Lunacy on the M40

[Mafffew]

Biker 1 said:

Jonesy23 said:

https://twitter.com/AlexVarga_/status/105189809442...

Holy st that made me wince!!!!!! Amazing evasive action by some of the drivers.

Lucky they had somewhere to go as well. Not all sections of our motorways have a grass verge in lane 3.

[Jonesy23]

Ron Maiden said:

Possible contributor to this type of event... having many foreign drivers used to driving on the left?, The more there are the higher the chance
someone is going to make a dreadful mistake.

I don't buy it. While it isn't too difficult to get confused about what side to take a turn on that doesn't get you across three carriageways or make you carry on at speed into that much oncoming traffic. Especially with a caravan.

[GTO-3R]

Two close friends of mine were abut 20 cars behind the one that got hit. They said it looked horrific and were stationary for 3 hours! The dash cam footage on twitter is shocking to say the least!

[alfaspecial]

Took a taxi in Egypt from the airport (Luxor) to City. The driver spent the whole journey talking over his shoulder, talking to me and not looking where he was going.

The road was two lanes (one lane 'our' way one lane on coming) plus a rubble strip on each side. As a faster moving vehicle we were on the rubble strip on the oncoming side side, overtaking a car (which itself was travelling in wrong direction), that was overtaking a bus (correct lane/direction) that was itself overtaking a bullock & cart (on rubble strip).

I screamed a warning at the driver but he just carried on oblivious to the view ahead and eventually I had to physically grab his head and turn it so he could see what was oncoming........ almost exactly the same scenario (cart plus bus plus car plus car) coming in the opposite direction.

Perhaps the reason why many Egyptian men wear gallibayas - a long shirt like garment rather than trousers - is because it saves on having to change ones underwear after a car journey on Egyptian roads.....



Very tragic but on a lighter note...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQpGJ2mtv0

Edited by alfaspecial on Tuesday 16th October 09:12

Edited by alfaspecial on Tuesday 16th October 09:13

[Coolbanana]

Idiots.

Happens everyday in South Africa - plenty of YouTube videos etc and I witnessed it a few times myself - where taxis deliberately drive on the wrong side if there is a queue on their side. They couldn't give a stuff and all carry guns, very dangerous to control.

There's a good vid doing the rounds of one such case where a - quite brave - motorcyclist refuses to give way to the taxi in front of him. Eventually another motorist joins in and the taxi has nowhere to go but back to the roundabout it entered the wrong way from.

12 year old driving with two spanners for a steering wheel and bald tyres held on by one wheel nut, driving the wrong way? Yep! Seen that too - little moron eventually drove into the back of my car at a stop street further along his dangerous journey and guess what? Not arrested!

What you are reading in the UK today, is not even newsworthy in some countries it is so common. Terrible.

[robm3]

Coolbanana said:

Idiots.

Happens everyday in South Africa - plenty of YouTube videos etc and I witnessed it a few times myself - where taxis deliberately drive on the wrong side if there is a queue on their side.

Happened to me in India a few years back, recorded it too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4TnQylWH4

[Vipers]

Some of you may remember the woman who used the wrong sliproad on the A90 in Aberdeen, trucker swerved crashed, causing thousands of pounds of damage, she got a broken nail, (Her sister worked with me, she told me that). Shortly before that, maybe a few weeks before, she rear ended a beema.

She was milliseconds away from death with the truck.

Some stupid people amongst us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK9-Ikcu0sY

Road Hawk shows time as around midday, had this been in rush hour, would have been total carnage.

[TooMany2cvs]

Jonesy23 said:

Another view:

https://twitter.com/AlexVarga_/status/105189809442...

Looks deliberate to me.

I dunno. Looks bloody gormless. But if it was deliberate, why not aim for the front of the first truck? He's going straight, with lights on beam - if it was deliberate, wouldn't he be swerving around?

It's definitely heading north around J7, only a mile or so short of J8, so can't have come on at the Lewknor junction at the bottom of the escarpment. He's probably got confused at the services roundabout somehow, gawd knows how.

Almost certainly not foreign - wipers are set for RHD. B'sides, a foreign caravanner in the UK would almost certainly be Dutch </sweeping stereotype>, and they aren't cloggy black on yellow plates.

[Regiment]

Jonesy23 said:

Another view:

https://twitter.com/AlexVarga_/status/105189809442...

Looks deliberate to me.

That definitely doesn't look like someone turning the wrong way and missing a no entry sign or a foreign driver getting confused, that looks deliberate to me. Hopefully whoever was driving didn't kill anyone but presumably themselves.

[Zod]

alfaspecial said:

Took a taxi in Egypt from the airport (Luxor) to City. The driver spent the whole journey talking over his shoulder, talking to me and not looking where he was going.

The road was two lanes (one lane 'our' way one lane on coming) plus a rubble strip on each side. As a faster moving vehicle we were on the rubble strip on the oncoming side side, overtaking a car (which itself was travelling in wrong direction), that was overtaking a bus (correct lane/direction) that was itself overtaking a bullock & cart (on rubble strip).

I screamed a warning at the driver but he just carried on oblivious to the view ahead and eventually I had to physically grab his head and turn it so he could see what was oncoming........ almost exactly the same scenario (cart plus bus plus car plus car) coming in the opposite direction.

Perhaps the reason why many Egyptian men wear gallibayas - a long shirt like garment rather than trousers - is because it saves on having to change ones underwear after a car journey on Egyptian roads.....



Very tragic but on a lighter note...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQpGJ2mtv0

Edited by alfaspecial on Tuesday 16th October 09:12

Edited by alfaspecial on Tuesday 16th October 09:13

I was once in a taxi from the airport in Cairo on the way into town. There were six of us in two taxis. On a flyover, an idiot tried to cross by running through several lanes of moving traffic and was hit and killed by the taxi in front carrying my colleagues. Amazingly quickly a menacing crowd gathered and the guys from the taxi involved were advised to get into our taxi to make a getaway in order to avoid the crowd demanding money for the dead guy's funeral and family, so six of us piled into that one taxi and got out of there. The only other places I've been as concerned about my safety in a car have been Calcutta and Moscow (office driver coming in from Domodedovo in heavy fresh snow at 90 mph - he was fired a few days later because it was just going to be a matter of time before he crashed).

[motco]

Ron Maiden said:

Possible contributor to this type of event... having many foreign drivers used to driving on the left?, The more there are the higher the chance
someone is going to make a dreadful mistake.

They'd have to be pretty stupid not to notice that everyone else was going the other way!

[Ron Maiden]

motco said:

Ron Maiden said:

Possible contributor to this type of event... having many foreign drivers used to driving on the left?, The more there are the higher the chance
someone is going to make a dreadful mistake.

They'd have to be pretty stupid not to notice that everyone else was going the other way!

Well as the OP illustrated there are actually some pretty stupid people out there. Maybe even stupid enough to think that all the other
cars have got it wrong.

There can be no denying that there are some serious lame brains on the roads today, and from personal experience it has gotten dramatically more noticeable in the last 5 or 6 years.

[4x4Tyke]

Biker 1 said:

Jonesy23 said:

https://twitter.com/AlexVarga_/status/105189809442...

Holy st that made me wince!!!!!! Amazing evasive action by some of the drivers.

The Civic (?) driver looks to be a bit of thunk when he pulls out and tailgates the little blue van, but he does seem to be amongst the first to spot the problem before the van and Fiesta (?) in front of him. The Fiesta seems very slow to react given he seem to have a big gap in front of him and the dashcammer is pretty last second as well.

[4x4Tyke]

motco said:

They'd have to be pretty stupid not to notice that everyone else was going the other way!

It looks right hand drive to me, you can see what looks like the outline of a steering wheel on the left side on the near head-on video.

[TooMany2cvs]

4x4Tyke said:

The Civic (?) driver looks to be a bit of thunk when he pulls out and tailgates the little blue van, but he does seem to be amongst the first to spot the problem before the van and Fiesta (?) in front of him. The Fiesta seems very slow to react given he seem to have a big gap in front of him and the dashcammer is pretty last second as well.

There's certainly a lot of people driving according to the car in front.

[dandarez]

Dr Jekyll said:

Do we know where the rogue joined? I understood the crash was on the Northbound carriageway at 7, implying he joined at 8 rather than 6.

Just watched the dashcam footage and you're right, he's passing the J8 Oxford/Cheltenham A40 sign!

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7186057,-1.03106...


How f far did he travel before the inevitable ending?

[Puggit]

2 people in their 80s killed in one vehicle, and a 30 something in another vehicle. So I think we have our answer as to 'how?'.

[Drew106]

Ahbefive said:

Foreign? Elderly? Or just an absolute idiot?

From the article:
"The driver and a passenger of the Subaru, both aged in their eighties, and the driver of the Ford Mondeo, a man in his thirties, died."

Very sad. My guess would be he lacked the mental capacity to be driving. Dementia maybe.

My Grandad became a real liability on the road a good while before he was properly diagnosed. Luckily he had no serious accidents and was stopped from driving as soon as possible.

[chris-.-]

TooMany2cvs said:

4x4Tyke said:

The Civic (?) driver looks to be a bit of thunk when he pulls out and tailgates the little blue van, but he does seem to be amongst the first to spot the problem before the van and Fiesta (?) in front of him. The Fiesta seems very slow to react given he seem to have a big gap in front of him and the dashcammer is pretty last second as well.

There's certainly a lot of people driving according to the car in front.

This sort of thing can really catch you out, so i can fully understand why some people appeared slow to react. Unless there were gantry sign warnings, it's really the last thing you expect to see on a dual carriageway (yes, i know, expect the unexpected...) and the speed at which they approach is truly frightening.

I went past this guy https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/pens..., he was in lane 3, me in lane 1. Despite increased observation and pegging the speed back quite a bit (gantry signs warned of oncoming vehicle), i almost missed him in a blink of the eye. Thankfully no-one hurt in this particular incident as the road was unusually quiet so few cars occupying L3.

I now take the 'oncoming vehicle' and 'pedestrians in road' warnings really quite seriously and give myself plenty of observation/stopping/avoidance space...

[Digga]

Puggit said:

2 people in their 80s killed in one vehicle, and a 30 something in another vehicle. So I think we have our answer as to 'how?'.

I'm guessing the elderly pair were the caravaners?

My dad is in his 70's and takes his sight/driving very seriously and has regular check ups. He reckons that, even so, with his eyesight/glasses, driving in certain types of rain, in low light, can be very tricky. Much trickier than without glasses. He never used to have to wear them and, at one time, racked up at least 20k miles a year for over a decade, so knows how his limitations have altered.