Thursday, October 09, 2008

Too impatient

First a thank-you to Y425 VOJ for coming to an abrupt halt at the approach to Vale Road from High Street to allow some pedestrians to cross. This wasn't a 'Well I wasn't moving anyway' halt this was a 'I'll move forward in the suddenly jumped forward queue as there's been a break in the traffic from Mitton Street, but then slam on my brakes to let someone cross the road" I feel more sorry for the car directly behind her who had even less notice. From my point of view I'd turned the blind corner seen the traffic moving forward into a large empty space before it came to a halt for no apparent reason.

Ah well onto the main attraction last night coming down the Worcester Road. The queue was, of course, backing up from the OGL island and was halting just before the turn to Discovery Road. I pulled up behind a red van CP53 AAU who then mounted the pavement drove along it before bumping down into this turn. First point was that he wasn't indicating to let the driver in front know that he wanted to turn (although I always leave a space for right-turning cars if there's enough wiggle room I'll move forward if the vehicle behind is trying to turn) and secondly 5 seconds after he'd done this the queue moved forward.

Approaching the OGL island just before the lane divides into two (and once again - why?) and the van behind me is drifting to the right ready to switch lanes when another car overtakes them on the wrong side of the road blats down the second lane; swerves out to avoid the rear-end of a car, that had turned out of OGL into the first lane; causing an oncoming car to swerve out of their way (and the lane is stupidly narrow for them at this point) before reaching the island and doing a 450. Sadly angle and speed precluded me from getting a licence plate.

I'd also like to make a shout out to the two vans guarding Parkes Passage this morning, one presumably for delivering to the butchers and the other whose driver was using the Lloyds cash-machine. That would be on High Street the road with the double yellow lines and the single yellow stripes down the side that indicate no parking or loading at this time.

On a final note would the users of the Minster Road traffic lights please read rule 176 of the Highway Code

[...]Only go forward when the traffic lights are green if there is room for you to clear the junction safely or you are taking up a position to turn right.[...]
Oh and just to please Tav, although they didn't indicate in succession I did find myself behind one car on the approach to a roundabout in the right-hand lane who was signalling left to go straight on.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's tame. I was in London yesterday. ;-)

Considering it's a 50 zone, there seemed to be an awful lot of of white vans doing 75 and cutting across all three lanes of busy traffic to get to the slip road — without bothering to signal, naturally.

Even better was the trip home, where the whole of the M1 slowed to 20 MPH. And then some flash git in a BMW comes shooting down the inside lane at 45, slices across all three lanes, no signal, the car he barged in front of had to hit the brakes to avoid a collision. The guy muscles his way past a lorry, and then slices back across all three lanes, and finally pulls onto the hard shoulder to overtake some more people.

Basically zooming from lane to lane without signalling, driving about twice the speed of everybody else, and causing other drivers to take sharp evasives to avoid an accident.

Call me soft, but I think driving like that should be illegal.

Don B said...

It is illegal.
1. Driving without due and attention.
2. Reckless driving.

I'm sure Flipc or Tav will tell us precisely which bit of which Road Traffic Act and which para of the Highway Code they are breaking.

FlipC said...

And there's never a copper or camera around.

144 of the HC, RTA 1988 Sections 3 and 2 respectively and to be pedantic it's dangerous driving for the latter.

Speeding is covered under 124 of the HC and as it states there sections "81, 86, 89 & sch6" of the RTRA.

Oh and driving on pavements is covered by 145 of the HC et al.

Surprisingly signalling is not covered as mandatory in the HC, but I suppose it can be tagged under "driv[ing] without reasonable consideration for other road users"

Anyway what were you up to in London?

Anonymous said...

Driving home after visiting my grandparents. (Greenford)

While I'm here, perhaps I could ask you all... You know what you're driving along, and you come across a car that's leaving such a dense smog cloud behind it that you can't see the bonnet of your car any more and you feel almost physically sick from the fumes?

1. Isn't that illegal?

2. Is there something you can actually do about this? (Rather than just complaining about it on the Internet anyway.)

FlipC said...

If you took the licence plate and make/model details you could report it to the police for that locality as a possibly non-roadworthy car. Whether they do anything is a whole other matter.

Anonymous said...

Hmm… Finding a phone number should be a trivial matter&hellilp; Oh, wait…