Standard of driving in different parts of the UK

Standard of driving in different parts of the UK

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theplayingmantis

Original Poster:

3,721 posts

81 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
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Just back from a few days in Manchester and the north west and found the standard of driving generally in the city to be abysmal and very inconsiderate and not much better further out (worse than south east England and east/west London (Heathrow area especially bad if you take the m25 regularly)). I was also surprised at how busy the roads were north of Manchester up towards the lakes. expected empty a/b roads and motorways but was very busy, just like Essex - guess a lot of you northerners are packed into that corner! had expected it to be on par with the north east, boy was i wrong!

is there any general PH consensus on what areas of the country are poor and those that are better? Done to death on here no doubt but interesting nonetheless.

I thought the standard in the south east and London was crap, but Manchester for me made them look great.

best for me east Scotland around Edinburgh and south west England.

SidewaysSi

10,742 posts

233 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
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Hideous driving in Devon and the Cotswolds.

CKR83

74 posts

74 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
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I live in Norfolk and we’re exposed to all the nations drivers coming across to holiday for the weekend on a Friday afternoon. All I can say is if the cars driven in the wrong lane, at the wrong speed, or just dangerously, it’s usually got a registration plate beginning with an ‘L’ if it’s not an ‘L’ it’ll be an ‘E’.
I find cars driven with ‘D’ and ‘M’ to rarely register on the knobhead scale, whereas ‘B’s, particularly when I’m in Birmingham itself, they’re the worst.

Pica-Pica

13,621 posts

83 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
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It all goes mad once you cross from Wales into England. Tailgating, use of horns, impatience. Before the new Highway Code changes, that hierarchy of vulnerability was already observed here. I was crossing on a ‘green man light’ in Manchester with my grandson, car came bowling around the turn, obviously running a red light - luckily I was alert to the possibility. I never trust a (traffic) green light in the North West either, yes I know green means go only if it’s safe, but it seems I have to be watching because they don’t. Essex and Kent were OK-ish when I lived there. Decades since I drove in London, I’d rather pull my own eyes out.

theplayingmantis

Original Poster:

3,721 posts

81 months

Thursday 26th May 2022
quotequote all
Also noted a lot of police vehicles (relative to my exposure of them) cruising of an evening when i was popping out both early and late for my run which usually took in (from OT cricket ground) media city and parts of stretford.

Pan Pan Pan

9,777 posts

110 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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I am not sure areas have much to do with this, although in any built up, heavily trafficked area, the chance of coming into contact with a `knob' is increased.
The issue is that there are quite a large number of car `users' out there, but not so many car `drivers'
To many, a car is just another tick on their white goods list, and they are no more interested in driving a car properly, than they are in operating their washing machine, tumble drier, or fridge freezer properly.

TooLateForAName

4,725 posts

183 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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Bradford.

Hate driving through either Bradford or Leeds, both have plenty of terrible drivers. In Leeds the road designs are a big contributary factor though. junction design and lane markings seem to be out to confuse.

The worst driving I see in harrogate is around the police station - make of that what you will!

vikingaero

10,256 posts

168 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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Must slower pace in Scotlandshire. Rarely get anyone racing you away from the lights.

Now Manchester. What a fkfest. All the pseudo-Sennas around. Traffic lights with green/blue bike lanes in front of them - you would get the food app delivery drivers overtake queuing cars to wedge themselves in the bike lane so they could go first.

ChocolateFrog

24,850 posts

172 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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TooLateForAName said:
Bradford.

Hands down the worst.

Most poorer towns are pretty bad IME.

The Surveyor

7,576 posts

236 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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ChocolateFrog said:
TooLateForAName said:
Bradford.

Hands down the worst.

Most poorer towns are pretty bad IME.
Absolutely Bradford, with Leeds being a close second. The M62 around there is nearly always delayed due to blithering incompetence.

some bloke

1,025 posts

66 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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Edinburgh is pretty awful - 1 in 3 or fewer indicate, red lights run, cabbies doing U-turns in front of you without warning, speeding etc. I hate driving here.

SkodaIan

706 posts

84 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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I'd agree that Manchester is pretty terrible, and the M60 is by far the worst motorway driving in the UK, it's on a par with the Peripherique in Paris for people doing really dangerous aggressive manoeuvres, and much, much worse than the M25.

However I've never come across any city in the UK with worse driving than Bristol. It has a particularly lethal mix of oblivious old people, really aggressive minicabs/delivery drivers and left wing types who really hate cars so pay no attention to driving them well or considerably. On top of that, the road signs are really bad, so there are quite a lot of non-locals who are lost too. These days it's even worse because there are loads of those E-Scooters ridden suicidally everywhere as well! Oddly, the large number bicycles seem to be ridden surprisingly well and considerately there, perhaps they have to do that to avoid being squashed by the terrible drivers....

At the other end of the scale, where there is generally pretty good driving in urban areas, Milton Keynes and Northampton are quite reasonable.

In rural areas, North Yorkshire, Country Durham and Northumberland seem to be the best, though that might be down to the roads being fairly empty. Lincolnshire is probably the worst I've been in, though Cornwall can be pretty bad too.

Shappers24

816 posts

85 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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Cities in South Wales have some of the worst driving I’ve seen. Regularly here red lights are treated as give ways, large numbers of youths on e-scooters / e-bikes causing chaos, tail gating, dodgy over takes…

Limpet

6,293 posts

160 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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London, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester are all horrible to drive in and around due to appalling driving standards.

Something else stands out in Birmingham as well. Presumably due to the factory location, every other car seems to be a either a Range Rover Sport, Discovery Sport or Evoque, and every other one of those seems to be driven by someone who bought their license rather than earned it.

ArnageWRC

2,050 posts

158 months

Friday 27th May 2022
quotequote all
Pan Pan Pan said:
I am not sure areas have much to do with this, although in any built up, heavily trafficked area, the chance of coming into contact with a `knob' is increased.
The issue is that there are quite a large number of car `users' out there, but not so many car `drivers'
To many, a car is just another tick on their white goods list, and they are no more interested in driving a car properly, than they are in operating their washing machine, tumble drier, or fridge freezer properly.
Yes, they've passed their test, and that's it. They get in the car, they're on auto pilot.....no awareness, no planning, just follow the car in front.....

NGK210

2,866 posts

144 months

Friday 27th May 2022
quotequote all
some bloke said:
Edinburgh is pretty awful - 1 in 3 or fewer indicate, red lights run, cabbies doing U-turns in front of you without warning, speeding etc. I hate driving here.
Interesting, IME Edinburgh is hassle-free and chilled compared to London.
SE London drivers are cheeky; RBKC are arrogant and aggressive; north London – especially north of the A406 – are either ultra aggressive and confrontational or alarmingly slow and breathtakingly inept.
Bristol is best.

LankyFreak

623 posts

27 months

Friday 27th May 2022
quotequote all
some bloke said:
Edinburgh is pretty awful - 1 in 3 or fewer indicate, red lights run, cabbies doing U-turns in front of you without warning, speeding etc. I hate driving here.
I hated driving there too!

Spoke

56 posts

30 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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Driving from Norwich to Cheltenham the driving standards get markedly worse once you hit the M6 and then it's downhill from there - M42/M5.

witko999

629 posts

207 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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The Surveyor said:
ChocolateFrog said:
TooLateForAName said:
Bradford.

Hands down the worst.

Most poorer towns are pretty bad IME.
Absolutely Bradford, with Leeds being a close second. The M62 around there is nearly always delayed due to blithering incompetence.
This.

It actually feels like you're under attack sometimes in Bradford, with the amount of evasive manoeuvers required.

georgeyboy12345

3,479 posts

34 months

Friday 27th May 2022
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As someone who is from Manchester and currently lives in Manchester, but who has lived in all four corners of the country (Devon, Kent and North Yorkshire), I have to absolutely agree with you.

The driving here in Manchester is shockingly bad. This is driven by the large number of people that hail from different parts of the world such as Asia and Africa, where the standard of driving is nowhere near as high as UK. Then also you have a large proportion of locals that are criminally inclined, plus a lot of people from out of town that are not familiar with the roads, it leads to a very poor overall standard of driving. It’s no coincidence that nearly all the Manchester postcodes are in the highest insurance band, and the rest of them are in the second highest.

I found the drivers in Devon to be best overall, though most are a little too relaxed, plus you still get the odd bellend. Drivers in the southeast are quite aggressive, but fundamentally most are good drivers. North east they are pretty good too, with the odd aggressive ahole, but mostly competent.