Nobody knows how wide their vehicle is!

[Acehood]

I don't know what's going on with people's driving lately but it's absolutely fking shocking. One of the many things annoying me recently is that every single time I drive up a road which has cars parked on either or both sides of the road, I find myself pushed as far to the left as possible because some tt in a tiny Hyundai or Peugeot thinks that their car is 15 feet wide.

It also happens a lot with 4x4s or those ridiculous SUVs that people seem to want to buy to ferry their offspring around in. YOU are the one with the 4 wheel drive and chunky tyres, how about you get in the fking ditch instead of me having scratches down the side of my car from trees and bottoming out my suspension?!?!! Or worse, nearly hitting someone else's car which is innocently parked up! Oh wait you have no interest in off-roading, you bought the one with 20" wheels and low profile tyres so could barely mount a kerb without breaking something! You wanted a huge car but have no idea how to drive it.

It makes me so mad and always becomes some kind of stty game of chicken where I hold out as long as possible before taking evasive action as they meander over to my side of the road, leaving 3 feet to the obstacle on their left.

Is it time to buy a smart car or something? Or should I get a Ford F650 Superduty and own the road? Nobody would play chicken with that fker. Although I'd never get parked anywhere.

[kambites]

I don't think people have actually got worse at judging the width of their cars; it just matters more now because they've all bought wider vehicles.

Maybe as well as the weight limit on category-B car licences, there should also be a width limit.

[Acehood]

kambites said:

I don't think people have actually got worse at judging the width of their cars; it just matters more now because they've all bought wider vehicles.

I think the issue for me is that a lot of the time they're driving very small vehicles which could comfortably move left a bit instead of me ending up ALL the way over to the left, nearly hitting things because of their incompetence.

[kambites]

I'm not convinced there's really such a thing as a narrow car these days. A current Golf is as wide as an E32 7-series!

[Swanny87]

I find this a lot as well. Sometimes it helps to move out a bit so they realise and move over. If you move over before they are a problem you kind of open yourself up to this. Stand your ground!

[Toltec]

Have ever tried just coming to a stop if you think there is not enough room?

Not being facetious, try it, the other driver may get the point.

[Acehood]

Toltec said:

Have ever tried just coming to a stop if you think there is not enough room?

Not being facetious, try it, the other driver may get the point.

Worth a go I guess!

The main road that this happens is on a road that leads up to the local dual carriageway ring-road (where nobody ever moves over to let you out.. another issue altogether!). There are cars parked on the right as I drive up. It's easily wide enough for 4 cars but I find myself almost hitting the kerb because the tts pulling off the dual carriageway seem unable to judge how much space there is.

This also happens to be part of my daily commute so I get more and more enraged leading to me nearly driving head on into them by Friday.

[eybic]

That's the great thing about driving a shed, you keep going and they move over, I guess they suffer from shock that their car can actually fit if they move to their left by 6 inches.

There's a supermarket near me that normally has a line of cars parked outside, the chaos this causes because people think only 1 car fits down there is ridiculous

[Miglia 888]

Plenty do indeed seem to overestimate the width of their cars and/or have no idea how wide (or not) their car actually is, imho.

Two cars can comfortably fit simultaneously through the width restrictions at my work, however the vast majority, even those in small city cars, want to go through the centre of the gap and hold everyone else up...

[Hudson]

eybic said:

That's the great thing about driving a shed, you keep going and they move over, I guess they suffer from shock that their car can actually fit if they move to their left by 6 inches.

There's a supermarket near me that normally has a line of cars parked outside, the chaos this causes because people think only 1 car fits down there is ridiculous

No one messed with my E34. It was old, it was big and it was driven by a teenager so everyone over the age of 40 assumed i was drunk, fresh from selling drugs to children and throwing kittens into nuclear reactors, and therefore i had a clear path everywhere

Now i have a car worth more than £2.50 and i'm giving way to everyone out of fear haha

[Acehood]

eybic said:

That's the great thing about driving a shed, you keep going and they move over, I guess they suffer from shock that their car can actually fit if they move to their left by 6 inches.

There's a supermarket near me that normally has a line of cars parked outside, the chaos this causes because people think only 1 car fits down there is ridiculous

Don't you find that you end up clipping wing mirrors if you try to move over when these types of people are blasting down the road? It's happened to me before! The other person didn't want to stop and I had to go and buy a new mirror!

[eybic]

Acehood said:

eybic said:

That's the great thing about driving a shed, you keep going and they move over, I guess they suffer from shock that their car can actually fit if they move to their left by 6 inches.

There's a supermarket near me that normally has a line of cars parked outside, the chaos this causes because people think only 1 car fits down there is ridiculous

Don't you find that you end up clipping wing mirrors if you try to move over when these types of people are blasting down the road? It's happened to me before! The other person didn't want to stop and I had to go and buy a new mirror!

I'm not fussed about clipping wing mirrors, the car cost me £200 I've had one wing mirror altercation with someone else driving a shed, we both continued without even braking but the bang made me jump a bit though

[skyrover]

Acehood said:

Or should I get a Ford F650 Superduty and own the road? Nobody would play chicken with that fker. Although I'd never get parked anywhere.

Do it

[Gixer]

Toltec said:

Have ever tried just coming to a stop if you think there is not enough room?

Not being facetious, try it, the other driver may get the point.

No that doesn't work. Did that in the Z06 a while back when the car coming towards me decided not to wait for the parked cars on their side of the road. They also stopped and just sat there in the middle of the road. Meanwhile chav woman in the white RR behind gets out to tell me my car isn't wide and that I should just drive up the pavement (yeah, I'll just rip the front off the car shall I). Followed a couple of seconds later by cocky ranting and raving and shouting. Telling me to get through - a gap I couldn't fit. Oddly nobody thought miss impatient sitting in the middle of the road trying to get around parked cars when she should have been waiting, was in the wrong at all.

[torres del paine]

kambites said:

I don't think people have actually got worse at judging the width of their cars; it just matters more now because they've all bought wider vehicles.

Maybe as well as the weight limit on category-B car licences, there should also be a width limit.

There was a study that showed that fat people have poorer spatial awareness and an inability to negotiate narrow spaces. Britain has got fatter too, I put it down to this.

[rossub]

I never thank anyone that lets me through first when there is ample room for two cars to pass each other. If they're not confident drivers, then thats their problem.

[DJP]

I put it down to 2 things: Cars getting wider and having ever worse vision.

Having a fat car where they can't see the corners is inevitably going to cause problems for the average driver.

[73mark]

I put it down to.
1)The old.
2)Driving test must be getting easy.
3)The incompetent tt that passes a test in a small car and immediately goes out and buy a big car.

[matchmaker]

Far too common for people not to have a clue how wide their car is. Or they are idiots. Witness my journey home - cars parked on one side. A stream of cars coming the opposite way. In front of me - an Aygo. In front of that - a Transit minibus. Now you'd expect the driver of the Aygo to have figured out that as the Transit went though OK, there was room for her 1 litre shopping trolley to pass. Nope. She had to stop to let all the oncoming traffic pass.

[Baryonyx]

SUV drivers are hopeless. I suspect soft sts like them because they make them feel safe. Bit see scores of them unable to park or corner because they don't know where the wheels are. The drivers are usually useless. Up here in the Northern countryside, you can play spot the difference. The brand new Range Rover on massive wheels which shoots down the dual carriageway and creeps down flowing country roads, or the battered Land Cruiser driven by an old farmer that keeps pace with the traffic!