits are fairly uncouth by comparison.
Maybe it's genetic, maybe it's cultural, I wouldn't know. Whatever the reasons, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that some of this behaviour is reflected in driving standards.
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Its not all sweetness and light in France. On the open road it can be very pleasant (especially when you're relaxed and on holiday). In the larger towns I find that French drivers are often more aggressive and impatient than British drivers. I think their accident rate is also quite a bit higher than ours.
As mentioned above, better to relax a little and stop seeing every other driver as someone who is out to block your progress.
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Over the last year and half, I've driven in France, Austria, Germany, Ireland, and the USA. You see inconsiderate and sloppy driving everywhere. I tend to agree that things are worse in the UK than elsewhere, but then I do tend to be pretty negative about modern Britain in general :-)
Westpig wrote: "Why is our country becoming more and more rude and ignorant when it comes to motoring?"
Maybe because, as gordonbennet and Humph have observed, we tend to be more rude and ignorant when it comes to everything. Courtesy and decorum are out of fashion.
However, there may be something in the "too many cars, too little road" theory. I've gone on about this before, but the old chestnut, which has become received political wisdom, that "if you build more roads you get more traffic", isn't helping.
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I have to agree with the OP here. I often feel as though I'm driving through a real-life version of the Hazard Perception Test. And before anyone comes on here and tells me that that is what I should be doing as a matter of course, you know what I mean...! :-)
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I left the UK 9 years ago to live in Germany. I come back periodically, mainly on business. I don't know whether things have got worse on the roads in the UK or whether it was always like that. I do get the feeling though, that there seem to be a lot more people on the roads in the UK these days who have no consideration for, or awareness of, other road users than there used to be. Maybe there are simply a lot more road users.
People in the UK, though, generally seem to be more selfish than I remember and there seems to be a real "me me me" attitude towards life which is probably reflected in the way people drive. Whenever I'm in the US, I'm always struck by how friendly, polite and willing to help the americans are (except in New York and Boston). It struck me that this sort of behaviour is what my parents (at least in their rose tinted memories) think of as British. So maybe the Americans make the better Brits these days!
The standard of driving in the US on the other hand...
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I had an experience on the A34 near Oxford yesterday which made me *almost* sympathise with outside lane hoggers for a second.
Travelling at the legal limit-ish in lane 2 overtaking an HGV, there's a couple of HGVs about half a mile ahead in lane 1, but nothing else. I return to lane 1.
After 10 seconds or so, a steady stream of cars starts to overtake me. As I half the gap between me and the HGVs ahead, I signal to pull out into lane 2. Not one person lets me out. Inevitably, I catch the HGVs, and spend half a mile sitting at 50 mph waiting to overtake. Had I "lane hogged", I would have maintained my speed without any problem at all.
I drove in Germany for the first time last month (North to South on the autobahns) and it reminded me how joyous proper lane discipline is.
Edited by DP on 31/10/2008 at 11:13
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After 10 seconds or so, a steady stream of cars starts to overtake me. As I half the gap between me and the HGVs ahead, I signal to pull out into lane 2. Not one person lets me out. Inevitably, I catch the HGVs, and spend half a mile sitting at 50 mph waiting to overtake. Had I "lane hogged", I would have maintained my speed without any problem at all.
Well, they shouldn't brake to let you out - that simply causes inconvenience or worse to the following stream. If the gaps were big enough, I'd have accelerated into one - that shouldn't faze anyone too much. If the inter-vehicle gaps weren't big enough - then that's life really - a bit like waiting at a junction with a stream of traffic passing - you simply have to wait.
I frequently anticipate overtaking blocking points - caused by mimsers or speed-restricted vehicles & make my move early - if someone is closing on me & I know I'll be boxed in my lane, I move while there's still a safe gap. Sometimes I don't bother, I do an economy calculation: does spending a few seconds more waiting justify the 'cost' (in fuel) of accelerating past something to maintain speed or if the closing vehicle is going faster than I'd like to accelerate to, to avoid slowing them unduly.
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Well they shouldn't brake to let you out - that simply causes inconvenience or worse to the following stream. If the gaps were big enough I'd have accelerated into one - that shouldn't faze anyone too much. If the inter-vehicle gaps weren't big enough - then that's life really - a bit like waiting at a junction with a stream of traffic passing - you simply have to wait.
A junction is different, though. You have to negotiate it if you want to use one of the roads that passes through it. In this case, by driving 'correctly', I put myself in a position that driving 'incorrectly' would have completely avoided. If I'd sat in lane 2, perhaps squeezed it on a bit to avoid inconveniencing the cars behind me, it simply wouldn't have happened.
The A34 is always an eye opener. It really does have an HGV lane, and an "everything else" lane. For the volume of traffic it carries, the road is woefully inadequate.
In my case above, making an early move would have involved pulling back out within the first 10 seconds, in which case I may as well have carried merrily along in lane 2 between the two overtakes. The actual distance between overtakes was more than enough to justify pulling back in.
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After 10 seconds or so a steady stream of cars starts to overtake me. As I half the gap between me and the HGVs ahead I signal to pull out into lane 2. Not one person lets me out. Inevitably I catch the HGVs and spend half a mile sitting at 50 mph waiting to overtake. Had I "lane hogged" I would have maintained my speed without any problem at all. Well they shouldn't brake to let you out - that simply causes inconvenience or worse to the following stream. If the gaps were big enough I'd have accelerated into one - that shouldn't faze anyone too much. If the inter-vehicle gaps weren't big enough - then that's life really- a bit like waiting at a junction with a stream of traffic passing - you simply have to wait.
At motorway speeds, if the inter-vehicle gaps aren't big enough then the two second rule is being violated. So I could just as easily turn your statement around and say to the "tailgaters" [*]: If the vehicle ahead is lane hogging instead of moving in to the left - then that's life really - a bit like waiting at a junction with a stream of traffic passing - you simply have to wait.
The lane hogger shouldn't be lane hogging, but the tailgaters shouldn't be tailgating. Two wrongs don't make a right, but it's difficult to feel any sympathy for the tailgaters being held up when it's only happening because of their own wrongdoing.
[*] I'm using the word "tailgaters" as shorthand for "violators of the two second rule". It might not be quite the right word to use, but I can't think of a better one right now.
You missed an important point though. DP also said that he signalled and still nobody let him out. The car immediately behind may not be able to let you out without braking, but two or three cars back has ample opportunity to see the signal and gently lift off to open up a gap for you without presenting a significant hazard to following traffic. But it didn't happen, and it hardly ever does. This particular lack of courtesy seems so prevalent that for short gaps between vehicles I want to overtake, I have started to seriously consider and use the lane hogging option.
I know I shouldn't do it, but the traffic behind shouldn't be driving in such a way that it's that hard for me to rejoin. Faced with the choice of doing the right thing and inconveniencing only myself, or doing the wrong thing and inconvienceing only those who would have needlessly inconvenienced me had I done the right thing, it's not a hard decision sometimes.
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Having studied the driving habits from my hotel window in Lisbon recently, I can state that drivers there don't yet understand roundabouts. General behaviour is relaxed, and hooting only starts at what is considered an improper obstruction. But gyratory lane discipline - forget it.
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>The old chestnut, which has become received political wisdom, that "if you build more roads you get more traffic"<
I presume from this remark that you don't accept the truth of the chestnut. I personally do. But whatever the truth, you might accept that adding 10% (say) to UK's road network to accommodate 10% more traffic is financially impossible, especially now.
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Andrew, if I may be permitted to quote what I wrote elsewhere on this forum (sorry - sounds a bit conceited, quoting oneself)
"More roads only leads to considerably more traffic in situations where there were not enough roads before. If there are sufficient roads to meet the transport needs of an area, any increase in traffic will be absolutely tiny. If road-building does produce materially more traffic, it is basically an indication that the transport infrastructure was inadequate before, or that it was soon going to become inadequate. "
For more, see www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=66281
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In Spain I've noticed that when you overtake on twisting, hilly roads to get by a lorry, say, oncoming traffic will slow to let you get safely by. Otherwise traffic would never go anywhere. Can't see that happening here where people "own" the bit of road they drive on.
I see that midlifecrisis said in response to OP: >> I've got a permanent bump on my head I've banged it against the wall so often. >>
I think that explains a lot. Just joking, of course.
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Tyro - that argument is a little facile. It applies equally to the growth in air traffic - until after WW2 that traffic didn't exist. The arrival of increasingly cheap flying created it (satisfied a need, if you prefer). The M25 was built to take a calculated level of traffic, but as it didn't 'replace' any large existing roads, it created new traffic which it couldn't take after a relatively short time. Many road improvements to eliminate bottlenecks cause a new one down the (new) road.
At the level of road saturation in the UK, new roads are often sticking-plaster solutions to local problems. Our vehicle:length of road proportion is too high. When drivers find cars become impossible they will either stop or try something else.
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When drivers find cars become impossible they will either stop or try something else.
And then, once the roads have freed up a bit, people will notice and return to cars. Recreating the problem.
The congestion problem can not be solved by any means other than pricing people off the roads. IMHO. Not that I'm advocating it.
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IMO traffic density may be a contributory factor; but I think its more about drivers' mindset, the selfish attitudes pervading society in general.
On my particular road/ motorway commute in the midlands I'm not directly affected by much congestion. I see it twice daily on the opposite carriageway, but I can sometimes go a week without being held up significantly myself. But I can still see every example of incompetent, ignorant, selfish driving, in light or moderate traffic.
I can sometimes go a few days and only see one or two stupid incidents. Then there seems to be a silly day where loads of people are at it! And the silly day does not have to have heavier traffic. It can sometimes be notably worse at weekends than weekdays; less commuting regulars and an influx of drivers not used to the motorway.
Another situation Ive been seeing daily is on the A617 dual carriageway, where currently the East and West-bound carriageways both have two sections coned down to one lane for repairs.
In a little over a week, in fairly light traffic, Ive seen numerous instances of drivers waddling up lane two only slightly faster than cars in lane one, then cutting in at an inappropriate point. They seem oblivious to the 800/ 600/ 400/ 200 yard signs and only take action when they see the cones. A little bit of deceleration or a good burst of acceleration would see them safely into a gap. But no they blunder in, misjudge speeds and then brake, forcing others to brake behind them. I must stress this is in light traffic, where 800 yards warning to pick a slot to move into is ample..
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Just done 2000+ miles in France, Switzerland and Italy, and the worse piece of driving I saw in all that time was a British registered BMW.
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I agree with Westpig that French drivers are better on motorways than we are, although of course they aren't perfect. They do, as others have said, enjoy a much lower national level of traffic density than us. On other roads they seem much the same as us, although marginally less inclined to mimse.
Something to do with different forms of bolshiness in our respective national characters perhaps...
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On other roads they seem much the same as us although marginally less inclined to mimse.
Considerably less inclined to mimse around town in my experience. I was driving in my local built up area a few years ago with a passenger who had recently returned from living in France (and who didn't drive at all). After an amount of positive progress past, through and around the mimsing masses she commented that I drove like I was French. Until then I had never imagined that being accused of being French could be a positive comparison :-)
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I've seen a great many near-suicidal overtaking manoeuvres on long, straight French single-carriageways. I believe the annual total of road accident fatalities in France, for about the same overall population, is about twice that of the UK.
They do do motorways better, certainly. My favourite French driving trait is the way that, as they round the curve on a motorway slip road and begin to accelerate towards the main carriageway, they actually look to see what's already in the nearside lane, then ease off to let it pass. Anyone with any sense of self-preservation in lane 1 of a UK motorway will instinctively ease off or try to change lane in the same situation, because the chances are no better than even that the driver on the slip road even knows you're there, let alone that the dotted line he's about to cross means 'give way'.
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Andrew
1. You seem to be saying that building new roads creates traffic that doesn't exist, just as increasingly cheap air travel brought about a lot more air travel. You are, of course right, that if air travel was expensive, we would be flying a lot less, and if we only have a few roads in Britain, we would be driving a lot less. We would, in short, have a lot less mobility. And in particular, we would have less mobility compared to other countries. I suppose there are people who consider that to be a good thing, but not many consider it to be realistic.
2. The M25 is an interesting case, and while I don't know the details, it seems to me that it both relieved other roads of congestion, and permitted greater mobility in the SE of England.
3. >> Our vehicle:length of road proportion is too high. When drivers find cars become impossible they will either stop or try something else."
If the ratio of vehicles to length of road is too high, it surely means that we either need more roads or fewer vehicles. To try to discourage driving by making it impossible is to decrease mobility - which is, I suspect, economically unrealistic. Do we really want to go back to 19th century levels of mobility?
I must confess that I am struggling a bit to understand your argument - so I do apologise if I have not understood the points you are making.
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I think that the real problem in this country is that nearly all the problems we have road related or not is that we have an overpopulation problem. Sort that out and the other problems will just evaporate.
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And how, pray, can that be sorted out ?
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Nearly all the global problems arise from global overpopulation at bottom. As PU asks, how do we sort that out?
I recall a debate at school 50 years ago - 'Is war a biological necessity?'. It may come to that. And the wars may be about water rather than oil.
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Tyro - your three responses all seem to be based on a god-given right to 'mobility', which is a nice idea in principle. The UK problem is that probably 30 million people want to exercise that right, at rush hour many at the same time, and the space available just isn't up to it. At vast expense (compared to what we get) we can apply the sticking plasters I referred to earlier, but we won't relieve the overall problem much.
No doubt it seems stupid to say so, but 40 years ago most people lived within a few miles of their work. These days daily commutes of an hour or more are common. There are of course many reasons for this, some of them nothing to do with driving, but one may be that Brits don't like living 'over the shop', which is something the French still do, for example. In other words we are all part of the problem. Another example - why drive 50 miles to a megastore when there is another just like it in the next town?
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Andrew - you are basically right about my responses. It does come down to the fact that mobility is something that has been increasing over the past few hundred years. Once upon a time, there were no cars, and before that, there was a time when there were no railways. And in those days, people were perfectly happy. Times move on. And I strongly suspect that they will continue to move on. I find it hard to believe that the increasing mobility that we have had over the past couple of hundred years is going to stop, let alone go into reverse, though it may well slow down.
And yes, a lot of it is about population density, and the fact that England is now the most densely populated country in Europe. (Maybe that's why I spend very little time there!) The interesting thing is that much of the rest of Europe does have comparatively empty roads, and that in most western European countries, the birth rate is falling. If France and Germany can have comparatively uncongested roads (though obviously around cities it is not so), so can England - but it means building more roads.
Your points about the rise in commuting distances, the culture of living over your work, and shopping trips are well made and relevant - but I really don't think that the answer is to make commuting slower and more difficult.
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>I really don't think that the answer is to make commuting slower and more difficult.<
I don't think that is the answer either, but we will unless habits change. I'm sure no-one (even politicians) starts with that intention. But whatever else, the UK land area is a fixed quantity, and in general individuals occupy more of it than they used to (including their driving space), and want to occupy more, so what is going to give?
Edited by Andrew-T on 01/11/2008 at 11:36
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Is it because of the higher proportion of newer cars now?
If you've just blown 20 grand on a shiny new motor, what happens when you're overtaken by someone in a 500 quid snotter? Personally I don't care, but judging by what happens when I'm in a £500 car, some people do.
Back in the day when even Lud was younger, was the same thing so prevalent? Even if it was there were fewer cars around so you'd perhaps see it less often?
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