Staying calm on the road
Discussion
Don said:
My view on remaining calm on the road is to consider the act of driving as a professional activity. Something to do dispassionately and to the best of your ability.
I've been on no end of driving training courses - all of which I have enjoyed - and constantly seek to better what I do on the road.
Then, when confronted with the inevitable t
ttery of the British road system, one can rise above it, determined to make smooth, fast, and unobtrusive progress through the melee that others are making for themselves.
Be where the accident isn't. Be fast when it is safe. Be smooth. Find ways to make better progress - without behaving like the idiots - just by being smart.
Turns it into a challenge. Good fun. Much better for my blood pressure.
...and I still swear under my breath at the ones that seem to be trying to kill me....
This man speaks a lot of sense! I've been on no end of driving training courses - all of which I have enjoyed - and constantly seek to better what I do on the road.
Then, when confronted with the inevitable t
ttery of the British road system, one can rise above it, determined to make smooth, fast, and unobtrusive progress through the melee that others are making for themselves.Be where the accident isn't. Be fast when it is safe. Be smooth. Find ways to make better progress - without behaving like the idiots - just by being smart.
Turns it into a challenge. Good fun. Much better for my blood pressure.
...and I still swear under my breath at the ones that seem to be trying to kill me....
Radio 4 works a treat.
Once you've heard a segment on woman's hour about the female orgasm discussed in huge detail by a bunch of women old enough to be your gran then no amount of bad driving ever seems enough to wind you up.
I'm still recovering.....
There are some interesting programes too...
Once you've heard a segment on woman's hour about the female orgasm discussed in huge detail by a bunch of women old enough to be your gran then no amount of bad driving ever seems enough to wind you up.
I'm still recovering.....
There are some interesting programes too...
PaulG40 said:
On my 22 mile weekly commute from Lincolnshire to Hampshire, I always know the certain sections that are going to irratate me. The 40mpher in a 60 NSL, always gets me. I don't mind a 50mpher but a 40er just seems to take forever. Trying to time the drive to avoid certain bottle necks helps too. M25 is, well...
Has Hampshire moved?Otispunkmeyer said:
for me, I used to just set cruise to 60-65 and then sit in the first lane. Let all the idiots get on with it. Invariably I'd be home about the same time anyway and I'd be more relaxed.
Its worth doing this once in a while and just watching what goes on around you, the desperate struggle to get out to lane 3, which n doing so actually slows them all down, cars darting in to small spaces during lane changes, traffic bunching up, tailgating, fists being shaken and so on.Meanwhile you just roll along, windows down, warm breeze coming through the car, the occasional overtake of a slow lorry.. all that hassle to arrive a few minutes earlier (at best).
I remember when I lived in Sheffield I used to drive home to Cumbria every weekend. Because I'm male I used to time it and drive it at different speeds. When I used to hammer it I could shave off maybe 15 mins, usually bad luck would end up with me stuck behind some 40mph daydreamer anyway, and for all the extra fuel/stress I did question myself what I was actually rushing back for anyway. Unfortunately it took its toll on my 1.3 Polo and the head gasket went on the way down there one weekend, I got a lift home and got a dodgy scrap dealer from the North East to take it away from Scotch Corner 
Willy Nilly said:
PaulG40 said:
On my 22 mile weekly commute from Lincolnshire to Hampshire, I always know the certain sections that are going to irratate me. The 40mpher in a 60 NSL, always gets me. I don't mind a 50mpher but a 40er just seems to take forever. Trying to time the drive to avoid certain bottle necks helps too. M25 is, well...
Has Hampshire moved?
Being calm behind the wheel has never been too much of a problem for me. When I was younger I didn't 'have' to drive a lot, so my driving (and I was doing plenty of it!) was confined to unsociable hours when the roads were much, much quieter.
Remembering the concept of 'karma' makes sense to me as well, Drive like a t
t and you're far more likely to have something 'unlucky' happen. I don't wait for it to happen, or expect it to unfold in front of my eyes, but when I see somebody driving very badly I just think to myself "he/she is going to have a scape one day..." (with the law or otherwise).In my experience the people who suffer road rage are almost invariably bad drivers themselves, driving agressively, following too close, having poor awareness and observation etc etc so I take comfort from knowing I'm 'better', like somebody said earlier- 'rise above it'.
Finally I like to play the 'don't brake' game, this is good for your heart rate as well as your fuel economy. It encourages a driver to follow at a safe distance and look well ahead in order to anticipate anything which is likely to result in a change of speed. It always makes me uncomfortable when I passenger with a driver who seems to just sit in the outside lane and watch the brake light of the car in front intently, poking at their own brakes every time it illuminates. Even better when you have a train of them following nose-to-tail, and they look like a line of racing cars with blinking rain lights on a formation lap...
Poko said:
Interesting question.
I've just got back from a month of driving around Thailand and with the lack of any driving license, car insurance, death-trap cars and scooters driving on the wrong side of the road / straight across the road into your path - I interestingly didn't get frustrated or enraged once, but only 5 minutes back on UK soil I started to notice myself getting frustrated.
Very odd and I can't quite put my finger on why UK roads frustrate me so much.. I don't get angry or road-ragey, just frustrated at people's inability to drive.
Man observes the truth.I've just got back from a month of driving around Thailand and with the lack of any driving license, car insurance, death-trap cars and scooters driving on the wrong side of the road / straight across the road into your path - I interestingly didn't get frustrated or enraged once, but only 5 minutes back on UK soil I started to notice myself getting frustrated.
Very odd and I can't quite put my finger on why UK roads frustrate me so much.. I don't get angry or road-ragey, just frustrated at people's inability to drive.
It's not the traffic, it's the you (me, them, all of us).
As most others have said, they feel great in other countries.
You all need a holiday, new job or divorce. Get to it
Oh yeah, and Italy. You have to do what they are doing or everybody gets confused. They expects you to cut the other fella up, overtake wherever and go round the wrong way, all of the traffic around you is anticipating it. If you don't do it, you feck it up for everybody
Once I figured that out Naples and the rest was a piece of tortaEdited by craig_m67 on Wednesday 23 July 07:41
V8Ford said:
Hello all,
Reading through the forums here it seems there is no shortage of things that annoy us - tailgaters, dawdlers, lane hogs, people who can't maintain a steady speed, people who cut you up on roundabouts etc.
Often I find myself getting more and more exasperated on my drive home which can leave me in a bad mood long after I arrive home. So the question is, what do others do to stay calm behind the wheel?
Matthew
At the risk of getting a bit verbose...Reading through the forums here it seems there is no shortage of things that annoy us - tailgaters, dawdlers, lane hogs, people who can't maintain a steady speed, people who cut you up on roundabouts etc.
Often I find myself getting more and more exasperated on my drive home which can leave me in a bad mood long after I arrive home. So the question is, what do others do to stay calm behind the wheel?
Matthew
Take another route.
Change the objective - faced with a dawdler, instead of making it about getting somewhere quickly, temporarily change it to be about smooth driving, or observation, or whatever else. You (hopefully) wouldn't rage impotently at finding yourself arriving at the back of a long traffic jam behind an accident, and you'd probably just give up on making progress, so just have a little dose of that for a moment when stuck behind someone doing 40 in a 60.
As another poster said, think about karma. w
kers usually get their comeuppance eventually.Don't project too much onto other people. Is the driver in front incompetently dawdling or are you just expecting too much from someone who has different values? (it's probably the former
) The person who's just cut you up might be a natural ahole or might be rushing to the hospital with a sick baby. You'll never know. Whatever it is, chances are it's not about you personally, so don't take it as such.Think about what your ideal driver would do in these situations - the driver you'd like to be, and how they'd behave. Then do that. Note: please don't do this if the driver you aspire to be is Kenneth Noye.
In general, just catch yourself getting annoyed at the moment it starts to happen, and apply a correction - back off, ignore it, whatever. Works much better than once you're already wound up.
Edited by trashbat on Wednesday 23 July 07:45
The reason you have a better time abroad is probably threefold:
(1) You're on holiday. Everything's better.
(2) When some chain-smoking, chain-phoning Italian dhead cuts you up on the autostrada or whatever, it's part of the quaint foreign novelty of the place, and not something you're going to experience most weekdays for the rest of your miserable life.
(3) You project your own British values and expectations onto every British driver at home. Because you're presumably a halfway competent driver, why shouldn't everyone else be? You don't attempt this abroad because obviously these strange foreign types are very different. It'd be lovely if your expectations came true, but until that happens, maybe they're a bit wrong. Maybe you should look at your average fellow Brit as an uninterested white goods pilot who scraped a pass on the third attempt. You car-obsessed hobbyist weirdo.
(1) You're on holiday. Everything's better.
(2) When some chain-smoking, chain-phoning Italian d
head cuts you up on the autostrada or whatever, it's part of the quaint foreign novelty of the place, and not something you're going to experience most weekdays for the rest of your miserable life.(3) You project your own British values and expectations onto every British driver at home. Because you're presumably a halfway competent driver, why shouldn't everyone else be? You don't attempt this abroad because obviously these strange foreign types are very different. It'd be lovely if your expectations came true, but until that happens, maybe they're a bit wrong. Maybe you should look at your average fellow Brit as an uninterested white goods pilot who scraped a pass on the third attempt. You car-obsessed hobbyist weirdo.
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