Bonefishblues wrote:.......... - but again that's a pretty rubblish benchmark in a country which believes, in the main, that overtaking is queue-jumping .
Especially if you're riding a bike and the jam is half a mile long at the next TL,and all the drivers passed you a couple of miles back
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
Bonefishblues wrote:.......... - but again that's a pretty rubblish benchmark in a country which believes, in the main, that overtaking is queue-jumping .
Especially if you're riding a bike and the jam is half a mile long at the next TL,and all the drivers passed you a couple of miles back
I too take some delight in that, I agree, but some of the behaviour I've seen by drivers attempting to block overtakes for instance is indeed criminal.
Bonefishblues wrote:.......... - but again that's a pretty rubblish benchmark in a country which believes, in the main, that overtaking is queue-jumping .
Especially if you're riding a bike and the jam is half a mile long at the next TL,and all the drivers passed you a couple of miles back
I too take some delight in that, I agree, but some of the behaviour I've seen by drivers attempting to block overtakes for instance is indeed criminal.
Not to mention the odd shouted insult Though TBF many drivers do assist me in such situations.
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
I've recently had reason to think about my own driving.
Before I had learned to drive - ie long ago - I first hear the expression "accelerating out of danger" from the father of a young lady of my acquaintance, sounding off about why he just had to have the most pwerful model of Zodiac as his company car. It's always sounded wrong to me.
Jump forward a bit, and when the M1 was extended into Leeds, the last few miles called the Leeds South Eastern Urban Motorway were subject to a 50mph limit because of the lower design standards imposed by running it through the buit-up area. That limit was robustly enforced by patrols and I've worked many hours overtime, prosecuting the cases at Leeds Magistrates' Court. (No cameras or fixed penalties in those days.)
The road is now the M621. Enforcement is long gone, so there's a dangerous mix of those who comply and those who do not, on a road designed for 50 mph max.
Jump forward to 2018, and Highways England have installed average speed cameras to enforce a temporary 30mph limit through roadworks.
Recently, I had to make a welfare journey and the M62 was reported blocked by a vehicle fire, so I used the M621, needing to exit at J7 or I'd have been back round to the M62 and the fire.
Trundling along at an indicated 30 mph in the first lane, I reached J5 where the entry slip forms a new first lane. A chap doing the same speed as me came down the entry slip so we were side-by-side. I would have slowed and pulled in behind him to prepare for my own exit, but there was a very large HGV right up behind him. I checked my mirrors and a similar HGV was by then right behind me, so close that the driver cannot have been able to see my brake lights. Had I even eased off, I'm pretty sure I'd have been shunted. For the first and hopefully last time in my life I accelerated out of danger, just sufficiently to clear the car to my left safely, before slowing back to an indicated 30mph. No official correspondence so I presume that I didn't exceed the average which triggers it, possibly because in my car the indicated 30mph = 27mph or whatever.
On another journey providing Dad's chauffeur service in the opposite direction, keeping a careful eye on the speedo in my son's car, I missed the end of the temporary 30mph and only realised I had done so when everything roared past. It's surprisingly difficult to adhere to a 30mph limit on a motorway without a lot of reference to the speedo.
Indeed, it is sometimes the right solution. I will occasionally do it when I judge that my closing speed on a DC/Motorway will mean I would force a vehicle to my lhs to slow as it's running towards a slower-moving vehicle ahead, and I can't pull into L3 to give it space to overtake. They then pull out behind me and all's well - unless the lemming up my chuff (the reason I haven't eased off as opposed to speeded up slightly) also speeds up too, but there's little or nothing I can do about that.
I can recall one time (the only time I can recall in my years of driving) that I accelerated out of danger, but I was in no danger of exceeding the speed limit. I had been sitting a red light. The light changed, and I started across (there being no traffic in the junction). I could see a car approaching from my right, but assumed the driver would stop. He didn't, and I realised it part way across, and accelerated. He missed the back of my car by a hair, but the car behind me couldn't miss his.
I pulled over when it was safe and walked back to the scene, where the driver that had narrowly missed me was getting quite aggressive. He seemed to think that he'd had a green light, and everyone else was wrong. The other driver retreated to his car, and some bystanders put triangles out and things, while the cause of the crash walked about yelling at all and sundry. He didn't seem to realise that I was the driver of the car his had narrowly missed
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
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