One single thing that makes you think "knob" Vol 4

[InitialDave]

yellowjack said:

What a bizarre and thoroughly unpleasant life you, and "most of the country" must lead if you never drive through a rural area to get from one conurbation to another.

Seriously? You expect me to believe this? Just getting from one town or village to the next, for most people, will involved driving along a rural road with either open fields or enclosed woodland on either side. And that's before we even consider that Deer have encroached into many urban areas too. We're talking about common native and invasive Deer species here, not stalking The Monarch Of The Glen with Archie the gamekeeper, while dressed in your very best Harris and wielding £5k's worth of rifle and scope.

If you (or perhaps more generously - the majority of UK drivers) are happy to wear ignorance as a badge of honour, then great. I'm happy for you. I, on the other hand, whilst not owning or driving a particularly 'PH-worthy' car, will continue to read and inwardly digest any hints, tips, and driving safety advice I find myself exposed to, in the hope that it will make me a better, safer, and more considerate driver.

I'll be sure to wave to y'all as you stand beside your cars, hazard lights forlornly blinking, wrapped in foil blankets, waiting for a recovery truck to pull the car out of a ditch all covered in a dead Deer's internal organs...

Leaving aside that yes, a lot of people do have a thoroughly unpleasant, urban-only existence, even if you're surrounded by fields, deer aren't necessarily a common thing to meet on the road. Can't remember when I last encountered one around here, actually. Sheep, cows, horses, the usual foxes and badgers etc, but not deer.

Lots of the buggers when driving at night in rural Japan though, and they've got about as much self-preservation instinct for crossing the road as our ones do.

[Graveworm]

Blown2CV said:

Graveworm said:

Blown2CV said:

go on you're going to have to explain this one... are you saying the driver should have predicted there would be more than one or something?

"Where there is one their may be more" is a commentary cliche, but still not a bad mantra.

never heard that in my life. Maybe this is corn-pone wisdom from Jethro types...

It doesn't just apply to deer it applies to lot's of road hazards.

[WarrenB]

Yadizzle1 said:

I've been doing a lot of m'way driving recently and have started to get to the point of wanting to cut myself every time I encounter an idiot. I genuinely don't know how to calm down after seeing such stupid driving.

Knob 1 - Corsa Driver on the M25. Barely any traffic at around 11 at night, i'm on the inside lane with my cruise control set to 70, Corsa ahead sat in the middle lane doing probably a bit less. I edge closer to him over the course of about 5 minutes, still sat in the middle lane. Now what I did may have been somewhat wrong but I decided to stay in my lane and continue doing 70, Corsa boy waited right until I was next to him and swerved into my lane without any indication and with less than half a cars gap, then proceeded to brake check me twice. WTF? If you're that offended by an undertake, why not sit in the correct bloody lane??

Knob 2 - VW Golf on the M1. Again hardly any traffic and going through the 60mph average speed zone, sat once again on the inside lane with cruise set to 60. VW Golf takes about 2 minutes to overtake me doing about 61mph and then as soon as his car is ahead of me, pulls into my lane leaving probably a quarter of a cars gap, I couldn't see the rear reg plate, that's how little of a gap he'd left. This caused my adaptive cruise to slam the anchors on. Again, why??

Knob 3 - Once again M1 on the same day as Golf guy, again inside lane doing 60 on cruise. People sat in the middle lane doing 55, cruise past them no issues. Pass a Mazda 6 also sat in the middle lane doing 55 too, all of a sudden he's so offended that he speeds up, overtakes the 55mph cruisers ahead of him, then comes to the inside lane and slows right down to 50 to box me in. Why do people drive like such aholes?

Then you've got all the wkers that will sit right on your rear bumper and flash an honk when you're doing 70 overtaking traffic sitting in the middle lane doing 60/65. People that will try and undertake/overtake you and then do 10mph less than the speed limit for absolutely no reason. i.e on Sunday a Range Rover at the lights in the wrong lane for taking the first exit overtook me, then did 30 in a 40mph dual carriage way and as I went to turn off he all of a sudden booted it and sat on the rear bumper of the van ahead.

Anyone have any advice to calm down, I just can't see why people behave like this? It's genuinely winding me up because I just can't think what the though process is behind any of the above actions? It's driving me bonkers. It's getting to the point that I'd be better of joining in being a middle lane moron.

I feel exactly the same way!

[jagnet]

Yadizzle1 said:

Anyone have any advice to calm down, I just can't see why people behave like this? It's genuinely winding me up because I just can't think what the though process is behind any of the above actions?

That's your mistake right there: assuming that there is a thought process behind it. There isn't. It's driving by instinct and emotion; purely reactionary whilst the conscious mind is left to free itself of the burden of concentrating on the task at hand. Logic, common sense and societal ideals around working together to achieve a common goal are abandoned as the brain's primordial areas are given sole charge over the task of driving.

[yellowjack]

Yadizzle1 said:

I've been doing a lot of m'way driving recently and have started to get to the point of wanting to cut myself every time I encounter an idiot. I genuinely don't know how to calm down after seeing such stupid driving.

Knob 1 - Corsa Driver on the M25. Barely any traffic at around 11 at night, i'm on the inside lane with my cruise control set to 70, Corsa ahead sat in the middle lane doing probably a bit less. I edge closer to him over the course of about 5 minutes, still sat in the middle lane. Now what I did may have been somewhat wrong but I decided to stay in my lane and continue doing 70, Corsa boy waited right until I was next to him and swerved into my lane without any indication and with less than half a cars gap, then proceeded to brake check me twice. WTF? If you're that offended by an undertake, why not sit in the correct bloody lane??

Knob 2 - VW Golf on the M1. Again hardly any traffic and going through the 60mph average speed zone, sat once again on the inside lane with cruise set to 60. VW Golf takes about 2 minutes to overtake me doing about 61mph and then as soon as his car is ahead of me, pulls into my lane leaving probably a quarter of a cars gap, I couldn't see the rear reg plate, that's how little of a gap he'd left. This caused my adaptive cruise to slam the anchors on. Again, why??

Knob 3 - Once again M1 on the same day as Golf guy, again inside lane doing 60 on cruise. People sat in the middle lane doing 55, cruise past them no issues. Pass a Mazda 6 also sat in the middle lane doing 55 too, all of a sudden he's so offended that he speeds up, overtakes the 55mph cruisers ahead of him, then comes to the inside lane and slows right down to 50 to box me in. Why do people drive like such aholes?

Then you've got all the wkers that will sit right on your rear bumper and flash an honk when you're doing 70 overtaking traffic sitting in the middle lane doing 60/65. People that will try and undertake/overtake you and then do 10mph less than the speed limit for absolutely no reason. i.e on Sunday a Range Rover at the lights in the wrong lane for taking the first exit overtook me, then did 30 in a 40mph dual carriage way and as I went to turn off he all of a sudden booted it and sat on the rear bumper of the van ahead.

Anyone have any advice to calm down, I just can't see why people behave like this? It's genuinely winding me up because I just can't think what the though process is behind any of the above actions? It's driving me bonkers. It's getting to the point that I'd be better of joining in being a middle lane moron.

It's no different to the complete aholes who have no idea how to drive on rural roads, and are proud to announce that "no normal person" reads the Highway Code or other readily available driving advice. Those driving along below the speed limit in the middle lane, then getting uppity when you pass them? They're the same people mocking me because I read about how to behave around common hazards on rural roads. They don't think that they need to improve their driving, so they don't. Worse still, many of them deliberately drive inconsiderately. I swear it's endemic these days.

The only advice I can give is to not get involved, really. Even if that means dropping back at a speed well below the speed you'd like to drive at. Or get past and put your foot down (not excessively) to put space between them and you. Pull off the motorway at a junction, even, do an orbit of the roundabout, and get back on. The kind of jelly-head you describe will NEVER accept that it's their driving which is poor, so there is no point in trying to draw their attention to the fact. They're the same buffoons that glue themselves to your bumper in rural village 30mph limits, disappear into the distance at the merest hint of a NSL bend or curve, then re-appear clamped to your rear bumper again in the next village or town. Or those driving Gods who feel that an indicated 63 mph isn't fast enough on a straight section of NSL road, but as soon as they overtake you they realise that there's no-one there to (metaphorically) hold their hand through the twisty bits, so they end up holding you up.

You just need to learn the 7-11 breathing method, achieve a zen-like serenity, and accept that this is the reality of driving on modern roads. Or get the train. But that leads to a whole new raft of complaints about knobs who are unable to share public spaces without irritating others. You can't win - there are just too many of them...

[InitialDave]

yellowjack said:

But that leads to a whole new raft of complaints about knobs who are unable to share public spaces without irritating others. You can't win - there are just too many of them...

That applies to online spaces as well as physical ones.

[yellowjack]

InitialDave said:

yellowjack said:

But that leads to a whole new raft of complaints about knobs who are unable to share public spaces without irritating others. You can't win - there are just too many of them...

That applies to online spaces as well as physical ones.

Oh, I can share online spaces just fine. Every poster is entitled to air their opinion just as I am, within the confines of the forum posting rules and the law.

As for physical spaces? Yup, one of the fundamental tenets of driving on the road is to drive only as fast as you can stop from in the part of the road which you can see to be clear, and which you can reasonably expect will remain clear. If a few more people applied some of the most basic principles of driving theory, and practice, then there'd be far fewer collisions. And no matter how many hours some tiresome bore on the internet claims to have "lost" being stuck behind dawdling drivers or slow, selfish cyclists, it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll have "lost" a hell of a lot more time, in the long run, due to delays and diversions caused entirely by avoidable incidents perpetrated by inept drivers.

TL;DR? If everyone put just a little bit of effort into being a better driver, then everyone would benefit from greater efficiency and reliability of the road network, and we'd all get where we want to go in a more relaxed and predictable manner.

[Monkeylegend]

yellowjack said:

The only advice I can give is to not get involved, really.

Says the guy who is on here nearly every day posting about his conflicts and poor interactions with other motorists, cyclists and joggers.

As I have said before you are PH's No 1 knob magnet, you attract them seemingly every time you venture out.

Ever asked yourself why you have so many daily disagreements and negative interactions with others. I am sure you will say it is everybody else.

Common sense and your obvious inability to be self critical would probably suggest that is not always the case.

Might be worthwhile heeding your own advice for your own sense of well being

[yellowjack]

Monkeylegend said:

Says the guy who is on here nearly every day posting about his conflicts and poor interactions with other motorists, cyclists and joggers.

As I have said before you are PH's No 1 knob magnet, you attract them seemingly every time you venture out.

Ever asked yourself why you have so many daily disagreements and negative interactions with others. I am sure you will say it is everybody else.

Common sense and your obvious inability to be self critical would probably suggest that is not always the case.

Might be worthwhile heeding your own advice for your own sense of well being

Well, we're clearly not going to agree about this anytime soon. I'm more than happy to park it, though, and let our differences lie...

[Pan Pan Pan]

I suspect that this is a forum mainly used by people who are interested in cars and driving them, and who actually like cars. whereas for the majority of drivers on the roads their car is (as pointed out on some other topics), just another tick in a box on their white goods line up.
Most are not really interested in cars, or in learning to drive them properly, and as some have suggested, for such people the driving test possibly represents the absolute pinnacle of their driving ability, after which it, (in many but fortunately not all cases) goes downhill from there.
instructors and examiners are there to determine if a drivers ability is sufficient for them to be on public roads with a degree of safety for themselves, and those around them. Quite possibly with the hope that once they have passed their driving test, they will then be able to learn how to drive.
All passing the driving test is doing, is giving an individual the opportunity to then learn how to drive. It can only be hoped that some do so with this in mind.

[Flibble]

yellowjack said:

What a bizarre and thoroughly unpleasant life you, and "most of the country" must lead if you never drive through a rural area to get from one conurbation to another.

Seriously? You expect me to believe this? Just getting from one town or village to the next, for most people, will involved driving along a rural road with either open fields or enclosed woodland on either side. And that's before we even consider that Deer have encroached into many urban areas too. We're talking about common native and invasive Deer species here, not stalking The Monarch Of The Glen with Archie the gamekeeper, while dressed in your very best Harris and wielding £5k's worth of rifle and scope.

I used to drive through rural Cheshire all the time. Number of deer seen in over a decade: zero. Like many parts of the country it's all farmland and thus has very few deer. Rural doesn't just mean the New Forest.
I did used to meet horses (with riders) quite often though.

Additionally, I've driven through many rural parts of the rest of country, and never seen a deer near the road at any time. The bigger hazard tends to be sheep in my experience (and highland cows up North).

As for urban, I live in Manchester, we don't have deer, don't be ridiculous.

[Monkeylegend]

In reality most drivers are perfectly competent and cause no issues, at least in my driving experience over the last 50 years.

I was driving 90k miles a year for 15 years or so, and in that time I saw a majority of good acceptable drivers and a few not so good.

It seems that for many purely posting on PH qualifies them as the creme de la creme of drivers, putting them on a pedestal head and shoulders above all the others, which is a ridiculous notion.

There are a small minority of drivers who cause most of the problems with poor anticipation, lane discipline, spacial awareness, and whatever skills or qualities a good driver is supposed to have.

Lets not kid ourselves that all but PH'ers are bad drivers and that we know best. It is this apparent arrogance which probably marks many on here down as not being as good as they think they are, hence leading to many of the confrontations that many posters on here find themselves in.

[Zetec-S]

Blown2CV said:

Zetec-S said:

Other knob was the guy in front who started to brake when they saw a deer run out from the side of the road, then stop braking when they saw the deer pause and sailed on past. Seconds later another 3 emerged, not sure how they avoided collecting at least one of them.

go on you're going to have to explain this one... are you saying the driver should have predicted there would be more than one or something?

Here you go, my dramatic CGI recreation hopefully explains all


Deer steps into road (approx speed of car 50mph)


Driver starts to brake:


Deer pauses, driver stops braking and continues (approx speed of car 40mph)


Car passes deer, 3 more run out:


https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.9544169,-2.03239...

[jagnet]

Monkeylegend said:

Lets not kid ourselves that all but PH'ers are bad drivers and that we know best. It is this apparent arrogance which probably marks many on here down as not being as good as they think they are, hence leading to many of the confrontations that many posters on here find themselves in.

I don't think anybody is suggesting that, are they?

It's a bell curve. There's a few terrible drivers, most drivers are competent and at the other end there's some genuinely excellent drivers. Occasionally I find myself following one of the latter and the difference is as noticeable as it is on the other end of the bell curve. I couldn't say whether they were PH members or not though

[jagnet]

Zetec-S said:

Here you go, my dramatic CGI recreation hopefully explains all

excellent work

[matchmaker]

Flibble said:

yellowjack said:

What a bizarre and thoroughly unpleasant life you, and "most of the country" must lead if you never drive through a rural area to get from one conurbation to another.

Seriously? You expect me to believe this? Just getting from one town or village to the next, for most people, will involved driving along a rural road with either open fields or enclosed woodland on either side. And that's before we even consider that Deer have encroached into many urban areas too. We're talking about common native and invasive Deer species here, not stalking The Monarch Of The Glen with Archie the gamekeeper, while dressed in your very best Harris and wielding £5k's worth of rifle and scope.

I used to drive through rural Cheshire all the time. Number of deer seen in over a decade: zero. Like many parts of the country it's all farmland and thus has very few deer. Rural doesn't just mean the New Forest.
I did used to meet horses (with riders) quite often though.

Additionally, I've driven through many rural parts of the rest of country, and never seen a deer near the road at any time. The bigger hazard tends to be sheep in my experience (and highland cows up North).

As for urban, I live in Manchester, we don't have deer, don't be ridiculous.

Last time I had to brake for a deer in the road was in the rural surroundings of Longannet Power Station...

Edited by matchmaker on Tuesday 3rd March 13:24

[yellowjack]

Flibble said:

I used to drive through rural Cheshire all the time. Number of deer seen in over a decade: zero.

Easily explained by legions of orange women in white Range Rovers killing them all, probably without noticing, as they fail to look up from their phones...

#otherlazystereotypesareavailable

[AppleJuice]

Muddle238 said:

Eventually coasting down to 40 does the trick and they overtake, the passenger giving me a stare as they finally come past, accelerating off into the distance. WTF is wrong with some people? It's a motorway, literally the easiest thing to overtake on.

Classic "looking at you as though you're the moron"!

[AppleJuice]

Dagnir said:

Hideous human and a full blown knob!

This was the only thing she didn't have.

[Centurion07]

slopes said:

I'm catching a car stopped for traffic, so i slow down and stop about 5 feet from his rear bumper. To my left is the slip road for a local industrial park that houses a Wickes / The Range and KFC.
Guy in a van gets all shouty and sweary at me because he can't go straight into the slip road...

If, by using that 5ft of wasted space he could've got on his way, then it's YOU that's the knob.

Few things more annoying than being held up because some plum is so ignorant to the possible consequences of THEIR driving on other people.