Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK

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Sat 23 Feb 2013 22:06
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - craig-pd130

Here's an alternative viewpoint on driving in the UK, from the editor of the Aussie web magazine, Autospeed.

He reckons us Pommies are (on average) better drivers, and faster, too.

blog.autospeed.com/2013/01/19/3500-kays-in-the-uk/

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Sat 23 Feb 2013 22:55
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - focussed

(In the UK)The drivers are disciplined, courteous and aware – average for average, much better than drivers in Australia. In those 3 weeks, much of it in wet and windy weather conditions, I saw very few accidents and witnessed even fewer driving mistakes.

My comment:-

Hmmm - Courteous, disciplined, and aware does not spring immediately to mind when describing UK drivers generally does it?

The standard of driving in Oz must be interesting to say the least.

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 10:54
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - Engineer Andy

Maybe its the prevelence of pickup trucks (sorry bonzo, I mean "Utes") and countryfied 4x4's, etc like in the US, who seem to feature heavily in accidents (see the tacky docushow "Destoryed in Seconds on Freeview and you'll see why). I wonder if they also feeture large numbers of beaten-up old red baseball capped drivers...

Only kidding! :-)

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 11:24
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - BigJohnD

If only, though the borders section of the M6/M74 might fit the description. He clearly didn't travel around the M25 at peak times.

Edited by BigJohnD on 24/02/2013 at 11:25

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 16:45
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - pd

Bearing in mind how heavily congested and how many times over the designed capacity it is used the M25 generally isn't driven too badly. I only find it really bad at weekends and bank holidays when many non-regular drivers hit the roads who aren't capable of driving on motorways or used to speeds over 12mph.

The problem with UK motorways is simply volume of traffic at many times of the day. They are brilliantly engineered (far better than most continental ones with far, far, stricter design rules) and generally driven well which is why the odd idiot really stands out. If they had the traffic they were designed for they'd be fantastic.

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 18:51
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - Collos25

Could you imagine London without the M25.

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 19:09
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - Engineer Andy

Could you imagine London without the M25.

Think back to 1985...the "M25" back then was limited to a few short stretches, one near me between the A1(M) and Potters Bar in Hertfordshire - as a youngster I always wondered why the road just "ended" there before the whole orbital was built. Shame it filled up in about a couple of years after the whole thing was finally opened (I remember passing it ever day on the way to school when it was being built)...

I think we need MORE East-West roads built or existing ones significantly upgraded - the local bottleneck around Cambridge-Huntingdon with the conflux of the M11/A11 and terrible A14 (all two lanes) is a good example of poor strategic thinking. If our Aussie friend had been driving along round here, he may have had a different view on our standards of driving (there's at least one major accident [roads closed for several hours] a week, if not more).

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 19:19
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - RT
I think we need MORE East-West roads built or existing ones significantly upgraded - the local bottleneck around Cambridge-Huntingdon with the conflux of the M11/A11 and terrible A14 (all two lanes) is a good example of poor strategic thinking. If our Aussie friend had been driving along round here, he may have had a different view on our standards of driving (there's at least one major accident [roads closed for several hours] a week, if not more).

There's nothing wrong with the strategic planning - the problem is cheapskate politicians - the original UK motorway planning back in the '50s included an East-West full 3-lane motorway from Holyhead to Harwich.

The only motorway built on that route is the M54/M6 from Telford to Catthorpe - the A14 as built is just an amalgam of pre-existing 2-lane dual carriageways plus the then-new dual carriageway from Catthorpe to Huntingdon - and made much, much worse by cutting the M11 short at Cambridge instead of going right through to the A1(M) at Alconbury.

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 19:21
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - jamie745

It's interesting to read an outsiders view of driving here as we can often forget just how safe our roads are and how rigerous our testing actually is. We fall into thinking the roads are in carnage when in fact they're the Worlds second safest.

I remember some Friends of the Earth campaigner - or whatever hard left pressure group the BBC was paying lip service to that week - once saying 'If the M25 wasn't built it wouldn't have cars on it!'

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Sun 24 Feb 2013 22:25
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - Smileyman

We need a proper south coast motorway .. linking Dover with Brighton.

Why? - well the traffic comes off the boats, and along the M20 to London then along southern side of the M25 onto M3 or M4, or even M23. A decent road from Dover to Brighton will take the traffic away from London and the south side of the M25. I live in Kent, it is far quicker and easier for me to travel M26/M25M23 to Brighton or Gatwick than to use a shorter south coast route. A case of winners all round!

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Mon 25 Feb 2013 07:49
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - RT

We need a proper south coast motorway .. linking Dover with Brighton.

Why? - well the traffic comes off the boats, and along the M20 to London then along southern side of the M25 onto M3 or M4, or even M23. A decent road from Dover to Brighton will take the traffic away from London and the south side of the M25. I live in Kent, it is far quicker and easier for me to travel M26/M25M23 to Brighton or Gatwick than to use a shorter south coast route. A case of winners all round!

If they want to get from France to Brighton, as huge numbers of people do?, why not use a Portsmouth ferry and pickup the M27 ?

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Mon 25 Feb 2013 11:12
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - Ed V

We seem essentially to assume everything has to touch London on the road and rail networks.

Travelling in the UK without the start or end being in London is awful and, at week-ends, next to impossible.

Not surpirsed about the down-under view of our drivers. I find us fairly accommodating.

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Mon 25 Feb 2013 16:20
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - RT

We seem essentially to assume everything has to touch London on the road and rail networks.

Travelling in the UK without the start or end being in London is awful and, at week-ends, next to impossible.

This is the fatal flaw with the HS2 rail schemes - it assumes that millions of people are desperate to get to London quickly from the Provinces - there simply aren't millions of people who want to go to London at all, quickly of not. I could believe there are millions of Londoners desperate to get out - but on a one-way ticket !

The sooner that the UK economy, UK road network and UK rail network gets away from it's current obseesion with London-centricity the better for everyone.

I never start or end journeys in London but have no trouble getting around, even at weekends - but that's because I don't live in the South-East !

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Mon 25 Feb 2013 11:19
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - Andrew-T
If they want to get from France to Brighton, as huge numbers of people do?, why not use a Portsmouth ferry and pickup the M27 ?

Look at the map of channel ferry crossings. Portsmouth and Dover ferries don't leave France from the same places? 'They' would have to make a similar choice between (e.g) Calais and Cherbourg.

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Mon 25 Feb 2013 16:22
Any - A visitor's view of driving in the UK - RT
If they want to get from France to Brighton, as huge numbers of people do?, why not use a Portsmouth ferry and pickup the M27 ?

Look at the map of channel ferry crossings. Portsmouth and Dover ferries don't leave France from the same places? 'They' would have to make a similar choice between (e.g) Calais and Cherbourg.

My point was that most people arriving at Dover DON'T want to get to Brighton - they want to get everywhere in the UK whether it's business, pleasure or freight.

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